Matt Smith News

NEW YORK, NY AND MIDDLETON, WI — July 8, 2016 — Scholastic, the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, and American Girl®, a premium brand for and about girls, today announced that it will launch an extensive publishing program based on the iconic American Girl brand beloved by millions of girls around the world. The multi-year licensed agreement includes rights to publish books in print and digital formats starting in January 2017, and marks the first time American Girl has licensed the rights to publish books based on its characters. Under the agreement, Scholastic will publish and distribute books simultaneously in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.

The National Youth Theatre (NYT) have announced that the UK's leading casting resource, Spotlight, is to sponsor industry performances for their REP cast in the West End this autumn.

MELODRAMA is an exhibition in two acts taking place between Luxembourg & Dayan's London and New York gallery spaces. The show includes seven sculptures and a series of photographs that function as characters in a melodramatic play. Cloaked under commonplace appearances, the works perform dramatic attitudes, generate heightened emotions, and pervade pathos into the gallery space.

Cleveland, Ohio – June 17, 2016: The Cleveland Pops Orchestra will be among the first to hold a major fundraising event at the brand new 32-story Hilton Cleveland which opened officially on June 1st.  The Cleveland Pops 20th Anniversary Celebration will be held on Saturday, August 20, 2016 in the Hope Ballroom of the brand new eye-popping Hilton. This year, the orchestra has chosen its two founders Carl Topilow and Shirley Morgenstern as the honorees for the event. 

Shazam, one of the world's most popular apps for connecting artists and fans, and Exposure The Musical, a thrilling new West End musical tale of fame and celebrity excess, announces a partnership around the launch of the musical with its entire print campaign, which will use Shazam's Visual Recognition to engage wider audiences for the new musical.

Cleveland, OH – June 22, 2016 -- The Cleveland POPS Orchestra announces the eighteenth annual competition for its Jean L. Petitt Memorial Music Scholarship. This year's competition will be held on Sunday, November 20, 2016, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at The Cleveland Institute of Music, 11021 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106.

The Annapolis Symphony is pleased to announce its 2016-2017 season, entitled 'The Triumph of Music.' The season will open on September 30 and October 1 with a celebration before and after the pair of concerts featuring superstar violinist MIDORI.?

After successful clarinet auditions on May 16, 2016 to fill two vacancies, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce the appointment of Robert DiLutis as Principal Clarinet and Brian Eldridge as Second Clarinet.  The day-long process involved applicants from all over the country. 

CYNTHIA-REEVES debuts a new series, 'Artists-in-Dialogue', with a summer exhibition entitled 'Form & Abstraction' -- a conversation between two established artists, Willard Boepple and Lloyd Martin.  Both are widely recognized and have exhibited frequently in New York; CYNTHIA-REEVES has included their work in numerous art fairs both domestically and internationally.   The exhibition is on view at The Barn, 28 Main Street in Walpole, New Hampshire through August 27, and the gallery is open year-round Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00  a.m. - 5:00 p.m. 

Bill Craig's bestselling Marlow mysteries are set in Key West, the southernmost point in the continental US. An end-of-the-road town, it is closer to Havana than to Miami. Key West has been a literary haven for many well-known authors from Tennessee Williams to Robert Stone, John Ciardi to Annie Dillard, Shel Silverstein to Hunter S. Thompson, Judy Blume to Stuart Woods. Perhaps most notably, it was a home to Ernest Hemingway.

Mozart's The Impresario—  (July 27 & August 3 in Central City; July 28 in Boulder) John Musto's Later the Same Evening— (July 28 in Colorado Springs; July 30 at the Denver Art Museum; August 5 in Central City Denver, Colo. (July 7, 2016)—Central City Opera complements its two mainstage productions this summer with two one-act operas—Mozart's The Impresario and John Musto's Later the Same Evening—performed in smaller venues in Central City and in creative spaces in Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Denver. Both of these shorter operas are performed by members of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program.

(New York, July 7, 2016)—Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology at The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been extended by three weeks through Labor Day, Monday, September 5. The exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute, opened to the public on May 5, and has drawn more than 350,000 visitors in its first nine weeks.

