PROFILES IN COURAGE: Cancer has an interesting effect on people’s outlooks. On the one hand, they feel worse than they’ve ever felt following surgeries and rounds of chemo. But they also can sometimes be filled with more life than ever as they dig down deep to discover strength and purpose.

That definitely seems to be the case with Dallas Symphony Chorus director David Davidson. CBS 11 profiled Davidson as he fought stomach cancer while preparing the chorus for its annual Christmas shows.

“I have noticed the people who stayed courageous and upbeat and positive have done the best with it,” Davidson says in the piece. “And I choose to do that.”

In case you missed it, Davidson discussed the concerts with Think’s Krys Boyd during a recent Scene segment.

THE KING OF POP: Andy Warhol is back in town as The Art Galleries at TCU stages Warhol and the Shared Subject, an exhibit of the artist’s photos and paintings alongside the work of some artists he influenced. The Art Galleries are the recent recipient of the photographs from the Warhol Foundation’s Legacy Program, hence the exhibit.

Mike Gerra of art251 says he was struck most by seeing Warhol’s Polaroids in relation to the finished products and the work of his successors. As the owner of the art251 gallery in Keller, Mike knows his visual art. If you aren’t following his blog, you should.

Bloomberg News has released a story online that says George Steel, the newly hired general director of the Dallas Opera, is in talks with New York City Opera for a possible position there as general manager. It would be something of a “Hail Mary” pass for the NYCO because the seriously troubled company currently has no home — its venue at Lincoln Center is undergoing $100 million in renovations — and last month, it lost Gerard Mortier, the Paris Opera impresario who was hired only last year to save it.

According to the Bloomberg report, Steel confirmed the negotations with NYCO through his spokeswoman, Aleba Gartner. But Gartner added that “nothing’s changed and no offer has been made.”

In a phone call with Art&Seek, Gartner repeatedly emphasized that no “formal talks” between Steel and NYCO representatives have ever been held.

“He’s very happy with Dallas,” Gartner said. “He’s not interested in New York City Opera, you can say that.”

Gartner insisted that even saying Steel has been “having talks with NYCO officials” would be a distortion of what has happened.

“I don’t think you should even say he’s been talking to them. He knows a few board members. You know, he’s been in New York all these years at Miller Theater.  And he’s in town right now because he’s conducting at the Guggenheim. So he’s having conversations with people. But there’s nothing formal at all going on between George Steel and the New York City Opera.”

In Dallas, Jennifer Schuder, marketing director for the Dallas Opera, said that she has “no knowledge” of  such talks. In an e-mail message, Suzanne Calvin, assistant director of marketing with the Dallas Opera, said that she had received “a call from George this morning who sounded quite certain he was returning to Dallas — and not to pack.”

In its current straits, NYCO could use someone like Steel, whom the Dallas Opera hired away from Columbia University’s Miller Theater in a surprise move only four months ago. Rumors have been circulating in the opera world the past week that the New Yorkers were trying to poach Steel and bring him back there.

NYCO has a considerably larger budget than the Dallas Opera (around four times the size of the DO’s $11.5 milllon) and it has a notably higher profile in opera circles. But it is also has a skeleton staff, has cut back its season offerings, is operating with a deficit, is facing intractable union negotiations and even possible bankruptcy.

The appeal for Steel, presumably, would be getting to be a last-minute savior. Seeing how desperate the New York City Opera is, he could also get terms that would suit his own more adventuresome tastes.

If he were to go, it would be the second time Steel has stunned the opera world since August. When the Dallas Opera hired him away from New York, Steel had never run an opera company, but he’d sparked tremendous interest with his inventive programming at Miller Theater as well as his success as a fundraiser.  And while the Dallas Opera is a lesser-known, more conventional, regional company, it is about to step into the new Winspear Opera House in October. And Steel was ostensibly hired because of his fresh approaches to programming.

“George has only ever expressed happiness with Dallas,” Gartner said. “I was out there recently and saw how happy he was. It’s a great team, it’s an incredibly solid organization … Dallas is a totally together organization. New York City Opera is the one with challenges.”

