Music News
New Century, New Leader
Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg’s inaugural season with the New Century Chamber Orchestra will be an eventful one. It includes two commissioned premieres, solo appearances by her in Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, Ginastera’s Glosses on Themes by Pablo Casals, and in Clarice Assad’s Dreamscape. That last work by the 30-year-old Brazilian composer is one of the two commissioned pieces from her; the other is Impressions: Suite for Chamber Orchestra.
NCCO’s upcoming 17th season opens in September with an evening of Brazilian and Argentine music. An all-Russian program features pianist Anne-Marie McDermott as soloist in Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives Op. 22, and Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Concerts with the Assad Dreamscape also include Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and a suite by Bernard Herrmann from the film Psycho.
New Century is stretching its admission price range in both directions: on the top, there is a $400 four-concert box subscription option in Herbst Theatre, with valet parking and other features. To attract young newcomers, the orchestra is offering single concert tickets to those under 30 for as little as $16, or $56 for the four-concert series. See a review of the latest NCCO concert.
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
City’s First ‘Arts Town Hall’
Preparations for the first San Francisco Bay Area Arts Town Hall must have started months ago, but when the day-long event took place at the Yerba Buena Center on June 9, the timing was terrible — which is to say perfect. This “arts summit” came right after the new Black Friday.
It’s both painful and timely to talk about financing the arts in the aftermath of a more than $10 daily jump in the price of oil, a new peak in the jobless report, a 400-point drop on the stock market, California gas prices hitting the midway point between $4 and $5 (and heading higher), the ongoing mortgage/housing crisis, along with the daily $341 million cost of the war in Iraq … and so on.
And yet, it is exactly the right time because the longer we wait, the worse the problems will become. Art is not all about money, but without funding it’s simply not possible to operate. The San Francisco Opera has a $61 million annual budget, the San Francisco Symphony requires $58 million every year, and smaller organizations have smaller, but still sizeable and — more importantly — indispensable budgets. What will happen, for example, to the summer festivals — or rather, when — the cost of tickets and the skyrocketing cost of transportation reduces attendance significantly? How will season-ticket sales fare for the fall?
What to about the approaching perfect storm?
Nobody knows more about the problem of funding at such a time than the organizations that provide major financing for the performing arts. These are the same groups that have sponsored the Town Hall: The Center for Cultural Innovation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, City of San Jose, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (also the venue for the meeting).
Attendees included representatives of community and arts organizations, individual artists, funders, cultural policy leaders, and just plain folk interested in the subject. More than 800 signed up for the meetings, according to the organizers, but the the crowd looked closer to 500 at the beginning, which reduced to a little more than 100 by the end.
Howard Lazar, José Cuellar, Susan Pontious, and E. San San Wong
In contrast with the bleak circumstances, opening statements were strong and positive. The host, Kenneth Foster, Executive Director of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, spoke of arts being “at the heart of community life.” E. San San Wong of the San Francisco Arts Commission and Center for Cultural Innovation and President Cora Mirikitani greeted the local debut of the Town Hall (already conducted twice in Los Angeles) as the “beginning of a dialogue … for a stronger future.” At last year’s L.A. Town Hall, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa called attention to that metropolis as being “driven by its creative industries [accounting] for 445,900 jobs in L.A. and $140.5 billion in revenue generated per year. Movies, music, art, fashion, and design are an integral part of life for all Angelenos …” For San Francisco figures, see next item.
John R. Killacky
The first plenary session, moderated by San Francisco Foundation Arts & Culture Program Officer John R. Killacky, focused on the “big picture” of current issues “surrounding creativity, survival, reach, and impact in the arts.” Speakers included Alan Brown, principal at the advisory group Wolf Brown, S.F. Arts Commission Director of Cultural Affairs Luis R. Cancel, Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program Director Moy Eng, Oakland East Bay Symphony Music Director Michael Morgan, and printmaker Favianna Rodriguez.
Panel discussion topics during the eight-hour forum included
- “Finding Balance: Living to Create”
- “What We Know About Audience Participation & Engagement: We Have Met the Audience and It Is Us”
- “Creativity Exposed: Opening the Process”
- “To Be Traditional Is to Be Political”
- “Beyond 501c3 [the IRS code exempting some nonprofits from income taxes] — New Structures, Leadership, and Sustenance for Tomorrow’s Arts Organizations”
- “Reaching Tomorrow’s Audiences: New Ideas in Action”
- “Justice: A Frame for Art in the 21st Century”
Perhaps deliberately general and vague in order to keep discussions open, the subject headings needed actual content to be meaningful. To have an indication of the specifics, see a blog report on the meeting.
