A surreal UA invasion of the performing arts

Salvador Dali might be hard-pressed to create the surreal scene erupting at the University of Akron as   the handiwork of an overzealous regime  that has set out to fix what in many instances wasn't broken. My talks with knowledgeable campus denizens who were in the UA ranks long before the Scarborough goodwrenches  arrived from Toledo  tell of the day to day horrors of trying to salvage some clarity from the woozy game plan to eliminate the school's debts.

Nothing demonstrates UA's  rocky path more than the published report that after many weeks of hazing the programs and staff at E.J.Thomas Hall the university has signed on with Playhouse Square in Cleveland to manage its Broadway road shows at the hall.  This bubbly relationship replaces  the director and staff  whose contracts expire in January.  That includes E.J.'s executive director, Dan Dahl.

The move has puzzled some of the  affected staffers.  And one person quite familiar with the operation asked a reasonable question:  If the series already had a Broadway producer, why did they replace it with another one?

As usual,  reasonable responses to reasonable questions have not been the forte of the Scarborough team. It prefers self-promoting slide shows to community groups.  

The turmoil has damaged the health of one of the area's prized possessions,  Tuesday  Musical's series at the hall.  TM has had a strong national reputation  for showcasing some of the leading classical music artists, a respected organization that apparently didn't impress the new UA regime enough to recognize its value. It messed up the preseason ticket sales, closed EJ's box office and  created a hunt-and-peck  system that discouraged many would-be ticket buyers from renewals, which are said to be down by at least 160 from last year.   

Here's what I encountered Thursday:

A call to Tuesday Musical's office  was unanswered. A call to the Akron Civic Theater box office for direction  was cautiously answered by someone who told me he was prohibited from talking.  I was told to call the Akron Symphony's office, which appeared to surprise the person at the other end of the line who also was on lockdown about the situation.  

 More frustrating calls around town to  folks to find out more about this  absurdity.   It came from the top, one source said:   Scarborough & Company.

I've had years of experience that often led me to the arts community. Even managed a couple of Elderhostels anchored by the Broadway series at  EJ.  But that was long before it was subjected to the current heavy hand that altered the course.

Oh, Thursday also was  the day when several scholarship foundation donor reps  met with  Lawrence Burns UA's import from Toledo  and now titled the vice president of advancement.    One complained to me that Burns, into a selfie, recounted his own career and seemed out of touch with some of the UA's donors, including an important foundation.

And the official reaction to the critics of the new regime's soiling of UA's reputation with its monstrous rebranding scheme?

"They don't give a shit!"  exclaimed one who sat painfully through the Burns meeting. 

Unapologetically graphic in a polite society of classical music lovers?

Perhaps.  But really, I sort of look at it that way myself.

Rene Fleming, the complete lyric soprano

RARELY DOES a visiting performer expand the cultural awareness of an audience that is already conditioned for excellence.  For the nearly 2,000 patrons of Rene Fleming's memorable recital in E. J. Thomas Hall Tuesday evening there is little doubt that it went well  beyond the highest expectations.

From the moment that she burst onto the stage in a stunning maroon gown and matching floor-length  wrap the audience was happily at her command, hailing her entrance  with bravos, applause and excited anticipation.  It got better as the program went on with stadium-like cheers.  

Fleming's appearance, along with her exceptional piano accompanist, Hartmut Holl,  was something of a coup for Tuesday Musical and its executive director, Barbara Feld. And, therefore, an artistic coup for the Akron area.  Here, after all, was one of the world's leading lyric sopranos who,  whether in recital or at the Met,  appears to have assembled the best in her own career from the great singers of today and the divas who have come before.

Exquisitely beautiful with that clear, certain voice to match,  she approached each piece in the recital as though she had separated her listeners as individuals and sang directly to each. But she also has a girlish humor that unassumingly charmed, whether on stage or later at a reception in which she patiently  accommodated all who stood in line to greet her.  Superb voice, beauty,  humor, an always personable approach to the moment.  For all of her acclaim, she wants you to realize that she's also the girl who grew up in Rochester, N.Y  

Thank you , Rene Fleming.  And thank you Barbara Feld and Tuesday Musical's financial  sponsors.  You've set the bar quite high for classical music in this town.  

Great programming, no media

IF YOU WERE in the large audience at E.J. Thomas Hall Tuesday night to witness the  program of violinist Hilary Hahn, you might agree with me that it was a remarkable performance by the soloist as well as her powerful piano accompanist, Valentina Lisitsa.   Hahn offered works by Ysaye, Ives, Brahms and Bartok with such firm command of  her instrument - such brilliance and virtuosity! - that it immediately became clear that it would be a very special evening.

It was her second appearance with Tuesday Musical  after a 10-year hiatus.  The first time, as a teenager, she was the  Clara Knight (mother of John S. Knight) artist of Tuesday Musical, an organization that has been offering the very best in classical music programming since its founding more than a century ago.     Since her first visit to  Akron,  Hahn  has risen to the world stage of the great orchestras.  Her  musicianship was honored with the Gramophone Artist of the Year Grammy of 2008. 

