Matt Smith News

CANTON, OHIO (July 5, 2016) – The Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) will put single tickets for all of their 2016-17 concerts on sale Monday July 18.  “In the past, we've started our single ticket sales in September,” notes President and CEO Michelle Mullaly, “but this year, we didn't see the need to make our patrons wait.”  The season includes 7 MasterWorks concerts, 3 Pops concerts and a Benefit Concert.  Subscriptions for the MasterWorks and Pops Series are also available.

New York, NY…The New Museum and the K11 Art Foundation (KAF) today announced a new partnership to support a residency and exhibition program for young Chinese artists. One of the most dynamic art institutions at work in Greater China today, KAF has, since 2010, supported a series of artist residencies in China and initiated major new productions by emerging Chinese artists internationally. KAF and the New Museum share a common mission to empower and incubate the talent of artists by facilitating the production of new works and providing opportunities for presentation locally and globally.

When a meth-addicted grave robber unearths the death mask of Montezuma, the fabled Aztec ruler, he sets off a violent struggle for its possession that pulls in a richly varied cast of American expats and local Mexicans. There's the ruthless, dying drug lord who will stop at nothing to secure the death mask for himself; a secretive expat American collector for whom masks are almost a fetish, kept locked away in a private chapel on his property; a Mexican gardener who needs cash to escape with his teenaged lover; a former Oaxacan museum director who, for a fee, provides provenances for looted artifacts; his long-suffering housekeeper, deeply religious, a lesbian in a culture of machismo who despises her patron; Salvador, the sensual and mercurial Oaxacan painter with a secret agenda of his own; and the addled, meth-addicted American grave robber himself, in over his head and running for his life.

Buffalo, NY -- KeyBank is the latest corporation to increase their support of Buffalo's internationally acclaimed orchestra. The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra's Pops Series will now be known as the KeyBank Pops Series. Key Private Bank previously sponsored the 2015-16 season of the BPO Rocks series. The announcement was made at the Bisons' Independence Eve event, also sponsored by KeyBank, which featured a post-game performance by the BPO.

Mami Kataoka, the acclaimed Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum (MAM) in Tokyo, is the first curator from Asia to be appointed as Artistic Director of the Biennale of Sydney. No stranger to Australia (having been one of thirteen eminent international advisors to this year's 20th edition and with strong connections to local curators and artists), Ms. Kataoka is a key figure in analysing socio-historical and generational trends within Japanese and Asian art.

PITTSBURGH – Harry Potter fans and newcomers are invited to take the Hogwarts Express to Heinz Hall to join the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for a night of wizardry, magic and music on July 16 at 8 p.m.

HOUSTON (July 1, 2016) – The Houston Symphony is teaming up with the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation and the Houston Area Urban League to offer free music lessons to hundreds of underserved K-2 Houston Independent School District students in the Kashmere, Wheatley, Scarborough and Booker T. Washington High School feeder patterns as part of the 2016 Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation Summer Reading Challenge Camps.

AMARILLO, TEXAS - (July 1, 2016) - The Amarillo Symphony, (www.amarillosymphony.org), the leader of orchestral music in the Texas Panhandle since 1924, announced today that the 2016-2017 season auditions will be held in Amarillo, Texas on Saturday, August 27th and Sunday, August 28th,2016. All candidates must register for an audition with the Director of Operations no later than Friday, August 19, 2016.

Denver, Colo. (July 1, 2016)—On July 16, 1932, Central City Opera Summer Festival, as it is known today, was launched with a performance of Alexandre Dumas' Camille, starring Lillian Gish. The weeklong run completely sold out. On July 16, 2016, 84 years later, Central City Opera continues its 2016 summer festival with the opening of a new production of Tosca, Puccini's powerful thriller of passion, seduction, and deceit, running in repertory in the Central City Opera House through August 7. 

BURLINGTON, VT– Beginning August, 2016 at the 2nd Annual Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival [MNFF], the Vermont Symphony Orchestra [VSO], will present its “Excellence in Music Composed for Film Award” to one filmmaker whose selection and incorporation of original music into their film displays the highest potential for future success. The partnership highlights the orchestra's commitment to empower and nurture new commissions continuing the mission of innovation and exploration. “The Vermont Symphony Orchestra is committed to blanketing our state with exceptional concert experiences, and we love that MNFF is bringing fresh, new art to Vermont,” remarked Executive Director Benjamin Cadwallader. “Through this remarkable partnership, two wildly creative artists work on a collaborative project to elevate the role of music as a singular and critical component in a film.”

