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(04/28/08 3:51am)
NEW YORK – Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to “close this city down” to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.\n“We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians,” Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. “This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell.”\nSharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell – a black man – and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club. Two of the three officers charged were also black.\nThe rally at Sharpton’s office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem’s main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out “Kill the police!”\nFifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.\nSharpton urged people to return for a meeting this coming week “to plan the day that we will close this city down” with the kind of “massive civil disobedience” once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\n“They never accused Sean Bell of doing anything. Then why is he dead?” Sharpton asked, his voice roaring with anger. Authorities “have shown now that they will not hold police accountable. Well, guess what? If you won’t, we will!”\n“Shut it down! Shut it down!” the crowd chanted, standing up and applauding wildly.\nSharpton didn’t say exactly how they would protest the acquittals of the officers who fired the 50 shots. He said Bell’s supporters could demonstrate all over the city, from Wall Street to the home of Justice Arthur Cooperman, who on Friday acquitted the three detectives after a nonjury trial.\nSitting behind Sharpton as he spoke were Bell’s parents, his sister and Nicole Paultre Bell, who took her fiance’s name after his death.\n“The justice system let me down,” Paultre Bell told the crowd in a soft voice. “April 25, 2008: They killed Sean all over again. That’s what it felt like to us.”\nIt was her first public comment since she stormed out of a courtroom Friday after the NYPD detectives were cleared in Bell’s killing as he left his bachelor party.\nOne of Bell’s companions, Joseph Guzman, also spoke briefly on Saturday, saying: “We’ve got a long fight.”
(11/30/07 1:53am)
NEW YORK – Theatergoers lined up for tickets Thursday as Broadway returned to business following a crippling 19-day strike that cost producers and the city millions of dollars.\nTickets sold at a discounted $26.50 as people lined up for the musical “Chicago.”\n“I never thought I’d have the opportunity to see a Broadway show! And the price is right,” said Susie Biamonte as she waited for tickets. The play was re-opening with a new cast – Aida Turturro and Vincent Pastore of “Sopranos” fame.\nThe stagehands and theater producers reached a tentative agreement late Wednesday, ending a strike that kept more than two dozen shows dark for nearly three weeks. The strike took an economic bite out of New York, with businesses like restaurants, stores, hotels – even hot dog vendors – losing an estimated $2 million \na day.\nBut Biamonte and her friends from Canada said they’d help fix the damage during their weekend in \nthe city.\n“We’re going to make sure they’ll be successful again, because we’ll leave money behind,” Rosemary Girardo said as the “Chicago” line \nmoved ahead.\nThe settlement came Wednesday night, the third day of marathon sessions between Local 1 and the League of American Theatres and Producers to end the lengthy work stoppage that has cost producers and the city millions \nof dollars.\nMost plays and musicals that were shut during the walkout, which began Nov. 10, were expected to be up and running Thursday evening.\n“The contract is a good compromise that serves our industry,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the league’s executive director. “What is most important is that Broadway’s lights will once again shine brightly, with a diversity of productions that will delight all theatergoers during this holiday time.”\nUnion President James J. Claffey Jr. was equally effusive in signing off on the agreement, saying, “The people of Broadway are looking forward to returning to work, giving the theatergoing public the joy of Broadway, the greatest entertainment in \nthe world.”\nDetails of the five-year contract, which must be approved by the union membership, were not disclosed.\nThe end of the walkout means a scramble for new opening nights for several shows that were in previews when the strike hit. They include Aaron Sorkin’s “The Farnsworth Invention,” “August: Osage County” from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company and an adaptation of a long-lost Mark Twain comedy, “Is He Dead?”\nDisney’s “The Little Mermaid” already has announced it would push back its scheduled Dec. 6 opening – with a new date still to be set.\n“We are so excited,” Tituss Burgess, who portrays Sebastian the crab in the lavish musical, told New York 1 TV. The actor said he hadn’t anticipated the strike would last as long as it did.\n“We hope everyone’s satisfied ... the atmosphere around our stage door was: We tried to remain positive,” Burgess added. “We’re just happy to be going back to work.”\nBroadway’s last strike occurred in 2003 when musicians staged a four-day walkout. The musicians also struck in 1975, shutting down musicals but not plays for 25 days.