[Update 12/23: Bloomberg News nas released an online story reiterating Steel's rejection of any NYCO offer.]

Southern :Methodist University’s Bridwell Library will open an exhibition Feb. 2 on ancient and modern personal prayer books in the library’s special collection. The exhibition will feature 60 books from the 13th to the 20th centuries. These include medieval manuscripts of psalters, breviaries, and books of hours. As its name implies a psalter is the Book of Psalms,  a breviary contains the daily prayers and Latin rituals used by the Catholic and a book of hours is the most common kind of prayer book with daily devotions (hence the title — for prayers to be read at special times of the day.) There will also be Hebrew psalters, illuminated manuscripts for Muslim prayer and a variety of modern publications for individual Christian prayer. To quote the press release: “These books were designed to enhance private spirituality in ways that extended beyond what could be achieved through congregational forms of worship. At the same time, many of them were also treasured personal possessions whose physical beauty still engages us today.”

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will run through May 1.

• Huzzah. The global recession might actually be good for the arts! Well, the visual arts anyway. And mostly in the long term. So says Holland Cotter in the New York Times: “In politics the old order was voted out. In the art world money is running out. Auctions are iffy. Galleries are closing. Museums are in slash-back mode. So 2009 could be 1989 all over again. Important to remember: The last crash opened the art world’s tightly guarded gates to a wave of upstart talent and radical new ways of thinking. That was great. It could happen again.”
• Huzzah 2.0. The internet has actually brought back reading and writing! Sort of. It just didn’t bring back reading Tolstoy. Clay Shirky, who teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications program at New York University, tells Columbia Journalism Review:

One of the things that I’ve noticed with criticisms of the Internet is that very often they’re displaced criticisms of television. That there are a lot of people, Nick Carr [in the Atlantic Monthly] especially is a recent addition to the canon, wringing their hands over the end of literary reading. And they’re laying that at the foot of the Internet. It seems to me, in fact, from the historical record, that the idea of literary reading as a sort of broad and normal activity was done in by television, and it was done in forty years ago….

The notion was that there was somehow this sacred cathedral of the great books and so forth. It was just that no one actually participated in it, and so it was sort of this kind of Potemkin village. What the Internet has actually done is not decimate literary reading; that was really a done deal by 1970. What it has done, instead, is brought back reading and writing as a normal activity for a huge group of people.

Many, many more people are reading and writing now as part of their daily experience. But, because the reading and writing has come back without bringing Tolstoy along with it, the enormity of the historical loss to the literary landscape caused by television is now becoming manifested to everybody. And I think as people are surveying the Internet, a lot of what they’re doing is just shooting the messenger.

Image from money.howstuffworks.com

BROADWAY TO BIG D: Dallas Morning News theater critic Lawson Taitte has been in New York the past week or so compiling his semi-annual Broadway roundup. Among the shows he’s taken in are the movie-to-stage musicals Billy Elliot and Shrek and the soon-to-be-closed Thirteen. Before reading his reviews, can you guess which one of those three he didn’t care for?

The one characteristic those three shows share is that they are family-friendly, a trend Taitte also wrote about on Sunday. He talked to Dallas Summer Musicals president Michael Jenkins, and it sounds like that trend has trickled down to what we’ll be seeing at Fair Park Music Hall — as Jerome noted here when the new season was announced in September. (Jenkins has “vacuumed up a lot of the available material, especially of the ‘family friendly’ sort.”) As the story notes, families tend to buy twice as many tickets to a single show as the average subscriber.

BARACK FOR KIDS: It was bound to happen — a Barack Obama book for kids. What’s cool about this one, though, is that it was written and illustrated by a pair of locals. The words come from University Park’s Jonah Winter while the pictures are courtesy of AG Ford, who grew up in Garland and now lives in University Park. DFW.com profiled Ford on Sunday, who admits the he gets caught up in tracking the book’s sales.

“I’m trying to stay away from looking at how the book is doing,” Ford tells DFW.com. “But I’m obsessed with checking it on the Internet.”

When he looks up the numbers, he’s likely to be pleased: it hit No. 6 on The New York Times best-sellers list of children’s books. When inauguration day roles around, don’t be surprised if it spikes again.