RICHMOND, Va. (June 8, 2016) – Due to the sell-out of the July 7 concert featuring University of Richmond President Dr. Ronald Crutcher, cello and pianist Joanne Kong, the Richmond Symphony is happy to announce that a second concert has just been added to the 2016 Summer Series line-up. The additional concert will take place on Wednesday, July 6 at 6:30pm and will feature the same program, with pieces by Glazunov, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff. Please see the original media release with the announcement of the 2016 Summer Series below.

Artistic Director, Molly Lynch, is announcing an ensemble of sixteen professional dancers and three apprentices for the National Choreographers Initiative project in July.   The dancers needed for this type of project have special qualities. The schedule is physically quite demanding and the process requires an adventuresome spirit, an open outlook to try new things, and the ability to adapt quickly. Each dancer will be assigned to work with two choreographers throughout the project.

Denver, Colo. (June 29, 2016)—Central City Opera opens its 2016 summer festival with Douglas Moore'sThe Ballad of Baby Doe, running in repertory from July 9 through August 6, in the historic 550-seat opera house in Central City.

International publisher Brill launches a new journal in 2016: Philological Encounters, in collaboration with the research program Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship (Forum Transregionale Studien/Freie Universität Berlin).

Royal & Derngate's fourth tribute to William Shakespeare is his last masterpiece THE TEMPEST, in a vibrant new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Oscar and BAFTA winning Ida; Her Naked Skin, National Theatre). BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

NEW YORK, NY (June 10, 2016)— Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education, and media company, and the pioneering force behind the groundbreaking and bestselling multi-platform properties The 39 Clues® and Spirit Animals, expands its innovative multi-platform publishing program with the worldwide launch of Horizon, a supernatural survival series for readers ages 9 and up. To be written by a team of seven authors anchored by #1 New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld, this blistering new adventure combines books with a fast-paced digital game that allows readers to test their survival skills. The new hardcover book series will launch simultaneously in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with the first book scheduled for release in January 2017. The second book, penned by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen, will follow in September 2017. Additional authors will be announced at a later date.

Andrea Rosen Gallery is thrilled to announce Mika Rottenberg's solo exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, opening June 22, 2016. Nearly a decade after her first solo exhibition in France at La Maison Rouge, since then followed by ten major museum exhibitions worldwide, Mika Rottenberg (born in 1976, in Buenos Aires) will stage her most comprehensive survey exhibition to date. The labyrinthine exhibition will feature several of the major video installations that have consolidated her international reputation, including her most recent NoNoseKnows (2015), lauded at the 56th Venice Biennale, Bowls Balls Souls Holes (2014), SEVEN (2011), and Squeeze (2010), as well as recent and new sculptural works produced specifically for the exhibition.

This Asahi Shimbun Display Made in Japan: Kakiemon and 400 years of porcelain celebrates fifteen generations of porcelain production in Arita by showcasing work by one of the most famous potting dynasties. This year is the 400th anniversary of the birth of porcelain in the town of Arita in Saga Prefecture and the show will feature, among other examples, a new work decorated with acorn branches by Sakaida Kakiemon XV (b.1968) representing his coming of age as an artist that he created specifically for the British Museum. Featured in the display is an original film made by the British Museum at the Kakiemon kiln, which allows viewers to see and feel through the actions of the potters how Kakiemon porcelain is actually created.

The Oakland Symphony, the Craneway Pavilion, located inside the historic Ford Point Building on the waterfront in Richmond, and the City of Richmond will again join forces to host a family-friendly Independence Eve Celebration led by the Oakland Symphony and Music Director Michael Morgan on Sunday, July 3. The evening will also include pre-performance entertainment, food and fireworks. Craneway Pavilion, located on 25 waterfront acres, delivers spectacular views of theSan Francisco skyline, with floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the entire event space as well as a 20,000 square foot patio, perfect for viewing the City of Richmond's firework display. The event is free to the public and in the eight years since its inception has become one of the Bay Area's most popular and talked-about Independence Day Celebrations. Paid parking will be available beginning at 5 pm and access to the Craneway Pavilion and Wharf will begin at 6:30 pm. Concert sponsors include City of Richmond, Mechanics Bank, Chevron, Allied Propane Service, BNSF Railway, Chemtrade Logistics, Inc., Dreisbach Enterprises, Laconia Development LLC, LDK Ventures, Pottery Land LLC, Rafanelli & Nahas, Wareham Development, International-Matex Tank Terminals, Republic Services, Terraphase Engineering, TMG Partners, The Castle Companies For more information, visit www.oaklandsymphony.org or www.craneway.com.