(11/21/05 4:38pm)
NEW YORK - Emotionally, opera is "a direct whammy," "Law & Order" star Sam Waterston said as he prepared to co-host the first Opera News magazine awards.\nThe awards, presented Sunday, went to three Americans - mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Dolora Zajick, and conductor James Conlon - plus Spanish tenor Placido Domingo and French soprano Regine Crespin.\nWaterston saw his first opera as a high school student in Boston - the Metropolitan Opera performing Richard Strauss's "Rosenkavalier."\nHe was seduced, and now the 65-year-old actor who plays the intense prosecutor Jack McCoy on TV's "Law & Order" wants to lure others to the art form he loves.\n"For an opera idiot like myself, the first impression is that it expresses the size of the feelings in people's hearts," he said. "That can't be adequately done, except for these big guns of voices and a vast orchestra. When it comes to feelings, opera is a direct whammy."\nCo-hosting the evening - a fundraiser to benefit music education - was rising star Isabel Bayrakdarian, a Canadian soprano of Armenian descent.\nAlready at the peak is Graham, who won a Grammy earlier this year for an album of American songs by composer Charles Ives and starred in the opera "Dead Man Walking," playing Sister Helen Prejean.\nShe is the musical darling of Paris, with perfect French diction, but the 6-foot-tall singer who loves tooling around on roller blades is proud of her down-to-earth American image.\nGraham, 45, was born in Roswell, N.M. She spent her teenage years in an oil field town in West Texas, Midland, and never saw an opera until she was 18.\nNext week, Graham has a lead role in "An American Tragedy," a new opera by New York composer Tobias Picker that premieres at the Metropolitan Opera. Based on Theodore Dreiser's novel about a social-climbing man who murders his pregnant girlfriend. \n"It could be the story of Scott Peterson," said Graham. "It's a really American story of a man trying to make it, to succeed, who loses his values along the way."\nGraham finds her way in the New Mexico wilderness, with its vast landscape and sky.\n"You can't grow up with all of this around you and not have it impact you - not grow up with the feeling that the possibilities are as endless as the sky on the horizon," she said.
(08/30/05 5:30am)
NEW YORK -- It was a high-tech, pricey setting for what was once considered low-tech vandalism: Mackie speakers blasting rap while artists spray-painted graffiti on fake subway cars.\nFashion designer Marc Ecko, who earlier this week won a court battle against Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the right to host the stylish street party Wednesday, led a team of 50 graffiti specialists, wielding 600 high-end cans of spray paint with customized nozzles.\n"Thank you, Mr. Bloomberg, for the promotion. You can't shut us up," said the one-time graffiti artist, referring to the mayor's battle to quash the event. The mayor had claimed that the graffiti-fest could encourage New Yorkers to deface the real subway.\nWith a summer breeze carrying the acrid odor of paint and police barricades keeping order, eight subway car sides lined an art gallery-dotted street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. On one car, huge green and yellow zigzags crawled across the metal -- a more lighthearted splash of paint than the dense, violence-tinged images that once assaulted New York's subways.\nNearby, people young and old lined up for the video games Ecko had set up in a parked truck.\nThe city initially granted a permit for the event, but ultimately revoked it. Ecko went to Manhattan federal court, where a judge on Monday ordered city officials to allow the exhibition, citing the First Amendment's protection of free speech.\nWednesday's graffiti team, some wearing gas masks, included the Bronx veteran known as Terrible T-Kid 170 -- whose day job is city painting supervisor.