Lone Spring Arts Adult Vocal Artists

We get press releases all the time here at Art&Seek touting this show or that product. And every once in a while, a line in one really catches my attention. Like this one:

“Using statistical analysis of 3,400 individual songs from 170 separate Christmas CDs, Lone Spring Arts determined the 12 most popular Christmas carols.”

Something about “statistical analysis” and “Christmas carols” struck me as funny. So I e-mailed Dr. Presley Mock about the CD. By day, Dr. Mock is an ear, nose and throat surgeon and chief of staff at Texas Institute for Surgery at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. And in his off time, he’s the co-founder and general manager of Lone Spring Arts, a production company dedicated to preserving music of the past. The 12 Carols of Christmas is its newest project.

I e-mailed Dr. Mock about putting together the CD, and this is what he had to say:

Can you tell me about the statistical method for analyzing the 3,400 songs?

MOCK: We identified 170 Christmas CDs, selected at random, listed on Web sites such as Amazon.com, ebay and CDBaby.com. Using an Excel spreadsheet, we entered the 3,400 individual song listings on these 170 separate Christmas CDs. Then, we asked our computer to determine the 12 most popular songs from this Excel spreadsheet (the 12 most frequently listed).

Do you think that these are the 12 songs that would have made it if you were taking a guess before the analysis?
MOCK: The results of our survey were not surprising. For the most part, these are the 12 songs we would have guessed would appear on the list. But it was heartbreaking to read what ranked just below the 12 most popular songs: “Lo! How a Rose,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “In Dulci Jubilo,” “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” etc. So, we decided to include them, in an abbreviated form. Our friend, Milo Deering, created guitar “fantasies” to honor the beautiful songs that didn’t make it into the “Top 12.” And those songs that did make it into the “Top 12″ are the very best, indeed.

Was there a song that came up in your analysis that you couldn’t use for some reason?

MOCK: It’s important to remember that we were interested in determining the 12 most popular “carols,” not the most popular Christmas songs. There were several songs that we could not use: “White Christmas,” “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” However, these are not carols, by definition. Therefore, there was no song that came up in our analysis (of carols) that we couldn’t use for any reason. Christmas caroling is an oral tradition that has been passed from generation to generation. Its exact origins are unknown. Latin Nativity, carols first appeared four to five hundred years after the birth of Christ. They began as folk songs and were indelibly associated with Christmas by the 13th Century, when Francis of Assisi introduced carols into the formal worship service of the church during a Christmas Midnight Mass. All ancient carols, such as the 12 that appear on our CD, are in the public domain.

With so many Christmas CDs out there, what do you think makes this one unique?
The vast number of Christmas CDs available today seem to have one thing in common: only half of the songs on each CD are recognizable as traditional Christmas music. The other half of each CD often contains obscure music that the artist wants to “introduce” to the listener. So, we began to wonder: where is the Christmas CD that contains the 12 songs we want to hear, presented in a straight-forward way, sung by Christmas carolers? Where is the Christmas CD that contains the songs we want to hear (and none that we don’t)? It was nowhere to be found. So, we decided to create it ourselves.

If you are interested in picking up the CD, you can buy it on cdbaby.com and atexasstyle.com.

At Art&Seek, we get in the holiday spirit as much as anyone. And to prove it, we’ve got a stellar lineup of holiday programming planned for the radio station (KERA 90.1 FM) beginning Dec. 23. Among the highlights is our very own Gini Mascorro’s Christmas Anthem — a genre-busting collection of artists performing holiday songs new and old (see below). What else is on tap? So glad you asked:

Dec. 23 at 8 p.m.: Hanukkah Lights 2008 — An NPR holiday tradition for nearly two decades, Hanukkah Lights presents brand new fiction to celebrate and illuminate the holiday season — moving tales of discovery and reconciliation, the persistence of hope and the promise of undimmed light — read by Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz. This program repeats Dec. 28 at 1 p.m.