Ken Ikeda
These were the roundtable topics and facilitators:
- Arts Law: Intellectual Property — Stephen J. Camber, Attorney and Board President Emeritus, California Lawyers for the Arts
- Organizational Development & Sucession Planning — Thérèse F. Martin, Executive Director, ArtSpan
- Board Development — Julie Fry, Program Officer, Performing Arts Program, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
- Emerging Nonprofit Arts Leadership — Ken Ikeda, Executive Director, Bay Area Video Coalition
- Foundation Funding for Nonprofit Organizations — Sarah Jo Neubauer, Assistant Librarian, The Foundation Center
- Special Events Fundraising — Sheri Kuehl, Development Manager, Quinn Associates
- Marketing and Promotion — Sherri Young, Executive Director, African-American Shakespeare Company
- Cultural Facilities And Live/Work Spaces — Linda L. Schanfein, Executive Director, ArtHouse, a subsidiary of California Lawyers for the Arts
- Increasing Individual Giving for Nonprofit Organizations — Thérèse F. Martin
- Foundation Funding for Individual Artists — Sarah Jo Neubauer
- Institutional Fundraising — Lori Zook, Development Manager, Quinn Associates
- Board Development — Sherri Young
- Leveraging Media Strategically — Ken Ikeda, Executive Director, Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC)
- Marketing and Promotion — Nancy Hytone Leb, Director of Training, Center for Cultural Innovation
- Arts Law: Negotiations and Contracts — Alma Robinson, Executive Director, California Lawyers for the Arts, and Jill Roisen, Program Director, Arts Arbitration and Mediation Services, a program of California Lawyers for the Arts
- Succession Planning — Marc Vogl, Program Officer, Performing Arts Program, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
- Board Development — Sherri Young
- Increasing Individual Giving for Nonprofit Organizations — Thérèse F. Martin
- Marketing and Promotion — Nancy Hytone Leb
On the Arts Town Hall graffiti wall, a defiant “Survival? Thrive!”
Arts’ Amazing Economic Impact
Following up on the impact of the arts on Los Angeles’ economy (see previous column item), we found some impressive figures that apply to San Francisco, culled from the MacArthur Foundation’s national study last year. The survey, which found that America’s nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion annually ($63.1 billion in spending by organizations and $103.1 billion in spending by audiences), stated that it repesents a $1.03 billion industry in San Francisco, supporting almost 28,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and generating $93.1 million in local and state government revenue.
Excluding for-profit arts activities, nonprofit arts and culture organizations in the city spend almost $460 million each year, leveraging $573 million in additional spending by arts and culture audiences — in local restaurants, hotels, retail stores, parking garages, and other businesses. Arts & Economic Prosperity III says it’s a “common misconception that communities support the arts and culture at the expense of local economic development. In fact, communities that support the arts and culture not only enhance their quality of life, they also invest in their economic wellbeing.”
Festival del Sole Changes
No official reason (beyond “conflict”) is given for the cancellation by mezzo Elina Garanca in what would have been her debut at the Festival del Sole, but you wonder if the combination of the dollar’s decline and continued security “difficulties” for artists traveling to the U.S. makes a one- or two-appearance contract less than appealing.
The July 15 program, without Garanca, will feature the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and violinist Joshua Bell, in a program of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the Haydn Violin Concerto in C Major, and the Mahler orchestration of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.
Joshua Bell
In other news from the festival, details of the Philip Glass program have been released. On July 13, Glass’ music will combine with visual design by Alexander V. Nichols in “LIFE: A Journey Through Time,” a multimedia event featuring Frans Lanting’s photography. The concert, with the Napa Valley Symphony, conducted by Carolyn Kuan, will benefit the Napa Land Trust and other conservation organizations.
From Lanting’s LIFE
After spending seven years photographing every continent on the planet, including Antarctica, Lanting compiled a photo collection comprising over 200 images that parallel new scientific insights about the evolution of life on Earth. The result is a lyrical interpretation of life on Earth, from its earliest beginnings to its present diversity, including prehistoric trilobites, giant tortoises, delicate jellies, spiny octopus trees, and erupting volcanoes.
“There is a heroic quality about LIFE: A Journey Through Time,” says Festival del Sole Co-Director Richard Walker. “Unlike any other global warming imperative, this work puts in proper perspective our role in this planet, which is dwarfed by the beauty and magnitude of life on this planet. LIFE was created in a small seaside hamlet in Santa Cruz, California, and is slowly and fittingly making its way around the country and world.”
From Lanting’s LIFE
YouTube Follow-Up on Soprano Moss
An aria from the Pocket Opera production of Don Pasquale featuring Heidi Moss, subject of a profile in last week’s Music News, is now available on YouTube.
Early Plans for Cleveland’s Centennial
The Cleveland Orchestra won’t turn 100 for another nine years, but Music Director Franz Welser-Möst (whose contract has been extended through 2018) has already made arrangements for centennial commissions. (It makes you wonder about plans for the San Francisco Symphony’s big birthday, which occurs in 2011.)
The Cleveland commissions are being awarded to Marc-André Dalbavie, Osvaldo Golijov, HK Gruber, Matthias Pintscher, and Kaija Saariaho. Works will include a concerto for orchestra, a sacred work, a song cycle, a concerto for soloist and orchestra, and a work for children.
Kaija Saariaho
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.