(08/29/05 5:36am)
NEW YORK -- Days before the fourth anniversary of the 2001 attacks, a photographer is offering intimate images of death and love inside Ground Zero at a new museum that brings you nose-to-nose with the smoldering pit.\n"If people want to come past the security gates and see what our world was like down in the hole, this is as close as they can come to it," said Gary Marlon Suson, the official Ground Zero photographer for the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the city firefighters' main union.\nSuson spent eight months at the site with recovery workers searching for the remains of the 2,749 people who died on a sunny September morning, including 343 firefighters. His time in "The Pit" comes alive at the Ground Zero Museum Workshop of photographs, videos and artifacts, opening Sept. 8.\nLast year, Suson went to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and visited the home of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who wrote a diary of her life before the Nazis sent her to the Bergen-Belsen death camp.\n"Within two hours of being in there, I felt like I'd come to know this little girl. It put a face on the Holocaust," said the 33-year-old Suson. "I went back to the hotel and cried."\nThe experience inspired him to create the 1,000-square-foot museum, whose rooftop he stood upon in 2001 to take images of the Trade Center collapse.\n"I felt if I could create something that would have an effect on people similar to the one the Anne Frank museum had on me, it could help people connect more to 9-11. If you can't connect, you can't heal," he said.\nAt the second-floor museum in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, visitors are met by 3-D displays of photographs that pull the viewer close to the terror, dirt, sweat -- and death.\nSuson took one of the first photos of the firefighter honor guard that carried remains as they were found. He shot the scene in close-up, as he did other moments, such as a firefighter helping carry out the remains of his own son.\nThe museum has tangible vestiges of the Twin Towers, including pieces of window glass, lobby marble and jagged beam steel. One display case holds a beer can from 1971, when construction workers building the new towers shoved it between two steel beams before sealing them. The can was pried from the metal at Ground Zero, twisted and rusty.\nOne jarring item is a frozen clock, its simple black hands stopped at 10:02, and the small one at 14. The south tower collapsed first that day, at 10:02:14 a.m. The clock came from a room with a weightlifting bench used by Port Authority Trans-Hudson train workers.\nSuson, an actor and playwright, contributed thousands of dollars toward the $60,000 museum; the rest came from private donations. Proceeds from the $15 entrance fee ($12 for seniors and children) will go to six charities linked to Sept. 11, some benefiting families.
(04/22/05 4:31am)
NEW YORK -- When Joshua Nelson sings the gospel music of his black ancestors, he commands attention.\nIt's not just because of his fire-and-brimstone voice, the comparisons with the late Mahalia Jackson or even his discovery by Oprah Winfrey, whom he counts as a friend. It's the places he sometimes performs (synagogues), the word he avoids (Jesus) and his own faith (Jewish).\n"We've been Jews for centuries, as long as anyone can remember," Nelson said. "Why is it that when people of color are Jews, questions are raised?"\nIn fact, Nelson is one of about 100,000 nonwhite Americans who were born Jewish. Another 300,000 people of color are followers of Judaism through marriage, adoption, conversion or the recent surge of Jewish immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, according to Yavilah McCoy, director of Ayecha, a New York-based group she founded five years ago to reach out to Jewish minorities.\nNelson's voice rocked a pre-Passover "Liberation Seder" last week that was organized by McCoy and co-hosted by The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. The evening, accompanied by a seder meal of Middle Eastern, African and East European dishes, accented the Jewish community's diversity in New York.\nAmong black Jews, "you see the flavor of Jewish culture in a way you might not have seen before, when it was just black and white, so to speak, as in Christians and non-Christians," says McCoy, 33, who is black and was raised in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, where she studied in a yeshiva with other Orthodox Jews.\nAt home now with her husband in St. Louis, a physician and Jewish convert, she plans to serve collard greens at the family Passover meal, replacing the pork with beef fried like bacon.\nThe feast honors her Southern great-grandmother, who followed black traditions while embracing Judaism and renaming herself and her children after Old Testament figures.\nThe harmonious mix also raises the dilemma of black-Jewish relations today.\nThe civil rights era made Jews and blacks close allies, but incidents like the Crown Heights riots of 1991 have put a heavy strain on the ties between the groups -- a paradox to McCoy.\n"Jews have been oppressed. And African-Americans have been oppressed," she said. "When a soul endures, there's something very beautiful in its music. It's not just oppression, but the spirit of joy that overcomes oppression, something so powerful that it's explosive."\nAt the "Liberation Seder," that spirit came in a variety of tones.