Around The Arts

New composer takes Carnegie \nHall chair\nNEW YORK -- John Adams, who has written operas about Richard Nixon in China and the terrorist killing of Leon Klinghoffer, will hold Carnegie Hall's "composer's chair" beginning with the 2003-2004 season.\nExecutive and artistic director Robert Harth made the announcement Tuesday. Adams, who will serve a three-year term, will help develop artistic initiatives and plans for Carnegie Hall's stages, focusing on Zankel Hall, which opens in September 2003.\n"John's wonderfully creative sensibility, so brilliantly evident in his work as a composer and conductor, will become a most invigorating part of our thinking at a vital moment in Carnegie Hall's history and in conjunction with the opening of Zankel Hall," Harth said in a statement.\nThe New England-born Adams composed the opera "Nixon in China" in the mid-1980s, about President Nixon's historic trip to Mao Tse-tung's China, and "The Death of Klinghoffer," which debuted in 1991, six years after the disabled American tourist was shot by Palestinian terrorists on a hijacked cruise ship and hurled overboard.\nIn September, the world premiere of Adams' "On the Transmigration of Souls," with texts drawn from cell phone calls and other firsthand accounts of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will be performed as part of the New York Philharmonic's opening-night program.\nPierre Boulez, who will hold the "composer's chair" through the 2002-2003 season, will complete his tenure at Carnegie Hall with a retrospective of his works, including a rare performance of "Repons" and the U.S. premiere of "Derive II."\nBill Monroe Bluegrass Festival to be held in Rosine, Kentucky.\nROSINE, Ky. -- About 20 bands and performers will come to Ohio County this week for the third annual Bill Monroe Memorial Day Weekend Bluegrass Festival.\nThe four-day event, which begins Thursday, will bring together generations of bluegrass artists, including the original members of Monroe's backing band -- the Blue Grass Boys.\nMonroe, who died in 1996 at age 84, is credited with bringing bluegrass music wide popularity and giving the mandolin a new role as a lead instrument in country, pop and rock.\n"I wanted to have a memorial for my father, and I figured (Rosine) would be the right place to do it," said bluegrass artist James Monroe, the event's host. "(Rosine) is where my father was born, and it has a lot of music history."\nMonroe said that although the Grammy-winning "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack has sparked new interest in bluegrass, public appreciation for the music has been growing for years.\n"Bluegrass has been gaining in momentum," he said. "My father saw some of that at the end of his life. Most of the bluegrass bands are pretty busy right now."\nLast year's festival attracted 3,000 people, but Monroe hopes for more. "This festival has all the ingredients," he said. "I think, in time, it will be a gigantic festival."\nOther festival performers include Eddie and Martha Adcock, the Lonesome Whistle Band, the Adairs, Jim Monroe and James Monroe, Tim Graves, J.D. Crowe and New South, 1946, Bluegrass Alliance, Gary Brewer, Larry Sparks, Rhonda Vincent, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, Dean Osborne, the Cumberland Highlanders, Ronnie Reno, Don Stanley and Middle Creek and Vince Combs.