Tomorrow is another day...

After yesterday, I've been hugely impressed by the attitudes expressed by those organisations who've lost their ACE funding yet have issued statements declaring their determination to carry on with their work. While certain bullish media commentators are desperate to portray them all as that magical invention of the school playground, "whingeing luvvies", I've not spotted a single "whinge" anywhere. There's disappointment, of course, and sometimes incomprehension about some of the decisions - but principally we note fortitude, resourcefulness and gratitude for the support thus far.

These are people who work extremely hard, often for little financial recompense, and commit to their various activities with dogged determination against a sea of ignorant, opposing twatdom. I am especially sorry to see that the brilliant charity Live Music Now is among those whose funding has been wiped out - you'll find their website in my Music Inspirations list, but here it is again. Others include beloved Riverside Studios, Dartington, Lake District Summer Music and the Rose Theatre in Kingston. As for the massive cut to the excellent Almeida Theatre, Norman Lebrecht has theories about this.

There's good news, too: among the big winners has been the Britten Sinfonia, with a massively increased grant that is very well deserved, and several famous early-music orchestras have won funding despite having existed perfectly strongly without it for decades, while the London Mozart Players is out of the picture altogether. (There is an early music enthusiast, or so, on the ACE board, as you'll note if you have a look at Norman's lavish commentary from yesterday.) More news here from the Independent.

It was entertaining to see Jeremy Paxman facing a team of theatrical manager, Tory minister and a highly intelligent scientist on Newsnight yesterday, and finding no dissent amongst them at all over the value to society of public funding for culture and research. The more he pushed the philistine mealymouth view, the more strongly and excellently they reasoned.

My husband still has a job: all the symphony orchestras have taken a roughly equal 11% cut. Many in other sectors of work across the country are less fortunate. As the libretto of Anna Nicole says: "There but for the grace of your deity of choice..." Never think that we don't know this.

As far as the UK's cultural life is concerned, there's much to celebrate. Many creative and resourceful people work in this industry; it's now going to be up to them to find alternative ways forward. The arts here take just a sliver of public funding - notable when you compare it to other departments and see the returns that investment in the arts can bring - and the "mixed model" of funds-gathering - a sort of hedging approach with a bit of public, a bit of private and a lot of commercial nous - is currently proving its worth. It's a bit like freelancing: you're not dependent on any one company for your income, but on many different ones, so it is unlikely that you'll lose the whole lot at once (as I have learned over a sometimes difficult but often rewarding patch of 18 years to date).

And so, as Scarlett O'Hara says, tomorrow is another day. Keep calm and carry on.

A far greater danger than ACE cuts is the tearing up of culture and education by the grass roots, in the shape of university tuition fees and local authority budget-slashing. That is a topic for another time.

'National Portfolio Organisations'

Here is the database of the arts organisations across the UK that have become National Portfolio Organisations with ACE funding.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?hl=en&hl=en&key=tNqPxvivkg4P8A27Cy8UqZA&type=view&gid=0&f=true&sortcolid=-1&sortasc=true&page=2&rowsperpage=250

It is only part of the jigsaw puzzle, but quite an important part.

Music While U Wait

The ACE is busy sending those emails even now. Results are filtering through on Twitter with the hashtag #ACEfunding. So far early winners include Tete a Tete Opera and the Manchester International Festival. It's worth pointing out that some organisations that have never received ACE funding before are now getting some - a fact that's been a bit overlooked by many of us - though there will be losers too. The Guardian has rolling updates here and you can set the page to refresh automatically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2011/mar/30/arts-council-funding-decision-day-cuts

Let's have some Bach while we wait. This is the piece that the MD used to play in the office when he was doling out clear-your-desk-right-away redundancies in a company I worked for in 1989. But it wasn't being played like this...

ROBERT TEAR (1939-2011)

Extremely sad this morning to hear about the death of Robert Tear, one of the greatest singers and 'characters' in the British opera world over the past half century. He was 72.

