AMT Lives to Sing Another Day
By the time the clock struck midnight on Nov. 18, Austin Musical Theatre had failed to raise the $500,000 it needed to complete its current season. In truth, the company had collected only 20% of that goal over the two weeks since it suspended operations, but despite that and the departure last week of still-new Executive Director David Jenkins (and perhaps inspired by one of the musicals left in the 2003 season), AMT’s board of directors swept in like a fairy godmother and granted the company’s fondest wish: to continue. The board has given Artistic Director Scott Thompson the green light to restore reduced operations by Dec. 1 and, if its still-active fundraising campaign continues successfully, to reopen its performing arts academy and produce one, if not both, of the shows remaining in the season, Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. According to Thompson, the $100,000 that was raised — mostly in small gifts — helped convince the board that the company had a broad base of support in the community and, combined with the potential of larger contributions from deep-pocketed donors, that AMT had a future, too. Now, the company is far from out of the woods; it still needs support and would gladly accept your contribution. To help, call 428-9696 x301.
UT Hears American Singing
The School of Music at UT-Austin is making a new bid for prestige in the world of academia with a little something called the Center for American Music. The idea is for the music school to be a place where scholars, students, and artists from all over the world can come to study, research, and perform every kind of music generated in the Americas, from classical to folk, jazz to pop, the blues to bluegrass. The center will contain resources for studying not just the music itself but its history, technical aspects, the culture from which it springs, and issues of business and law surrounding it. Such a comprehensive approach to the still neglected field of American music has yet to be undertaken by another university, which should lift UT-Austin to a new level of prominence among its academic peers. To mark the establishment of this new enterprise, UT will host a conference on “Popular Culture and American Music” Nov. 20-23. Music scholars from around the U.S. will give presentations on various topics in popular music, including the relationship between music and technology, radio formats, and the use of music in films. For the full program, visit www.cam.music.utexas.edu.
This article appears in November 22 • 2002.