Art Talk
Jacob Stockinger takes you inside local arts
5/15/2008 9:17 am
Art Talk: Choral Union breaks even. But what about next year?
Art Talk has learned that the
UW Choral Union (see photo at
left) broke even at its concert two weekends
ago with the UW Symphony Orchestra.
You may recall that the Choral Union, which
performed Ralph Vaughan Williams "A Sea Symphony" (plus the same
composer's orchestral work "Five Variants on
'Dive and Lazarus'") on
Sunday night, May 4, in the Overture
Center's Capitol Theater. Normally, the
160-voice group, which consists of...
READ MORE
E-MAIL
PRINT5/14/2008 9:45 am
Art Talk: 4 Turner Prize nominees announced. What do you think?
This just in from the Associated
Press:
LONDON - Four
artists have been nominated for this year's
Turner Prize, awarded annually to a British artist
under the age of 50.
Competing for the $50,000 prize are Mark
Leckey, who uses images from "The Simpsons" TV show, the
movie "Titanic" and the cartoon character Felix the Cat in his
film-based installations. (See a still from one of his
films below right.)...
READ MORE
5/13/2008 10:26 am
Art Talk: Overture Organ concerts, hymn sings set for 2008-09. Do you like the organ?
The Madison Symphony
Orchestra (MSO) has announced the 2008-2009 season
of Overture Concert Organ events and
performances.The
organ, which is the striking backdrop for all MSO concerts in
Overture Hall (see the photo by Bob Rashid at left), was built in
2004 by Germany's Orgelbau Klais. The organ
weighs 174 tons and is...
READ MORE
5/09/2008 8:26 am
Art Talk: Is "green art" a gimmick? Fall show deadline is July 15
Green Lantern Studios in
Mineral Point (see photo at left) is seeking work
for its exhibition titled "Going Green "“
collage/assemblage.
"We're looking for 2D and 3D works that
explore the possibilities of reused and recycled materials (natural
or manufactured) and objects or fragments not intended as art
materials," the press release reads.
"Show us how you Go Green with your art!"
Exhibition dates are Aug. 2 through Sept. 14, 2008.
The postmark deadline for submissions...
READ MORE
5/08/2008 8:45 am
Art Talk: City bus poetry deadline extended to May 16 for students
This just in from the City of Madison
Arts Commission:
...
READ MORE
5/07/2008 9:32 am
Art Talk: Was Gallery Night successful? Which shows do you recommend?
Last Friday night was Gallery
Night in Madison.
The twice-yearly event, organized by the Madison Museum
of Contemporary Art, featured a record 58 venues
(including shows with the work of Lone Rock artist
Charles Munch, seen at left, and the annual "Art of Note" violin
art fundraiser for the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, seen
below right) at the Grace Chosy Gallery, 1825 Monroe)....
READ MORE
5/06/2008 9:54 am
Art Talk: How good is the Capitol Theater in Overture Center?
On Sunday night I once again had a
chance to attend a concert in the Overture Center's Capitol
Theater (pictured at left), which used to be the old Oscar
Mayer Theatre of the Madison Civic Center.
And once again, I found myself cursing the preservationists for
what they did to Overture.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright could probably act as my stand-in when
it comes to vocally critiquing what effect the preservationists had
on the Overture Center.
Which is to ruin a major section of what could have been an
otherwise even more outstanding design for a...
READ MORE
5/02/2008 8:50 am
Art Talk: UW classical season ends this weekend - with a lot for free
Most of the major classical music
groups in the Madison area have already finished their seasons.
The big remaining one is the Madison Opera,
which will perform its premiere production of Donizetti's
"Lucia di Lammermoor" on Friday, May 9, at 8 pm. and Sunday, May
11, at 2:30 p.m. in Overture Hall.
Then there is pianist Jeffrey Siegel's
Keyboard Conversation featuring Austro-Hungarian composers
on Tuesday, May 6, at 7:30 in Mills
Hall; and the Oakwood
Chamber Players, which will...