[Update, Tuesday 29th, 6.45pm A Telegraph obituary is now up on site here]

I've been listening to Bob singing for as long as I can remember, but certain occasions stand out as utterly unforgettable. His Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw can scarcely have been bettered: while his presence could emanate sinister power almost effortlessly, the beauty of his voice gave the character its essential extra dimension of seductiveness. At the opposite end of the spectrum, he was in Glyndebourne's Die Fledermaus a few years ago singing Dr Falke the lawyer - a production which included a little coup-de-theatre in the last act when Falke's cloak was pulled off him, abruptly revealing that he was wearing a petticoat. "What's that?" bellowed Eisenstein. The reply: "It's my Freudian slip!" And at the UK premiere of Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane at the RFH in 2007, Bob sang the short role of the Blind Judge. His was the finest voice on the platform.

It was on that occasion that I met him for the first time. I'd just been in France for the premiere of my play about Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time; Bob became very interested since he had known Messiaen well and worked with him. He said that he was winding down his singing career (and his last operatic appearance was in Turandot at the ROH two years ago), but was still interested in performing as an actor or reader. The upshot was that he and I gave the UK premiere of the play together at Lake District Summer Music 2008, in the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick.

It was astonishing to be on stage with him. The stage is not my natural environment and appearing alongside such a legend is a tall order. But he was such a strong, reassuring, comforting presence - able to inhabit a role so entirely, even when simply reading - that I was able to "lose myself", forget nerves and respond with all I could muster. With his wife, Hilary, and our team of musicians including Charles Owen and Philippe Graffin, we had a ball in the festival, too, huddling together for warmth in Lake District pubs and watching the rain...

Bob was not just a great singer, but a Renaissance man, fascinated by literature, art and issues mystical. His favourite pastime seemed, indeed, to be painting and he also wrote some amazing texts, short stories which I was privileged to read; his poetry also featured in a Christmas carol, 'Winter's Wait', which was performed at King's College Cambridge last year. He was a vivacious and irrepressible dinner guest, regaling us with hilarious stories from his time as a larger-than-life figure in a larger-than-life profession; and his West London home seemed to buzz with the spirits of all the creative powerhouses who had passed through its portals over the years.

I phoned him just before Christmas to ask whether he would be interested in doing another reading of the play this spring. He told me he wasn't taking on any more work of any kind and mentioned that he hadn't been very well, but if this was in fact a serious illness he gave no indication of the fact. My thoughts today are very much with Hilary and their two daughters.

And here is his official biography from his agent's website.

Robert Tear was born and educated in Wales, and became a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge.  Throughout his career he has shown his versatility and great talent as one of  the world's leading tenors and has worked with many eminent conductors.

He has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on a regular basis since his debut in l970. In 1988/89 he made his debut with English National Opera in The Turn of the Screw and the following season included his highly successful debut as Aschenbach in Death in Venice with the Glyndebourne Touring Company, later filmed by BBC TV.

Robert Tear has worked on many television projects, including the Jeunesses Musicales’ War Requiem performances in East and West Berlin to celebrate the City's 750th Anniversary in l987,   and more recently, a performance at the Wigmore Hall in which he performed Britten Song Cycles and Out of Winter by Jonathan Dove to Robert’s own texts.

He has made well over 250 records for every major recording company, including Bach Cantatas, numerous recital records, Victorian ballads with his friends Benjamin Luxon and André Previn, Britten's Serenade and Nocturne with Giulini for DG, and all the major choral works. Other recordings include Britten's War Requiem, Mahler's Das Klagende Lied, both with Sir Simon Rattle, Die Winterreise with Philip Ledger, and the first recording of Schoenberg's arrangement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde for BMG Records with Mark Wigglesworth and The Premiere Ensemble. His recording of Dyson's The Canterbury Pilgrims with the LSO and Hickox for Chandos was released in 1997.