Perhaps the most epic choral work ever composed, Beethoven's monumental Ninth Symphony, which includes the famous last movement, “Ode to Joy,” has filled concert venues around the world for close to two centuries, yet has never lost its ability to thrill. A musical wonder considered by many to be Beethoven's greatest work, his massive and majestic Ninth fills Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre with pure radiance during Pacific Symphony's second concert of Summer Festival 2016. Led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, this crown jewel of the season boasts a huge orchestra, full chorus and a spine-tingling vocal quartet. The heart-welling program also includes a number of other beloved and moving pieces including Aaron Copland's “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Samuel Barber's “Adagio for Strings,” John Williams' “Liberty Fanfare” and his “Hymn to the Fallen” from the film “Saving Private Ryan.”

Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra 1st Vice President and Treasurer and Rehmann Principal Rick Hendricks has been named the 2016 recipient of the Jack J. Rehmann Community Leadership Award. Established in 1995, the award encourages and recognizes Rehmann associates who have taken leadership roles in community volunteer organizations for the betterment of their respective communities. On behalf of each recipient, Rehmann makes a donation to the nonprofit organization of his or her choice.

In Susan Daitch's fourth, intricate novel, a series of archeological expeditions unfold through time, each one looking for the ruins of a fabled underground city-state that once flourished in a remote province near the border of present-day Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sealed off for centuries by seismic activity, Suolucidir beckons with the promise of plunder and the glory of discovery, fantasies as varied as the imaginations of her aspiring modern-day conquerors.

New York...Beginning October 14, 2016, Luxembourg & Dayan will present Salvatore Scarpitta 1956-1964, bringing together early works by the Italian-American artist (1919–2007), whose long career spanned non-objective abstraction, radical realism, and car racing in an oeuvre that achieved a distinctive mixture of material daring and tenderness. The exhibition spotlights a pivotal period of transformation, beginning with Scarpitta's forays into shaped and bandaged paintings, initiated just before his 1958 return from Rome to his native United States. It concludes with his shift away from the canvas toward constructing racecars in 1964—the culmination of his deep-seated belief in movement as metaphor for life. 

FORT WORTH, TX – Fort Worth Opera (FWOpera) announced today that the submission deadline has been extended for its fifth annual Frontiers showcase. Applications will now be accepted through midnight, July 19, 2016. The company's innovative program will be held during the final week of the 2017 Fort Worth Opera Festival – April 15, 2017 – May 7, 2017 and coincides with the 2017 Opera America Conference in Dallas/Fort Worth. Launched during the company's 2012-2013 season, Frontiers remains one of the only programs world-wide that seeks out unproduced works by the finest up-and-coming composers and librettists from North, South, and Central America, and has been acclaimed for the opportunities it provides its winners. Composers and librettists whose works are selected as part of the Frontiers showcase gain valuable exposure for their works in a live performance environment while also taking part in unparalleled networking opportunities with industry professionals including artistic directors of other established opera companies, artist managers, classical music publishers, funding organizations, and conductors.

BUFFALO, NY -Your Buffalo Philharmonic rocks in the 2016-17 season, celebrating the music of five highly-regarded rock visionaries, each of whom had a profound effect on the musical landscape. Electric guitars blend with strings, woodwinds and horns as rock musicians join forces with the BPO. 

SAN FRANCISCO, June 28— The San Francisco Symphony and Director of Summer Concerts Edwin Outwater perform a free outdoor concert on Sunday, July 24 at 12 noon on the grassy plaza in front of the James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27, located on the Embarcadero at the foot of Lombard Street. The Orchestra performs a concert of Russian music, including Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Makoto Ozone. Audience members are encouraged to bring blankets and picnics to enjoy during the performance. Valet bike parking will be available.

LEBANON, NH – Opera North is pleased to announce the principal roles for Daughter of the Regiment, one of its three 2016 mainstage productions. The role of Marie will be shared by Martha Eason and Lindsay Ohse; the role of Tonio will be shared by Martin Clark and Andrew Surrena; the role of The Marquise of Birkenfeld will be shared by Natalie Rose Havens and Heather Gallagher; and Alex Soare will play Sergeant Sulpice. In addition, Maureen Brennan will appear as the Duchess of Krakenthorp.