READ MORE
5/01/2008 8:36 am
Art Talk: Record 58 venues are in Friday's Gallery Night.
Spring Gallery Night,
Madison's semi-annual celebration of the visual
arts organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary
Art, returns this Friday, May 2, from 5 to 9 p.m., with a
record-breaking 58 venues participating. (Curiously, the University
of Wisconsin's Chazen Museum of Art, which has two striking shows
of circus art on display) is not participating this
time.)
...
READ MORE
4/30/2008 9:15 am
Art Talk: MSO launches $500,000 Overture organ campaign
This news just in from The Ear:
A campaign to raise $500,000 to complete the
original $2-million endowment fund (which now has $1.5 million) to
maintain the Overture Concert Organ (see photo at
left) through the future was launched Tuesday night at a benefit
dinner on the stage of Orchestra Hall.
Fred Mohs, president of the
board of directors of the Madison Symphony
Orchestra, announced that an anonymous donor had come
forward with a $100,000 challenge gift to kick off a open-ended
fundraising effort.
The...
READ MORE
4/29/2008 8:37 am
Art Talk: Broom St. Theater seeks scripts, directors. How good is new BST?
This just in from Broom
Street Theater, one of Madison's most
venerable yet countercultural institutions:
Broom Street Theater is currently
seeking script submissions for its 2009 season.
Broom Street is one of the
nation's oldest continuous experimental theater
companies and primarily produces original works by local
playwrights.
There are openings for seven new
plays in the upcoming year.
While there are no limitations as
to style, length, or subject matter it helps to know the kind of
work that has generally...
READ MORE
4/28/2008 12:23 pm
Art Talk: Was the piano too soft or the Madison Symphony too loud?
If you went attended this past
weekend's concerts by the Madison
Symphony Orchestra, you heard one of the greatest
interpretations of Tchaikovky's popular
"Pathetique" Symphony you will ever hear.
It was passionate and profound
without being sentimental or sappy.
It was conducted by guest Russian
conductor (and violin virtuoso) Vladimir Spivakov
(at left).
...
READ MORE
4/25/2008 8:37 am
Art Talk: Von Karajan would be 100. What do you think of him?
This month marks the 100th anniversary
of the birth (April 5, 1908) of Austrian conductor, maestro
Herbert von Karajan (pictured at left), perhaps the most
famous orchestra conductor who has ever mounted
a podium.
Von Karajan ingratiated himself
to the Nazis by joining the party in 1933, but who always remained
suspect to Hitler after a botched performance of Wagner. But
Hermann Goering remained a big fan.
After the war, Karajan took...
READ MORE
4/24/2008 9:26 am
Art Talk: American up for women's fiction prize. Have you read her?
This just in from the Associated
Press:
LONDON
- American writer Patricia Wood
and two other first-time novelists are among six finalists for the
Orange Prize for fiction by
women.
Wood (pictured at
left), 54, is nominated for her debut novel
"Lottery," the tale of a jackpot winner that...
READ MORE
4/23/2008 8:36 am
Art Talk: Fan Taylor memorial is May 25. What do you say about her legacy?
Here is a news release from the
Wisconsin Union Theater concerning Fan Taylor, who
died recently but whose legacy includes an unbelievably vital
performing arts scene for a city of 250,000 in a county of
260,000:
"A memorial will
be held for Fan Taylor (pictured at left in 1984), former director
of the Wisconsin Union Theater, on Sunday, May 25, at 2
p.m. in the Memorial Union Main Lounge, 2nd
floor.
...
READ MORE
4/22/2008 9:26 am
Art Talk: What do you think of Taylor's Beethoven sonata cycle?
Well, it's
over.
Alas.
Last Friday night,
University of Wisconsin virtuoso pianist Christopher
Taylor (pictured at left) wrapped up his marathon
10-concert series of Beethoven's 32 piano
sonatas.