In 1985 Robert Tear made his US conducting debut in Minneapolis and has subsequently worked with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Mozart Players, Northern Sinfonia, English Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Toulouse Chamber Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Recent opera performances have included Opera National de Paris Bastille (Marriage of Figaro), Los Angeles Opera (Tales of Hoffmann), the Royal Opera House (Falstaff & The Bartered Bride), Welsh National Opera (Eugene Onegin), Bayerische Staatsoper (Saul), English National Opera (Sir John in Love) and Glyndebourne (Die Fledermaus). In early 2009 Robert made his final singing performance at the Royal Opera House as Altuom in Turandot.

Robert is in increasing demand as a speaker/narrator. He has most recently read a selection of Mozart’s letters accompanied by music at Kings Place, and Stravinksy’s A Soldier’s Tale with members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Wigmore Hall.

Robert Tear is married with two daughters and lives in West London. From 1992-94 he was Artistic Director of the Vocal Faculty of the London Royal Schools of Music, and he is currently a visiting professor of Opera at the Royal Academy of Music. He is an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and in l984 was awarded the C.B.E.

Just the beginning...

Does the UK government have the first clue about what it's doing? Less than a year since the coalition came to power and they're already being told by their own select committee that decisions they made a few months ago were poor - something the public spotted right away when the UK Film Council was turned into a clay pigeon and shot down. Now they want the ACE to slash another 50% of its own operating costs and are making noises about not being 'convinced' that so many subsidised orchestras are needed. Yet so many of the comments, as reported today, are self-contradictory, confused or oddly timed that the incoherence and anxiety that lie beneath are clearly visible. You can read the whole Select Committee Report yourself, here.

..."Arts industry insiders believe the timing of the report is designed to damage the council and deflect negative reaction to the forthcoming announcement away from the Government."... (The Independent) (Read the rest here.) 

..."The committee also said it was not convinced there was a need for so many symphony orchestras to receive funding from the council and the BBC; claimed heritage had been underfunded compared with the arts; and expressed concern at the deep level of cuts to funding for culture proposed by some local councils.

The arts world is waiting anxiously for the results of public funding applications, which are due to drop into email inboxes up and down England between 7.30am and 9.30am on Wednesday. Grant applications have been made by 1,300 organisations; almost half will be unsuccessful....  (The Guardian)" (Read the rest here)

Feeling sick already? We ain't seen nothing yet. I'm not saying the status quo was perfect - yes, there's a serious deficit, and yes, there was a world financial crisis. There has to be a way to save money. But it has to be a competent, considered, sensible way and we have yet to see anything that suggests the current administration is capable of this; or that there is an electable alternative that could be any better. The sense of lunatics running the asylum has rarely been stronger; today, after all we've seen taking place in the US, persistent clinging to belief in the free market as the answer to all the world's problems seems staggeringly naive at best and, at worst, plain stupid. In one word: Detroit.


It's the apparently hasty and ill-considered way in which decisions like the abolition of the Film Council and the PLR (public lending rights) distributing agency were forced through that seems most dubious. The report says the following re PLR:

147. We are surprised at the Government's decision to abolish the PLR body and disappointed that DCMS did not discuss the future of the PLR with its Registrar before announcing its abolition. It follows the same disturbingmodus operandi as with the other bodies, including the UK Film Council. We have not found anyone who supports this decision. Any proposal that the Arts Council should take over the PLR was unrealistic and rightly abandoned. However, this has left the PLR in a state of protracted uncertainty, which could have been avoided had the department discussed proposals with the PLR sooner.

148. We do not believe that the British Library is an appropriate body to take on the work of administering the PLR. Far more appropriate is the ALCS, which already distributes royalty payments to authors. We understand that there may be a legal technicality preventing this, in which case we recommend that legislative measures are put in place to allow it to happen as soon as possible.

NB "WE HAVE NOT FOUND ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS THIS DECISION"


Meanwhile in academia, ideology-driven policies that bear little relation to reality are taking hold too...have a dekko at this weirdly Stalinist requirement, reported yesterday, that humanities research at university level will be required to study 'the Big Society', something that I hope profoundly might have been misinterpreted or misquoted or at least mis-something. Here are David Lodge's thoughts on the university situation.