\nFive non-Jewish young men from Sudan, orphaned when their parents were killed in that nation's civil war, performed the music of their "exodus" for an audience celebrating the flight of the Jews that is at the heart of Passover.\nThen Nelson took a turn, singing "Mi Chamocha," meaning in Hebrew, "Who is like you, God?"\nHe inspired people to clap and dance to his ecstatic fusion of spiritual tunes, Motown and Jewish lyrics, his rich voice equally at ease in a cantorial wail and in hard-driving gospel. "I let people know it's all right to enjoy, to put their whole bodies into it," he says.\nWinfrey's mother, Vernita Lee, met Nelson four years ago through a mutual friend and was so dazzled by his high-octane delivery that she introduced him to her daughter after serving him the Southern collard green recipe Nelson is making for Passover (with red hot peppers, minus the ham hocks).\nLast fall Nelson appeared on "Oprah," with the show's host joking that he doesn't sing "Oh Happy Day" but "Oy Happy Day." He's been on programs with Wynton Marsalis, Aretha Franklin and the late jazz greats Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie.\nHe's sung at the Globe Arena in Stockholm to a crowd of 30,000, New York's Lincoln Center Jazz Festival and in Selma, Ala., for President Clinton, Coretta King and an audience of 10,000 marking the Voters Rights Act of 1965.\nIt was the sound of Jackson's recorded voice that first seduced Nelson when he was 8, living in Brooklyn with five siblings; their father worked as a truck driver, and their mother was a nurse. The fascination with Jackson's voice lasted after he graduated from Newark's Performing Arts High School and went on to sing at the funeral of another graduate, Sarah Vaughan.\nWhile attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he started blending Hebrew texts with gospel melodies and arranging Jewish hymns in gospel style, resulting in solo CDs like "Hebrew Soul."\nHe occasionally sings a real Christian gospel hymn for historical purposes but his "kosher gospel" avoids any mention of Jesus.\nFor Passover, Nelson planned to worship at Ahawas Achim B'nai Jacob and David in West Orange, N.J., where the Orthodox rituals and music are closer to the Sephardic traditions of American Jews with roots in Africa, as well as Iran, Iraq and Syria. Nelson teaches Hebrew at Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange, N.J., a Reformed synagogue his family had attended while living nearby.\n"Being Jewish is not a race -- it's a culture and a religion," says Nelson, who believes the earliest Jews were "dark-skinned Semites, speaking a language indigenous to Africa."\nNelson said he resents the suggestion "that we need to come back to our faith," as one black minister put it.\n"I told him, 'It's weird the way black Christians look at us as sort of strange. We came off the boat Jews. You didn't come off the boat Christians. Your faith was given to you by a slave master."
(03/11/05 4:25am)
NEW YORK -- Surgeons successfully removed fluid and scar tissue from Bill Clinton's chest cavity Thursday, cleaning up minor complications from the former president's heart bypass operation of six months ago.\nClinton was "awake and resting comfortably" after four hours of surgery, said Herbert Pardes, president of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. His wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and daughter Chelsea were with him and said to be pleased with the outcome.\nThe surgery began at 7 a.m., about two hours after Clinton arrived in an SUV at the Manhattan hospital on a brisk winter morning.\nClinton, 58, told doctors he was looking forward to getting on with his recovery. Doctors expect him to make a full recovery, which could take anywhere from three to 10 days.\nClinton underwent heart bypass surgery in September because of clogged arteries. Doctors described Thursday's operation as a low-risk procedure to relieve a complication that crops up in only a fraction of 1 percent of bypass patients.\nThe scar tissue was pressing down on Clinton's left lung, causing discomfort and reduced lung capacity. Dr. Joshua Sonett, one of Clinton's surgeons, said at a news conference that the combination of fluid and scar tissue had decreased Clinton's lung capacity by 25 percent before the operation.\nThe operation typically is done either through a small incision or with a video-assisted scope inserted between the ribs. The patient is given general anesthesia.\nThe Secret Service, police and hospital security staff conducted a sweep of the walkways and corridors as Clinton was whisked inside through a side entrance before the operation. He arrived in an SUV that pulled inside a hospital gate, providing quick access inside.\nThe former president had been in Florida on Wednesday at a charity golf tournament to benefit tsunami victims. He appeared relaxed, cracking jokes about his golf game and saying he wasn't worried about the surgery.\nMore than 1,000 people sent the 42nd president good wishes through his Web site.\nAcross the street from the hospital, good wishes and prayers for Clinton were offered at a restaurant named El Presidente. "I pray to God that he is well, that he comes out healthy," said manager Wilton Rafael Marte Fermin.\nThe Clintons asked well-wishers to make donations to the American Heart Association, which set up a special location for such contributions on its web site.\nSince his heart surgery, Clinton has presided over the opening of his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and joined former President Bush for a public relations campaign to help raise money for the Asian tsunami victims.
