Arkansas Blog

How odd that the only person quoted in the interview is the conductor/director of the organization. Where's the President of the Board and other board members? After all, the health of the institution is mostly their responsibility; the conductor is their employee, and if there are debts incurred and the NWA Symphony should have to close its doors, the Board members must pay those debts out of their own pockets. Most people in Arkansas, I have found, don't realize these things about their non-profit arts organizations.

I hope they make it. I also have hoped for too long that deeper news coverage of Arkansas fine arts institutions could become a reality. It dwindles month by month.

I met Jeannine Wagar three years ago in a hairdresser's "salon." She was so busy extolling the virtues of WalMart I just about had to exit my appointment. The woman was almost raving about shopping at Walmart and went on how NYC would be much better off with Walmarts sprinkled around the Metrolopolis. Now she's learning.

"We've been staving it off all year and just kept hoping and hoping," she said. Our budget is $ 600, 000 a year."

Well isn't that special! City of Fayetteville (home to the symphony) can spent $900,000 per year to keep a private executive jet port going but not so much for a cultural landmark like our immensely talented symphony.

As you vote . . . so shall you reap.

Click on handle for the posterboy of Republican Charity

Too many violins; not enough fiddles. It's the Walsmart way!

I met a young Russian engineer this weekend who was dismayed at the lack of cultural appreciation in Arkansas. He's lived here for about six months, but has been in the U.S. for several years. His main point was he had seen the Moscow Ballet four times, once in Russia, once in western Europe, in a large city in the U.S., and at Robinson in LR. At the Robinson show he was shocked that there was no orchestra playing for the Ballet, just a sound system and a laptop. "Where was the orchestra? Little Rock has an orchestra, right?" he wanted to know. "It wasn't even half-full, and people were dressed in jeans and sneakers!" He said everywhere else he had seen the Ballet the audience was dressed up, to show respect for their hard work and talent. I tried to explain to him that funding for arts education had been cut over the years, because it was not deemed as valuable as it once was (such as that was; my 6th grade music teacher played a Beatles song and argued with me that there was no cymbal being played, as in orchestral-weight-lifting-crash cymbal, vs. cymbals on a drum set, which she denied even existed). "In Russia we had culture because of the government although people were starving and standing in line for food. At least this country can feed its people."

I wonder how many Arkansans do not attend or dress up because they do not appreciate the arts, or they can't afford to attend, let alone bring their children, thereby continuing that cycle. Business complains that there are not enough technically skilled employees, yet the math-music connection has been proven.

The problem with the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra is its music director of eight years, Jeannine Wagar. She has completely undercut the goodwill that NASO enjoyed in the NWA community for decades, and has finally succeeded in running the organization into the ground.

There are rocks to be turned over, daylight to be shed. Ms. Wagar's mismanagement goes beyond mere incompetence. Public money is involved. I'd like to see the media organs of NWA - the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Northwest Arkansas Times, the Morning News - doing their job in this matter.