Industry and Local News
The Carnival Center is now the Adrienne Arsht Center. Arsht, former chairman of Totalbank, has pledged $30 million for naming rights. $13 million this year will be used to fund $4 million in programming and to pay off a loan. An additional $7 million will be donated next year, and the remaining $10 million in 2010. Arsht had previously worked with Center CEO Lawrence Wilker at the Kennedy Center. Carnival Center has agreed to relinquish naming rights for the center in return for a reduction in its pledged donation from $20 million to $10 million, as well as naming rights to the studio theater, the Art Deco tower, and the pedestrian bridge.
Lynn University hopes to open the 750-seat Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center by April of 2009. The $9 million center will be funded by $7 million in donations from Wold, and the University hopes that the new center will help it attract talent to help put its theater department on par with its Conservatory of Music, which will also perform in the new center.
Congress has approved the largest increase to the National Endowment for the Arts in 24 years. The NEA will receive $144.7 million in fiscal 2008, a 16 percent increase from 2007.
Broadway had a record year in 2007, despite the stagehands strike. Revenue was up 3.5 percent from 2006, to $938 million, and attendance rose 2.7 percent to 12.29 million. The numbers were bolstered by strong holiday sales, with twice as many shows recording sales of more than $1 million during the week of December 24 to December 30, including a record $1.8 million for the week for the musical "Wicked."
Coconut Grove Playhouse is staging a comeback. Over the next several months, Playhouse representatives will hold public sessions to get input on a rebuilding plan. The current plan proposes a partnership between the playhouse, a local college or university, and a commercial developer. The plan also calls for the playhouse to be remodeled into a 600-seat main theater and a 150-seat studio theater, administrative space, a rehearsal hall, and costume and scenery shops. A parking garage, shops, and restaurants may also be included in the plan.
Arnold Mittleman, head of Coconut Grove Playhouse for 21 years, will return to theater production at the Parker Playhouse. The production will be under the joint banner of the American Theater Festival and the National Jewish Theater. Mittleman serves as artistic director for both organizations.
FAU has quadrupled the size of its library's jazz collection, thanks to a donation from Delray Beach resident Henry Ivey. Ivey has donated his 11,655-piece collection valued at $142,500. The collection includes reel-to-reel recordings, 8-track tapes, and CDs he has been collecting since 1940. FAU will make the collection available to members of the community and students from other schools, as well as FAU students.
Recording
EMI is restructuring its business in a move that will likely result in the loss of up to 2,000 jobs. EMI will centralize support functions such as sales and marketing, consolidating the current separate departments for each label.
Sony BMG has launched Platinum MusicPass. The collectible cards, featuring artist images and album information, will be available at Best Buy, Target, and Winn-Dixie for a suggested retail price of $12,99, and will allow the purchaser to download a full-length album in MP3 format. In addition to the complete digital album, the card will also include bonus material, or for compilation albums, extensive track listings.
Sony BMG will offer its entire catalog in MP3 format through Amazon.com. Sony joins Universal, EMI, and Warner, making Amazon.com serious competition to Apple's iTunes now that all of the major labels will be offering their music through Amazon.com as well.
Album sales for 2007 were down 9.5 percent, despite a rise in sales of digital tracks to 844 million, a 45 percent increase. Labels are increasingly looking for alternative sources of revenue. Anticipated for 2008 are more licensing for ad-supported websites (such as imeem), subscriptions bundled with Internet Access or cell phone plans (such as Nokia's Comes with Music), CD singles that include ringtones and other digital content ("ringles"), and possibly deals with Internet services providers to receive compensation for online song swapping.
Symphony
The San Francisco Opera will begin transmitting its productions to movie theaters across the country. They intend to broadcast six operas to 200 screens beginning in March. The San Francisco broadcasts will differ from those offered by the Met in that they will use digital format and will be delayed, rather than live, broadcasts.
The New World Symphony has received a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation to further its use of digital technology, such as Internet2, to expand its audience. The New World Symphony currently uses Internet2 during master classes, seminars, and symposia to interact and collaborate with others across the country.
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