(02/14/05 4:55am)
NEW YORK -- The biggest art project in New York City's history debuted Saturday in Central Park with the unfurling of saffron-colored fabric banners suspended in 16-foot-high frames, providing a splash of sunrise 26 years in the making.\n"I came for this. It's poetry in motion. It's for the moment a kind of Zen," Barbara Knorr said, a German-speaking visitor who came from Switzerland just to see the exhibit created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.\n"The Gates" is the pair's first major project in New York City. It features 7,500 frames with their hanging orange-tinted fabric, creating what the artists billed as "a visual golden river" along 23 miles of footpaths in the park.\nKnorr took in the sight from the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which offered a panoramic view of lines of the wind-blown banners snaking through the trees in the park below.\n"It's art," pronounced 8-year-old Mikaela Simon, of Shiloh, N.J., as she sketched the scene in a notebook on the museum roof.\n"(It) created a temple in the park; it's become like a holy place to walk," Thea Stone said.\nThe 16-day exhibit was expected to lure tens of thousands of art lovers and the merely curious to Manhattan.\nIt opened with cheers as Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised a hooked baton to pull a tab and release the first swatch of fabric from a sleeve at the top of a gate. A class of fourth-graders counted down the seconds.\nBy noon, more than 1 million square feet of fabric had been freed to flap in the stiff breeze.\nThe work's official title "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005," refers to the artists' conception of the project 26 years ago. The Parks Department rejected the idea in 1981. They are paying for the project themselves and estimate the cost could total as much $21 million.\n"I can't promise, particularly since this is New York, that everyone will love 'The Gates,' but I guarantee that they will all talk about it," Bloomberg said Friday. "And that's really what innovative, provocative art is supposed to do."\nChristo and Jeanne-Claude were reticent to discuss their creation.\n"It's very difficult," Christo said. "You ask us to talk. This project is not involving talk. It's a real, physical space. It's not necessary to talk. You spend time, you experience the project."\nTheir previous projects included "Wrapped Reichstag," which wrapped the German parliament building in Berlin in silvery fabric in 1995, and for "The Umbrellas" of 1991, with 3,100 large umbrellas opened in valleys of California and Japan.\nWhether "The Gates" is deemed art or not, the work nudged thousands of New Yorkers out of bed on a freezing Saturday morning.\nAli Naqui had to be dragged to the unveiling by his fiancee, but then was smiling by the time he joined the crowd. "It's a bit insane, but that's why everybody is here," he said.\nOne New York fourth-grader had her own art critique.\n"It's a waste of money, but it's fabulous," Shakana Jayson said. "It brings happiness when you look at it"
(12/05/03 5:20am)
NEW YORK -- The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center came to life in a blaze of 30,000 lights Wednesday night before a crowd of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world.\nBefore flipping the switch to usher in the holiday season, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated the lighting ceremony to U.S. soldiers everywhere.\nAs the temperature dipped below freezing, 6-foot-7-inch Anthony Jenkins found warmth and good wishes in the packed crowd after dressing up as a giant Santa. "What I get out of it is the love of the people," said Jenkins, 55.\nFor Hy Safran, 19, and friend Melissa Opper, 18, both students at Columbia University, watching the tree lighting stirred their patriotism.\n"I wanted to experience the season," Safran said, adding that he and Opper are both Jewish but that "the Christmas spirit has become the American spirit since 9-11."\nThe 79-foot, 9-ton tree was planted 50 years ago in Manchester, Conn. It arrived in Manhattan last month on a Hudson River barge and was trucked to the midtown landmark where it will remain lit until Jan. 6.\nThe televised Christmas show featured performances by Harry Connick Jr., Ashanti, Enrique Iglesias, Gloria Estefan, Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard and the Brian Setzer Orchestra.\nThe tree tradition dates to 1931, when workers building Rockefeller Center erected a small tree amid the Art Deco buildings rising between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Since then, the tree has been lit on the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving.
