Good Morning,
Thomas Wolf’s autopsy of the Boston Symphony mess (Thomas Wolf) lands on something larger than one orchestra: the field has narrowed “excellence” down to the quality of the playing, then wondered why that alone won’t hold up. Two stories today show a wider definition working. At Vail, a choreographer put Irish step and tap on ballet dancers, and it works (Dance Magazine). And the concert stage’s dress code has quietly turned expressive instead of uniform (3 Quarks Daily).
The institutional news runs the other way. The Kennedy Center board is weighing three futures for the National Symphony (Axios), none resembling the previous 96 years. And the Center was ordered to pay a quarter-million to the jazz musician whose Christmas Eve concert it canceled and then sued (Variety). New York’s School of Visual Arts has lost a third of its enrollment and is deep in the hole (ARTnews).
Meanwhile, Edinburgh has three competing “Heated Rivalry” musical parodies running at once (The New York Times). Nobody has ever accused the Fringe of undersupply.
