A worldwide radio audience estimated at some 20 million will hear a broadcast of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s weekend subscription program.
The concert, under Daniel Barenboim’s direction, will be taped Friday night at Orchestra Hall and will be broadcast Sunday in Europe and Asia through the facilities of the European Broadcasting Union. The broadcast is produced by Chicago-based Inter-Continental Media and underwritten by ITT Corp. of New York.
The CSO is among a consortium of six American orchestras taking part in this second season of broadcasts to radio listeners across six continents. Others are the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra. An American work or soloist is featured on broadcast concert. Melinda Wagner’s “Falling Angels” is the American work on the CSO’s program.
Broadcast last year throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union, the series this year also will be heard throughout North America and distributed to select countries around the world by broadcasters in Southeast Asia, Africa and Central and South America. Locally the programs will air during Classical Music Month next September on WNIB 97.1 FM.
The last previous CSO broadcast to Europe, also produced by Inter-Continental Media, was in 1990.
– Sunday should be a red-letter afternoon for piano-lovers. That’s when Evgeny Kissin, the 24-year-old piano sensation from Russia, will return to Orchestra Hall to present a recital at 3 p.m. His program holds the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, Mozart’s A-Major Sonata, K.331, and two works by Robert Schumann–“Kreisleriana” and Toccata in C, Op. 7. Kissin is also scheduled to perform Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 with the CSO under Barenboim in February.
– Grammy follow-up: A story in Friday editions announcing nominations for this year’s Grammy Awards incorrectly identified the label of one of the recordings. The Vermeer Quartet was nominated for Best Chamber Music Performance for its recording of Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ” on the Alden Productions label, not Teldec as stated in the article.
Surprisingly, CSO music director laureate Georg Solti, who has won more Grammy Awards–31–than any other recording artist, came up empty-handed in this year’s nominations, as did Barenboim.
Sir Georg may take consolation in the fact that Michael Woolcock was nominated as Classical Producer of the Year for three recordings conducted by Solti on the London Decca label, including Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation,” with the CSO and Chorus.
Recordings by the CSO and its musicians have received 53 awards in various categories to date, and the CSO itself has won 17 Grammys for Best Orchestral Performance, handily outdistancing its nearest competitors.
– John von Rhein
THEATER
The Goodman Theatre’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol” will get a new director next season.
He is Henry Godinez, artistic director of Teatro Vista. Godinez, the first director of the annual holiday offering to come from outside the Goodman’s own full-time artistic staff, staged “Cloud Tectonics” to acclaim earlier this season in the Goodman Studio Theatre.
Chuck Smith has directed the classic for the past three seasons.
Also, the Goodman is one of the first three recipients of the new “Season of Concern Honors in Commemoration of Larry Sloan.” The Goodman wins the first honor for a theater, David Turrentine will receive the first nod for individual work and the AIDS alternative Health Project is being honored as an organization.
The first awards will be presented Jan. 29 at Magnum’s Steak & Lobster, 225 W. Ontario St. The citations in each of the three categories will be presented annually in honor of the late Sloan, onetime artistic director of Remains Theatre, onetime Goodman artistic associate and the first executive director of Chicago’s “Season of Concern,” the theater community’s effort to help victims of AIDS. Sloan himself died of the disease last year.
– Tickets go on sale Friday for the production of “Dial M for Murder” playing Feb.27-March 10 at the Shubert Theatre, 22 W. Monroe St.
The production of Frederick Knott’s classic boulevard thriller stars John James of “Search for Tomorrow,” “Dynasty” and “The Colbys”; Nancy Allen of “Robocop” and “Blowout”; and Roddy McDowall. For more information: 312-902-1500.
– Sid Smith
ARCHITECTURE
Progressive Architecture, the most provocative of the three American architecture magazines, has been shut down–first sold to, then killed by, one of its archrivals.
After it introduced a new format in 1994, departing from the puff-piece mentality of its competitors in favor of tough-minded criticism, Progressive Architecture became the best of three design journals. It published stories like “The Intern Trap,” which examined how architectural firms exploit young, inexperienced employees, and was recognized by being named a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1995.
But last week, it was announced that Progressive Architecture’s owner, Cleveland-based trade publisher Penton Publishing, had sold the 76-year-old magazine to New York-based BPI Communications. BPI is the publisher of Architecture magazine.
Subsequently, BPI determined that Progressive Architecture’s December issue would be its last and that the staff of the magazine, including editorial director Thomas Fisher and editor John Morris Dixon, would be dismissed. The magazine had a circulation of 52,000, mostly architects. It lost money following the recession of the early 1990s, but was expected to be profitable in 1996, according to Fisher and Dixon.
The move follows last year’s decision by the American Institute of Architects to enter an alliance with New York-based McGraw-Hill, publishers of Architectural Record magazine. The alliance makes Architectural Record the official publication of the AIA, guaranteeing it thousands of architect subscribers. That status previously had been held by Architecture magazine.
In a statement, Fisher and Dixon said that Progressive Architecture’s editorial team “will not be silenced. We have begun to conceptualize a new version of the magazine, and we hope to announce concrete plans for its introduction within a few months.”
– Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has been named the winner of the 1996 Architecture Firm award from the American Institute of Architects. SOM last received the honor in 1962.
– Prominent Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas will lecture at the Art Institute on Feb. 1. The 6 p.m. lecture in the Rubloff Auditorium is being held by the museum’s Architecture and Design Society. Cost is $5 for society members, $8 for museum members; $2 for students; $9 in advance for the public; and $12 at the door. Call (312) 857-7166.
– Blair Kamin
ART
The Hirsch Farm Project, an arts think tank based in Northbrook, has published the results of its most recent week of intensive conversation among eight artists, writers, curators, critics and an architect. Titled “Conviviality: Flirtation, Displeasure and the Hospitable in the Visual Arts,” the 125-page hardcover book is available for $25 by writing the project at 450 Skokie Blvd., Suite 703, Northbrook, Ill. 60062. Shipping for international orders only is $5.
– Herbert Kahn, curator of the photography collection of LaSalle National Bank, will lead a tour of the collection at 5:30 p.m. Thursday beginning in the lobby of the bank, 120 S. LaSalle St. Presented by the Northside Affiliate of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the event will include a cocktail reception. Admission is $25. For (required) reservations, call Tom Morris at 312-528-7087.
– Dewey F. Mosby, director of the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, will speak on “Henry O. Tanner’s African-American Messages Revealed through European Images” at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the Terra Museum of American Art, 666 N. Michigan Ave., which will open an exhibition of Tanner’s work on Saturday. Admission is $6, $5 for educators and students. 312-664-3939.
– Lynn F. Dacosse, officer of the U.S. General Services Administration, will give a free talk on the 1993 sculpture commission for the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago, “Town-Ho’s Story with Postscript and the Gam” by Frank Stella, at 11:45 a.m. Jan. 18 at the Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, 1967 South Campus Drive, Evanston. The work was inspired by an episode in Herman Melville’s novel, “Moby Dick,” which in turn is the subject of an exhibition at the gallery, continuing through March 3.
– Alan G. Artner
JAZZ
Though the Unity Temple Concert Series–in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unity Temple–is often considered a classical event, it also ventures into jazz.
At 8 p.m. Jan. 27, the series will feature Kansas City jazz singer Kevin Mahogany, with Chicago pianist Frank Mantooth. Mahogany is the headliner, but Mantooth is the more interesting artist, due to his ingenious pianism and originality of arrangements.
Unity Temple is at 875 Lake St., Oak Park; phone 708-445-8955.
– Howard Reich