One of the joys for me was
rediscovering such old favorites and popular works as the
"Moonlight," "Pathetique,"...
READ MORE
4/17/2008 9:59 am
Art Talk: New American Academy members have Madison ties
This just is from the Associated
Press:
NEW YORK
- Historian Robert Caro,
humorist Calvin Trillin and poet Paul
Muldoon will be among the eight new members
inducted next month into the elite American Academy of Arts
and Letters, (see the official seal and motto above) the
academy announced Tuesday.
Some...
READ MORE
4/16/2008 8:49 am
Art Talk: Wisconsin book writing, illustrating grants offered
Using grants awarded by the
Wisconsin Center for the Book, communities can
celebrate and explore the literature of Wisconsin with its authors
and illustrators.
The Wisconsin Center for the Book
will award up to four grants of $300 each to qualifying
organizations wishing to sponsor a Wisconsin author or illustrator
at a public event.
The event must be open to the
public and free of charge.
The grants are made possible
through the cooperation of the Wisconsin Academy of
Sciences, Arts and Letters and the generosity of
donors.
Wisconsin nonprofit...
READ MORE
4/15/2008 8:58 am
Art Talk: Should PBS have blurred naked men's heinies in Forster novel-film?
Sunday night I saw
"Masterpiece Classic" - the former "Masterpiece
Theatre" repackaged, with spacey host Gillian Anderson of "The X
Files" purportedly to attract a hipper, younger audience - present
a new adaptation of E.M. Forster's
classic 1908 novel "A Room With a View."
Many viewers probably found this
version, done by Andrew Davies, the same man...
READ MORE
4/14/2008 8:12 am
Art Talk: Dane County awards $150,244 in arts grants. What do you like/dislike?
If you want to get an idea of
just how rich in art and other cultural resources Madison and the
surrounding areas are, get a load of these many generous
grants, just one round of four for the calendar year,
awarded by the Dane County Cultural Affairs
Commission.
It seems like a really
high quality and diverse group of awards to me.
What do you, as audiences
or recipients or just citizens and
taxpayers, think?
Is there one award you
find particularly deserving?
Is there one award you
find disappointing or...
READ MORE
4/11/2008 8:58 am
Art Talk: What do you think of Norman Mailer and his books?
Well, some thought it would never
happen.
But this week they buried
Norman Mailer (shown above recently and below in
1949), or at least memorialized him before more than 2,000 people,
according to various news reports.
Here's the one
from the Los Angeles Times:
NEW YORK - The
late Norman Mailer, a novelist and cultural provocateur who was
rarely at a loss...
READ MORE
4/10/2008 8:17 am
Art Talk: Is reading a book during a live concert rude?
It happened again.
Just as I was settling in to
enjoy a concert, one person in the audience committed the kind of
breach of etiquette that I found deeply disturbing.
To be specific: Last Sunday
afternoon, I attended the free concert by the five winners of the
annual UW student Beethoven sonata
competition.
The various players were all
talented and all performed...
READ MORE
4/09/2008 9:22 am
Art Talk: Should there be more subtitles for English films, songs?
I really like subtitles.
And surtitles.
Of course, they have long been
standard among art movie fans who need them to understand foreign
language films.
And for the past 15 years or so,
the opera world has been rejuvenated by them.
Of course some purists argue that
they detract, that there is nothing like the original
language.
...
READ MORE
4/04/2008 8:25 am
RIP Robert Fagles, the Odysseus of translators
I was saddened this week to learn of
the recent death at 74 (of prostate cancer) of Robert
Fagles. (He is seen at left, with his last major work,
"The Aeneid.")
Fagles was the Princeton
University professor who translated ancient Greek and Roman
epic poems by Homer ("The Iliad" and "The Odyssey") and Vergil
("The Aeneid") and ancient Greek tragedies by Aeschylus and
Sophocles into English...