(10/31/03 4:55am)
NEW YORK -- Hundreds of Broadway actors huddled under the rain in Times Square Wednesday, blasting producers who take shows like "Miss Saigon" on the road while paying performers lower, nonunion wages.\n"They're left-brained money men!" actress Sandy Duncan said into a microphone set up just behind the TKTS discount ticket booth. "And you're being held ransom for doing what you desperately want to do!"\n"The producers are charging almost the same ticket prices, but the actors are getting only one-third the money," said Flora Stamatiades, Equity's national director of labor organizing.\n"Miss Saigon" employed union members while the musical played on Broadway, but as a new non-Equity tour travels to major cities, its actors are earning about 450 dollars a week instead of the more than 1,300 dollar wages under the Actors' Equity production contract, said Maria Somma, spokeswoman for the protest's road campaign.\n"Non-Equity shows used to go to smaller markets. But 'Saigon' is hitting major cities; that's a change," Somma said.\nNext week, the New York-based Big League Theatricals is taking "Miss Saigon" to Newark's New Jersey Performing Arts Center, after stints in Boston and Philadelphia. Big League also took a nonunion "Music Man" on the road.\nBig League's executive producer, Dan Sher, said the weekly non-Equity salaries in "Miss Saigon" are more than 450 dollars but he refused to name a figure, saying only: "We pay many of our actors more per week than a lot of Equity minimum contracts do across the country."\nBesides, he said, taking this show on the road is expensive, and includes costs for rights to the production, stage crews and transportation costs. "We pay actors what we can afford to pay based on the budget," Sher said.\nAnd ticket prices, he said, are set by respective theaters, not by the production company.\nStamatiades said her union is not demanding ironclad wages, especially if a producer is facing an economic crunch. Equity has forged dozens of what she calls "deals" for salaries that allow a show to survive.\nShe said that of the 45,000 Equity members nationwide, most support the protest action against nonunion productions.\nDuring Wednesday's protest, Equity members presented "The Jobless Chronicles," a one-act musical showcasing unemployment stories, and the fictionalized story of a "Miss Saigon" cast member who runs away from the production.
(12/04/02 3:28am)
NEW YORK -- Tenor Placido Domingo, who always packs the house at the Metropolitan Opera, didn't always this fall. \nThe Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera have each dropped plans to produce two operas they had announced for next season. \nThe San Jose Symphony declared bankruptcy last month. \nA weakened economy means many U.S. opera companies and orchestras are facing financial crunches, reflected in less-than-brisk box-office sales, delayed ticket purchases, declines in subscriptions and fund-raising, and curtailed programs. \n"It really is the economy, stupid," says Jack McAuliffe, vice president of the American Symphony Orchestra League, a New York-based nonprofit association that represents most of the nation's 1,800 orchestras. \nMet spokesman Francois Giuliani agreed, "The box office has been somewhat soft -- probably because of the economic situation and the effect it has had on tourism." The Met also had to write off a $4 million pledge when philanthropist Alberto Vilar failed to deliver. \nNine blocks south of the Met, Carnegie Hall is drawing close to past years' capacity, but customers are waiting longer to buy tickets. "That means our marketing department is sitting there and thinking, 'How is this going to play out?"' spokeswoman Ann Diebold said. \nThe shiver of uncertainty extends nationwide. \nThe Houston Grand Opera, where star soprano Renee Fleming is singing in Verdi's "La Traviata," has laid off 14 administrative employees and cut back on performances. \nChicago's Lyric, which posted 14 consecutive years of sold-out houses, is averaging 94 percent of its seats filled so far for each event. Preparing for its 50th anniversary season in 2004-05, the company dropped plans for new productions of Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini" and Montemezzi's "L'Amore di Tre Re" next year. They were replaced with two standard works that may be an easier sell and cost less to produce. \nWilliam Mason, the Lyric's general director, said he has taken some heat from devoted fans. \n"I'm grateful for their passion, but they're not any more disappointed than I am to have to do it," he said. "It's basic economics. It's an art and we must never lose site of that, but it's also a business." \nThe San Francisco Opera, in the red by $7.7 million, has canceled plans for two of its costlier productions, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Le Coq d'Or" and Weber's "Der Freischutz." \nThe sour notes began with the 2001-02 season, when many major orchestras reported deficits, largely because of difficulties raising the millions needed to keep privately run music organizations going. \nThe