Dec. 24 at noon: Tinsel Tales: NPR Christmas Favorites — Christmas is a time of traditions, and over the years, NPR has created a few traditions of its own. In this hour-long special: Wistfulness, joy, doubt, hope, all the emotions we feel at this time of year, all summoned up in memorable stories from the NPR broadcast archives.

Dec. 24 at 1 p.m.: Songs of Joy and Peace: The Yo-Yo Ma Holiday Party — Hosted by John Schaefer, this one-hour holiday special combines the joy of music with the gift of discovery as shared and performed by friends old and new. James Taylor, Alison Krauss, Diana Krall, Dave Brubeck, Renee Fleming, The Silk Road Ensemble, Jake Shimabukuro and others discuss the collaborations they recorded with Ma.

Dec. 25 at Midnight: Conspirare: Christmas at the Carillon — Craig Hella Johnson, the founder and director of Conspirare, has put together a group of performers who unapologetically explore the entire range of choral music. From traditional works, which they perform with enlightened reverence, to arrangements of sacred contemporary and pop, which they sing with respect and a deep understanding of style, this is a choral group for the 21st century. This program repeats Dec. 25 at 2 p.m.

Dec. 25 at noon: Christmas Anthem with Gini Mascorro — A cheerful, cheeky blend of eclectic music matched to the many moods of Christmas. Enjoy new seasonal sounds from KERA’s own Gini Mascorro.

Gini says: “Christmas Anthem is a festive blend of music suited for the many moods of Christmas – a mishmash of songs aiding and abetting in the celebration and survival of the holiday season. I’ll be playing some new sounds and unearthing buried treasures here and there, too. And even if your inner Scrooge has the tendency to get the best of you, there are songs in the show that’ll suit your mood, too. Expect to hear holiday ditties from the likes of Matt Pond, PA, the Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Deathray Davies, Aimee Mann, the Bird & the Bee, Nicole Atkins, El Vez, Sufjan Stevens, the Darkness, Bob Marley, Punk TV, Julie London and much, much more.”

Dec. 26 at 8 p.m.: Chanukah in Story and Song — Vocal sextet the Western Wind and narrator Leonard Nimoy present 25 eclectic selections, from the Ladino songs of the Spanish Jews and Yiddish melodies of Eastern Europe to modern Israeli tunes and their original version of “I Have a Little Dreydle.” The singers sing a cappella and are also joined by instruments including violin, accordion, bass and guitar. The narration written by Rabbi Gerald Skolnik sheds light on the holiday customs and rituals.

Dec. 27 at 1 p.m.: A Seasons Griot 2008 In this edition of the Kwanzaa program “A Season’s Griot,” Madafo Lloyd Wilson presents traditional and original works of poetry, music and prose that speak to the institution of family, the security of community, and the unspoken and spoken principles and values of the black community.

In addition to the above programs, KERA will also present a holiday favorite, In His Own Words: Glenn Mitchell Christmas Blockbuster. The program airs Dec. 24 from 7 p.m. to midnight and features a celebration of old friends and good music presented with wry wit and intelligent commentary from the late Glenn Mitchell, KERA’s beloved former host.

• Why does anyone listen to music, anyway? Evolution-wise, what is all that blasted noise good for? (No, this is not another in our happy series on why everyone hates Christmas standards.) There are two traditional, sociobiological answers: We use music to mate (“Birds do it, bees do it … let’s do it”) or to bond with others (“Everyone rise, please, for the National Anthem”). There’s a third theory — that it’s all auditory cheesecake. What each theory tries (and possibly fails) to answer remains something of a mystery: How does music manipulate our emotions?
• When even the chestnuts aren’t selling: The Texas Ballet Theater isn’t the only dance company that has had to economize on Nutcracker or sell tickets at significantly lower prices. (The TBT cancelled a contract with the Fort Worth Symphony to use recorded music. The TBT production runs through Sunday at Bass Hall and then opens Tuesday at Fair Park ). The New York Times found two others.
• But it could be worse: The ballet company could get its bank account frozen and have it used to pay off credit card bills, as happened to Ballet British Columbia.
  
