Photo: Lisa Hirsch
A few folks in the blogosphere have comments about what went down at the LA Phil this week.
- Mr. CKHD, All is Yar
- Drew McManus, Adaptistration. Another thing you don't see every day is Drew scratching his head about a major event in the field.
- Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise. Alex goes straight to the point: the problem is a bad decision on the part of the LAPO Board in hiring Woods in the first place.
Some further thoughts: a couple of friends wondered whether there was more here than meets the eye. I am sure there was nothing illegal going on; Woods has been in the business long enough that if he had any history of legally problematic behavior that it would be known, plus, the LAPD was not present at Disney this week.
Could it have been a developing #MeToo moment? See the previous couple of sentences. One hopes he would not have been hired with a known history of harassment, but ahem see the problems across the street from WDCH.
Jumped/pushed? Especially after reading Alex's blog post, my guess is "mutual agreement," meaning "face-saving resignation after a discussion making it clear that he was leaving one way or the other."
This was a bit of a shock for me, he was hired with all the praise in the world, he would lead the LAP forward with great vision etc.
ReplyDeleteAt Los Angeles Opera, yes without Placido Domingo using his clout, it probably wouldn't even exist. However, the real core of the administration there was Peter Hemmings, who was there from 1984 until he retired in 2000. He was extremely well thought of, wasn't afraid to *gasp* program stuff outside of the MozartVerdiPuccini rep and, from the two times I met him briefly, seemed like a very nice man.
When he left, in came Domingo, who even aside from his alleged touchy-feely ways, wasn't qualified to run an opera company. Yes, he had underlings do most of the work, but it was made very clear that the general direction of the company was his. The whole Ring Cycle debacle was his fault, he thought it would be the great leap forward, instead it almost bankrupted the company. And no, programming stuff just so he would have a reason to appear is/was not a good thing. Hint: zarzuela is never going to become a big thing here.
As for the Philharmonic, I've really gotten the impression that they've bought in to their own hyperbolic PR campaign a bit too much. Since Gustavo Dudamel has taken over, they've become more conservative in programming, the Green Umbrella new music program has become the same and things like the much hyped 100 Pieces By 100 Composers To Celebrate Our 100th Anniversary!!! are empty; having a majority of those pieces be shunted off to short piano pieces or Green Umbrella stuff doesn't make up for the fact that there's a large chunk of contemporary composers of all styles that don't get programmed.
Come back Esa-Pekka Salonen, forget that San Francisco Symphony job! Hahahahaha.
Of course they had to praise Woods when he arrived!
ReplyDeletePD: sigh.