Cleveland Orchestra faces a deficit for the first time in a decade, to the tune of $1.3 million; the Philadelphia Orchestra projects a similar deficit; the Chicago Symphony -- profitable for 14 of the past 17 seasons -- was more than $6 million in the hole. \nThe 123-year-old San Jose Symphony declared bankruptcy with debts of more than $3 million. \nMcAuliffe blames the squeeze on reduced income from corporate, individual and government sources. Donors are under stock-market pressure; endowments that yield income are also tied to a sliding market. \n"More individuals are giving, but the average gift is smaller," he said. \nA national survey by the Symphony League found single-ticket and subscription sales staying firm, with the latter down just 1 percent from last year. "It's not a disastrous box-office softness," McAuliffe said. \nOpera houses, however, are in a "day-to-day battle" on single-ticket sales and are not meeting subscription goals, said Marc Scorca, president of Opera America, a Washington-based group that tracks 117 opera companies.\nWhile attendance at classical events declined after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the power of the medium helped ease the situation, McAuliffe said. \nAudiences flocked to special concerts like the New York Philharmonic's September premiere of John Adams' "On the Transmigration of Souls" -- a tribute to victims, survivors and heroes of the terrorist attacks. \n"Emotionally, people need music more," McAuliffe said. "What we do is terribly important to people, especially in stressful times." \nAn alternative music scene, meanwhile, is trying to inject fresh blood into the art form. \nIn New York, 30 world-class pianists are playing this season in intimate venues, such as a historic Lower East Side synagogue where French superstar Jean-Yves Thibaudet, wearing leather pants and rhinestone-studded shoes, recently offered an evening of music by Satie, Ellington and Debussy. \nThe series, "Rock Hotel PianoFest," was started by promoter Chris Williamson, known for presenting pop artists like Metallica, Guns 'N' Roses and Madonna. Tickets go for $10, and concerts are often sold out. \n"Playing Carnegie Hall is great, but people can't all afford it," said Thibaudet. "Plus, if they see a different kind of place, that's more casual -- it'll bring new audiences to concerts"
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
NEW YORK -- Multiplatinum singer Michael Jackson, already feuding with his record company, charged Saturday that the recording industry was a racist conspiracy that turns profits at the expense of performers -- particularly minority artists. \n"The recording companies really, really do conspire against the artists -- they steal, they cheat, they do everything they can,'' Jackson said in a rare public appearance. "(Especially) against the black artists." \nJackson, 43, who began his recording career as a child, spoke at the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network in Harlem. Sharpton and attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. recently formed a coalition to investigate whether artists are being financially exploited by record labels. \nJackson, who records for Sony Music, also singled out company chairman Tommy Mottola, saying he was "mean, he's a racist, and he's very, very, very devilish." Jackson also accused Mottola of using "the n-word" when speaking about an unidentified black Sony artist. \nSony Music issued a statement calling Jackson's comments "ludicrous, spiteful and hurtful. It seems particularly bizarre that he has chosen to launch an unwarranted and ugly attack on an executive who has championed his career ... for many, many years." \nJackson's last album, "Invincible," has had disappointing sales despite an estimated $25 million in promotion. The singer's fans say Sony didn't do enough to launch the album. Others in the industry say sagging sales were indicative of Jackson's declining appeal. \nJackson mentioned several black artists as victims of the industry, including James Brown, Mariah Carey and Sammy Davis Jr. Jackson alleged that Davis died penniless, although Davis' attorney said in 1990 that the "Rat Pack" member left an estate worth more than $6 million when he died. \n"If you fight for me, you're fighting for all black people, dead and alive," Jackson said, adding: "We have to put a stop to this incredible injustice." \nOutside Sony's Manhattan headquarters, about 150 fans gathered later Saturday, hoisting signs reading "Please Sony, stop killing the music,'' "Terminate Tommy Mottola," and "Invincible is Unbreakable." \nJackson arrived at the Midtown building on a double-decker city tour bus that twice circled the block. He stood in the open top deck and, raising his fists, joined the crowd in chanting "Down with Tommy Mottola!" \nJackson held up a poster with three boxes marked "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" -- with an image of himself in the "The Good" box and Mottola's face with devilish horns in "The Bad" box, while Mottola's real image adorned "The Ugly" box.
