The Kennedy Center has fired its dance programming team, including its director of dance programming and its assistant manager of dance programming. Both were supportive of staffers’ union organizing efforts. The Kennedy Center also received notice of resignation from its senior filmmaker, executive producer of theater, artistic director of jazz, and the executive producer of the Kennedy Center Honors. Many of the remaining staffers at the Center have learned about these changes in the news, as they have not been notified by the Center itself.
Former Washington Ballet dancer Stephen Nakagawa has been named the director of dance programming at the Kennedy Center. a self-proclaimed “MAGA former dancer,” Nakagawa enters after two dance administrators have been fired for trying to unionize staffers and ticket sales for dance programming is hovering under 20 percent capacity.
The Michigan state House of Representatives have proposed a budget that eliminates arts funding. Last year, Michigan spent $12.3 million on the arts. The House has also voted to reject $2 million in funding for cultural facility upgrades proposed by the Michigan Senate. Arts organizations are saying that these proposed cuts would decimate the arts, leading to job cuts and weakened economies. They also warn that these cuts could lead to the closure of many small and medium regional arts councils.
The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation has donated $1 million to Ideastream Public Media in Ohio. The funds will be used for the NEO Jazz Legacy Project broadcast on WCLV-HD2 and to build a dedicated studio for the program. Currently, all programming is pre-recorded, and the new studio will enable the program to host live interviews and performances.
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YouTube has paid out $100 billion to content creators in the last four years. YouTube shares 45 percent of ad revenue with channel owners, and last year ad revenue rose 15 percent to over $36 billion. Thirty percent of daily YouTube viewers are watching live content.
Labels including Universal and Sony have reached an agreement with the Internet Archive over copyright infringement. The Archive had been digitizing 78 rpm records from the 1890s through the 1950s to preserve them, arguing that they were protected under a copyright carve-out for libraries. The lawsuit against them was for about four thousand of the 400,000 recordings digitized, and at the statutory maximum rate would have totaled $621 million.
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A Utah violinist has been arrested and detained by ICE. John Shin, who has performed with the Utah Symphony and Ballet West, was a DACA recipient, but was arrested by ICE due to a 2019 DUI conviction. Musicians have been staging protests at the Utah State Capitol.
The musicians of the St. Louis Symphony have ratified a new four-year agreement. Wages will rise $10,000 in the first year and at least three percent in each of the remaining three years. Pay by 2030 will reach $128,036.
Musicians of the San Francisco Symphony have reached a tentative contract agreement after voting to authorize a strike. They have been in negotiations for over a year, and were fighting for better pay and were also concerned about the artistic leadership and financial health of the organization. The new agreement, retroactive to November 2024, will raise wages by 15 percent over three years, keeping the orchestra as one of the top five highest paid in the country. Musicians will also receive a one-time bonus of $3,450 and increases in their defined benefit pension plan.
Opera Naples has seen a 71 percent increase in ticket sales and a 310 percent rise in sponsorships in the past two years. They attribute the strong growth to new board leadership and marketing to attract new and younger audiences.
Baltimore Symphony musicians have a new, three-year agreement after authorizing a strike earlier this year. Wages will rise by 12 percent over the next three years, to $101,350 by the last year of the contract.