Such credentials should have been  enough to draw the attention of  a curious local newspaper. It didn't.  Unfortunately, the playing field for the arts in the Akron area was again shortened. Hard times in the newspaper world or not, it is an  unconscionable lack of respect for a significant quality of the city's  cultural life.  

Unclassical response to classical music

 ON JAN. 13 E.J. Thomas Hall on the University of Akron campus was the host of an historic visit by the Guarneri String Quartet for a performance on the Tuesday Musical series.  It was historic because the world-famous quartet, created in 1964,  was  making its valedictory  tour of concert halls before retiring at the end of the 2008-2009 season. Its program of Janacek, Mozart and Dvorak did not disappoint the audience who had come to expect extraordinarily played music by a  group that had been critically acclaimed across the globe.  For the privilege of hearing it in our backyard, we could thank Tuesday Musical, which across generations has striven to produce the highest level of classical music programming.  If you need more evidence to convince you, the series has scheduled Renee Fleming, perhaps the most revered operatic soprano on the Met stage today, for a solo program on April 7.  .  

How nice.  The Akron area's long-standing reputation as a committed supporter of the finest in classical programming deserves nothing less for keeping the concert halls active through good economic times and bad.  Well, only partly nice.  There is one critical missing part these days that has the folks at Tuesday Musical, the Akron Symphony and E.J. Thomas Hall scampering about for a solution.  Since the departure of Elaine Guregian as the Beacon Journal's classical music critic, she hasn't been replaced.  No reviews nor advance feature stories on the Guarneri, which might as well have performed in Kansas that night.  The same is true of the Akron Symphony's concert the past weekend. 

In both instances, it may have been the first time either group was snubbed by the local "metropolitan" newspaper.  Based on what their representatives have been told by the paper's editors so far, it's not likely to change.   They went away with nothing more than a rite of passage into the economics of  today's newspapers, at least as the editors and their Canadian owner might describe it. That means the BJ will continue to pretend to be a full-service newspaper while ignoring an important segment of the city's cultural spectrum.  It means that  the paper can find ways  to devote five pages to sports news (and - trust me -  I'm a big sports fan) daily and not come up with the equivalent of a couple of pages a month to concert fare.  Unless, of course, one of the entertainment venues happens to shut down, as was the recent case of the published  hysterics over the sudden demise of Carousel Dinner Theatre. Good Lord, there goes another potential advertiser!

Regarding Carousel, Dan Dahl, executive director of Thomas Hall , has moved to lure the Carousel series subscribers who will not get refunds for their subscriptions to Carousel shows. He is offering a free ticket to one of Thomas Hall's three remaining Broadway shows that come to town through April.   "This will cost us money," sighs Dahl, who faces the same economic demands as everyone else in the business and is searching  for ways introduce his stage to newcomers. 

The outlook is grim.  "It's unconscionable," says Barbara Feld,  Tuesday Musical's veteran executive director.  "It's terrible for a paper not to have a reviewer.  There wasn't  a word about the Guarneri. It just diminishes the cultural legitimacy of the community." She says she is embarrassed to tell a performing artist that if they come to Akron "there won't be anything in the paper."  It creates a prairie town atmosphere all around.  That would appear to be of no consquence to its absentee owner, David Black, in his faraway office in Victoria, British Columbia.  

There isn't much joy in other organizations, either.  Both Jessie Raynor, executive director of the Akron Area Arts Alliance, and Margot Snider, exectutive director of the Akron Symphony, share Feld's pessimism that the Beacon Journal  will respond to their concerns. "We were told," Raynor says, "that Elaine will not be replaced."     Snider laments that the symphony "obviously is being hurt" and predicts  the situation will only get worse.

I asked Bruce Winges, the BJ's editor via e-mail about these concerns.  His  reply was not reassuring. He said:

"We do not have anyone on our staff with Elaine's expertise, and we are not in a position to hire.  We will, however, continue to cover the arts community (we recently did a look at the state of funding for the arts in Akron and there is the closing of the dinner theater."

Is he in a bind between the owner's Scrooge-like attitude and the cultural needs of the Akron area.  Doubtless.   No one who has spent much time reading about the current travail of newspapers can ignore the economic pressure on the industry.  But is it only economic pressure, or is it also  the lack of will and imagination by local editors and the big guy who owns the place that are cheating a special group of readers?   For one thing, has there been any  consideration of alternatives that would help?   If there is absolute resistence to adding a music critic to the staff, there are other ways to solve the problem.  There are competent freelancers in the music schools at the University of Akron and Kent State who might be willing for a few bucks and a free ticket to write an advance story about a concert and then a review.  So I don't step aside when editors wring their handkershiefs and say that I ought to understand their predicament.  

Today's deadlock is especially brutal in a town with no television station and a couple of bargain-basement radio stations incapable of taking take up the slack. The one exception is the heroic effort by WKSU to inform its listeners of the best that the  area  music organizations have to offer.  As I have asked in the past, "When can  a newspaper stop calling itself a newspaper?"

Incredible!  

.