(10/29/01 5:37am)
NEW YORK -- With the smoldering gray rubble of the World Trade Center a sorrowful backdrop, the families of people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack gathered Sunday for a memorial service filled with prayer and song. \nThousands of mourners, some holding photographs of their loved ones, rose from their plastic chairs as Police Officer Daniel Rodriguez opened the service with "The Star-Spangled Banner." Cardinal Edward Egan delivered the invocation, standing at a podium draped in black. \n"They were innocent and they were brutally, viciously, unjustly taken from us," said Egan, the leader of New York\'s Roman Catholic archdiocese. He called them "strong and dedicated citizens" who were "executives and office workers, managers and laborers." \n"We are in mourning Lord, we have hardly any tears left to shed," he said. \nMore than 4,000 people are still missing. \nMany of the mourners wore the jackets and headgear of the police and fire units to which their loved ones belonged. \n"We are neighbors, we are family members and we are friends, and we hurt," said Imam Izak-El Mu\'eed Pasha, the Police Department\'s Muslim chaplain. "Let us stand together and pray and not let our faiths be used in such a way. ... They cannot use our faiths and do these terrible things." \nFor only the second time in the seven weeks since the attack, the round-the-clock recovery and demolition work at the site was halted to allow for the memorial service. The first time was on Oct. 11 at 8:48 a.m., one month to the minute after the first hijacked plane struck the trade center\'s north tower, when a moment of silence was observed. \nYellow, white and purple flowers ringed a stage erected in front of a jagged mountain of darkened wreckage. On either side of the stage were huge video screens with images of American flags and the words "God Bless America" and "Sept. 11, 2001." \nThe crowd was expected to number some 2,000, but it appeared to be larger. Mourners filled the rows of chairs to capacity; some people were forced to stand. \nThe crisp autumn air was tinged with an acrid smell from the debris, a constant in lower Manhattan since the twin towers collapsed. Although water was sprayed on smoldering spots in the wreckage before the service, a smoky cloud hung over the crowd. The drone of generators providing power for the service temporarily replaced the omnipresent roar of heavy machinery. \nMany of the mourners pressed masks to their faces to block out the smoke and the smell. They wiped away tears as tenor Andrea Bocelli sang "Ave Maria" and as other prayers were offered during the hour-long service. \n"Since Sept. 11, we the United States of America, have become the reunited states of America," said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the Fire Department\'s Jewish chaplain. "Death will not conquer our love. We will hold on to the memory, we will hold on to this moment, and most importantly, we will hold on to one another." \nEarlier, as the mourners were escorted to their seats, many said it was their first visit to the area known as "ground zero." And for many of them, the sight of the destruction caused their jaws to drop. \n"For a large number of families, the idea of being at the site was very important," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said earlier. "It was important to them to pray, and to feel a connection to the people they lost." \nOther officials attending the service included New York Gov. George Pataki and Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton. \nA chain-link fence ringing the site was hung with green mesh to shield the families from the throngs of bystanders gathered nearby.