• Traditionally, Broadway shows often close after the holiday rush – the out-of-town theatergoers decline and the shows can’t struggle until Tony Award time in the spring. But this January is seeing one of the biggest kill-offs in years, says the Washington Post:

“Such brand-name productions as the two-year-old “Young Frankenstein,” three-year-old “Spamalot” and six-year-old “Hairspray” are among those saying bye-bye. “Spring Awakening,” winner of the 2007 Tony for best musical and one of the most innovative shows to hit Broadway in years, is closing its doors. Departing, too, are “Boeing-Boeing,” this year’s Tony winner for best play revival; the tepidly reviewed musical “13″; the universally praised “Gypsy” with Patti LuPone; and the revival of “Grease,” whose leads were cast on a TV competition program.”

• But take heart: If you visit Britain in the next couple of months, you can perform in what amounts to a countrywide, neural-electronic symphony. Or a kind of giant, musical brain — thanks to the Fragmented Orchestra:

“The shed acts as a “neuron”, feeding sounds picked up at the Haworth tool shed to a central computer installation – the brain – at FACT gallery in Liverpool. The sounds are replayed almost immediately on one of the 24 speakers in the gallery. Then they are bounced back to speakers at each of 24 sites across the country – the other “neurons” – whereafter they vanish into the ether. The other neurons are sited in locations ranging from the nave of Gloucester cathedral to the main stand at Everton FC’s Goodison Park stadium. Anyone who makes a sound in the vicinity of these sites effectively becomes a player in a huge national orchestra.”

Image from Neuronal Music.

QUICK WORK: The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth posted a cool time-lapse video of its crew installing four works in a first-floor gallery. The Modern has gone a good job of adding these types of behind-the-scenes looks to its blog. Hopefully more museums will follow the Modern’s lead.

DINNER AND A MOVIE: Over on the Unfair Park blog, Robert Wilonsky passes along news that the Alamo Drafthouse has plans to expand into North Texas with six theaters, though the details of when and where are still up in the air. There was a rumor a few years back that an Alamo was going to move into Casa Linda, but that never panned out.

The chain has four theaters in Austin and should be familiar to anyone who has attended the film portion of South by Southwest. Entertainment Weekly named the theaters to its “10 Theaters doing it right” list in 2005, and with good reason. The Alamo has shown a knack for coming up with fun events over the years — everything from video sing-alongs to Weird Wednesday (this week’s film is something called Magic Christmas Tree) — the kinda stuff that movie geeks flock to.

Here’s hoping the expansion into our area works out this time.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “As a conductor, he can best be described as a very poor beater of time who far too often is unable to keep the ensemble together and allows most tempo transitions to fall where they may … In rehearsal, he admitted to our orchestra that he is not capable of keeping a steady tempo and that he would have to depend on us for any stability in that department. Considering his Everest-sized ego, this admission must have caused him great consternation upon reflection.”

David Finlayson, trombonist with the New York Philharmonic, blogging about performing under businessman-turned conductor Gilbert Kaplan

It’s Sarah, Plain and Tall. Yessirree, they’re going to stage an adaptation of the classic children’s novel of Kansas prairie life by Patricia MacLachlan. The novel, and its sequel, Skylark, were already turned into  three made-for-TV Hallmark films in the ’90s, starring Glenn Close and Christopher Walken, probably the last films in which Walken wasn’t positively creepy or funny. The screenplays were written by MacLachlan herself.

This time, the book about the widower-farmer advertising for a wife and mother for his two kids, will be written by Julia Jordan ,with music by Laurence O’Keefe and lyrics by Nell Benjamin, the composer-lyricist team behind Broadway’s Legally Blonde. The Dallas Theater Center is advertising this as a world premiere because it’s a full, two-act adaptation. An earlier one-act version of the musical was staged in 2002 at Theatreworks/USA, the Manhattan stage company for young people.

The original 1985 novel won a Newbery Medal — the children’s book award presented by the American Library Association — partly because it dealt with the problems of re-marriage. Sarah arrives from Maine — she answers the ad, explaining that she’s plain and tall and not necessarily everything Jacob Whitting may want. His first wife died in childbirth, leaving the kids feeling abandoned.

The musical runs at the DTC April 22-May 24