READ MORE
4/03/2008 9:22 am
Art Talk: Architect Nouvel wins Pritzker Prize. Does he deserve it?
This news is international, but
certainly has some regional relevance:
Here's the
story from the Associated Press:
LOS ANGELES -
Jean Nouvel, the French architect whose
hyper-modern buildings have been acclaimed for their eclectic
nature and departure from tradition, has won the 2008
Pritzker Architecture Prize - often called the Nobel Prize
of archiecture.
...
READ MORE
4/01/2008 9:12 am
Art Talk: Ax, von Stade show why live music is better than recorded
This past weekend, especially Sunday
afternoon and night, brought me some prime
opportunities to see again about why we should hear
music performed live, and not just listen to recorded
music.
Sure,
there's nothing wrong with recorded music. In
fact a lot of it is downright great. And much of it is preferable
to poor live...
READ MORE
3/31/2008 10:35 am
Art Talk: Should city buses 'publish' poems, other writing?
Just in time for National Poetry Month
in April, Madison's Poet Laureate and the
Madison Arts Commission (MAC) are announcing the new project that
combines literature and transportation Bus
Lines.
Nice wordplay title, no?
It's a high school poetry
competition that will print selected poems on the placards
right above the seats on Metro Transit buses in the...
READ MORE
3/28/2008 9:04 am
Art Talk: Madison Opera is building bridges to the Met
Madison-area opera fans, especially
those who might be wondering about the quality of the
singing they hear in town, might want to read
this.
Allan Naplan,
the general director of The Madison Opera, which
has been on a run of sold-out, high-profile productions the past
couple of seasons, recently sent Art Talk the following note after
he read this week's entry about the Metropolitan
Opera's high defintion, digital
broadcast of Wagner's...
READ MORE
3/27/2008 10:00 am
Art Talk: Should Madison host a string quartet festival?
This just in from the Associated
Press:
NEW YORK - At the upcoming
Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts, Mozart will share the spotlight with other old
masters and living artists from Finland to the South
Pacific.
Peter Sellars is to direct
Finnish composer Kaija
Saariaho's new work, "Passion de
Simone." Soprano Dawn Upshaw (who champions Saariaho...
READ MORE
3/26/2008 9:27 am
Art Talk: Which early music performers, recordings do you prefer?
It's hard to
believe, but this is the 50th anniversary of Das Alte Werk
(Old Works), a label that helped pioneer the early music
and period instrument movement.
For that reason, Warner Classics
is re-issuing a series of important CDs.
The Alte Werk label - along with
Archiv, Harmiona Mundi, L'Oiseau-Lyre and many
others - helped to pioneer the early music movement...
READ MORE
3/25/2008 9:23 am
Art Talk: What do you think of live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts?
Last Saturday was a
special event for me.
I attended my first live,
digital, high-definition broadcast via satellite of the
Metropolitan Opera's production of
Richard Wagner's love epic "Tristan und
Isolde" at the Point Cinemas on
Madison's far west side, one of 600 cinemas
around the world to participate in the event.
As you may already know...
READ MORE
3/12/2008 11:17 am
Art Talk: What do you think of the UW faculty art show?
Spring break next
week will be a good time to go down on campus, find
parking and check out the extensive show of University of
Wisconsin-Madison faculty art at the Chazen Museum
of Art, 800 University Ave.
I'd be
interested in knowing what your favorite art work is and
why?
My own preference run to
furniture maker Tom Loeser's
boat-like wooden spars and ribs (see at left). They...
READ MORE
3/11/2008 9:09 am
Art Talk: Pianist O'Riley should cross back over to classics, no?
I want pianist Christopher
O'Riley (pictured at left) to cross
back over to classical music.
There is a context to my
desire.
I attended
O'Riley's exceptional solo
recital Saturday night at the Wisconsin Union
Theater.
