The board met all day yesterday and decided to suspend the company’s intended closure on April 14. It will take another fortnight to see if the company can raise $10 million to put on another season, presumably under new management.
The vote for postponement was 35-4. The previous vote for closure was 33-1.
A lot of minds were changed yesterday, some of them by a personal appearance by Opera America president and CEO Marc Scorca.
Public protest has also made an impact.
This is not over, yet.
Message received
Trumpeter to Teach Gibbons the Blues
BBRSC and Arts Council to fund project by Nick Malcolm on Gibbon Island at Bristol Zoo
STRICTLY EMBARGOED TILL 00.01am on April 1st 2014
Bristol-based trumpeter / composer Nick Malcolm will be involved in a pioneering ear-training project with the two gibbons at Bristol Zoo. He will work with the pair, named Samuel and Duana, on Gibbon Island at the zoo every day for six weeks, starting today, according to a joint statement from Bristol Zoo, and the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) and Arts Council England, who will jointly be funding the work.
The project will involve taking a musical phrase based on the BBSRC acronym (Bb / Bb / Eb / D / C ) and teaching it to the gibbons.
lt lead to an academic paper in peer-reviewed journal Nature, and also to a live event on Gibbon Island with Malcolm’s quartet, featuring rising jazz star, pianist Alexander Hawkins.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Nick Malcolm
Nick Malcolm is a trumpeter/composer based in Bristol. His quartet will be on tour playing material from his second album Beyond these Voices after this work is completed, from May 21st . Dates from www.nickmalcolm.com. He comments: “I am very honoured to receive this grant. There is already extensive work on gibbon vocalisation (Geissmann, 1999; Geissmann & Orgeldinger, 2000; Haimoff, 1984; Leighton, 1987), but this will be, I believe, the first attempt to teach them a blues riff in C. Subsequent research may involve the gibbons teaching me their advanced brachiation techniques.”
BBSRC
BBSRC is the lead funding agency for academic research and training in the biosciences at universities and institutes throughout the UK, Dr April Day said. “We had a sneak preview of the track “It’s Alright, we’re Going to the Zoo” from Nick’s next album ‘Beyond these Voices’ and we thought he the was right person to carry out this exciting work, and to document the results.“
Arts Council England
For Arts Council England, spokesman Roland Poisson said: “Two aspects of Nick’s proposal really grabbed us. Firstly, we love site-specific work. Secondly, work with gibbons has always tended to cross art-forms – from ‘The Cries of London’ in the early seventeenth century and the carvings in St Pauls Cathedral in the 1690s, through to the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ (1776-88), stamp collecting and ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ (1932). We look forward to Nick Malcolm building on this important legacy and engaging new audiences in an innovative way with this work at Bristol Zoo.”