It was an unusual program that
alternated seven Shostakovich preludes and
fugues (from the...
READ MORE
3/06/2008 9:30 am
Art Talk: What do you think of 'snippet' and excerpt CDs?
I'm generally not
one for CD compilations and excerpts.
In fact, I usually despise
them.
Just as I despise radio hosts who
play excerpted movements or else put on a piece of classical music
without telling you what you're hearing and who
is playing it.
It may be where the market is
these days, but I think such...
READ MORE
3/05/2008 10:22 am
Art Talk: Famed tenor DiStefano dies. What condolence would you send?
Giuseppe Di Stefano, one of
the greatest tenors of the 20th century and a celebrated singing
partner of soprano Maria Callas, died Monday and will be buried
today, his wife told the Associated Press.
He was 86, and his last years had
the making one of a grand, if tragic, opera for such a glamorous
star of the music world.
Di Stefano (seen above singing in
a 1989 photo) died at home in Santa Maria Hoe, north of Milan, from
injuries...
READ MORE
3/04/2008 9:37 am
Art Talk: Copland opera brings thoughts of Obama, don't you think?
Tonight I and the whole nation will be
watching the returns of the Democratic primary elections and
caucuses in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island.
But I'll also
be thinking back to the Madison
Opera's production of Aaron
Copland's "The Tender Land," which I
saw last Saturday night during one of its six sold-out productions
in the small 200-seat Promenade Hall of the Overture
Center.
It...
READ MORE
3/03/2008 10:04 am
Art Talk: Madison arts grants have new deadline of March 15
This just in:
The Madison Arts Commission distributes funds to Madison
artists and organizations through three annual grant
programs:
Project Grants provide up to $2,500 for performances, exhibits
or events that enrich the cultural lives of Madison
citizens.
The Signature Grant provides up to $5,000 for a new and
original work.
...
READ MORE
2/29/2008 9:12 am
UW-Madison Libraries co-winner of Best Online Archival Exhibit
Score another win in the art world for
the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It is a co-winner of the
Best Online Archival Exhibit for a show about book
bindings.
The following message is posted
at http://www.archivesnext.com/
by: ArchivesNext in Best Archives on the Web awards
...
READ MORE
2/28/2008 9:12 am
Art Talk: 50 years later, what do you think of Van Cliburn, his win?
This spring marks the 50th anniversary
of American pianist Van
Cliburn's victory in the first
Tchaikowsky International Competition in Moscow in April of
1958.
The
23-year-old, Juilliard-trained Texan received admiration in the
Soviet Union and an unprecedented ticker tape parade in New York
City, the only classical musician to ever do
so.
...
READ MORE
2/27/2008 8:54 am
Art Talk: What do you think of writer Jim Shepard?
Recently I discovered another writer -
novelist and short story writer - whose new works I will await with
great excitement and anticipation.
That means he
joins a short list that includes Ward Just, Nadine Gordimer,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lorrie Moore and Ian
McEwen.
He is Jim
Shepard, and he teaches writing and literature at Williams
College...
READ MORE
2/26/2008 8:32 am
Art Talk: Should Madison send classical music to Cuba?
Things are popping at the crossroads
of culture and politics.
This week the New York
Philharmonic, playing under the baton of outgoing Maestro
Lorin Maazel, performed a concert in Pyongyang, capital of
North Korea.
They played
Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" and
George Gershwin's "An American in Paris" as...
READ MORE
2/21/2008 10:25 am
Art Talk: Wright lecture is March 11. Why does public still care?
The 2008 Wright
Lecture series at Monona Terrace Community and
Convention Center, One John Nolen Drive, in Madison, will
continue with Bob Greenstreet, Dean of the School of
Architecture and Urban Planning at UW
Milwaukee.
The event will take place on
Tuesday, March 11, in the Lecture Hall of the
Wright-designed Monona Terrace. Doors to the theater will open...
READ MORE<