November 22, 2004

Arts, Briefly

ontract Harmony in Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Orchestra and its musicians, right, said yesterday that they had reached final agreement on a contract after a bitter labor dispute. The new three-year contract calls for a reduction in the number of full-time jobs, something the players had strenuously opposed in public, and a salary freeze for the first year. According to a statement by the orchestra, the number of permanent players and librarians will drop from 109 to 103 during the term of the contract, and then bounce back to 106 at the end of it. The orchestra stressed that there would be no reduction of forces on stage for concerts.Minimum weekly salaries will rise to $2,200 by the contract's end, compared with the current level of $2,000, which the orchestra said kept it competitive. The musicians will also be contributing more toward their health benefits and agreed to add more Sunday concerts. The contract is in line with those at other major American orchestras that have settled with musicians in recent weeks; a number have had some sort of wage freeze and higher health care costs for the members. The Chicago Symphony also had a temporary reduction in permanent positions. The Philadelphia contract is retroactive to Sept. 20, when the old pact expired. Negotiations were tense, and Mayor John F. Street stepped in to mediate. A tentative agreement was announced on Nov. 16, and the musicians and management worked out the details before the contract was ratified by the musicians this weekend. DANIEL J. WAKIN

Rapper Turns Himself In

The rapper Young Buck surrendered to police in Santa Monica, Calif., on Friday to face charges that he stabbed a parolee who sparked a melee at the Vibe Awards ceremony. The 23-year-old rapper, whose real name is David Darnell Brown, was charged with one count of attempted murder and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. Investigators believe Mr. Brown stabbed 26-year-old Jimmy James Johnson during the ruckus after Mr. Johnson punched the superstar producer Dr. Dre at the awards show last Monday. Mr. Brown was booked and later released after posting a $500,000 bail. He is scheduled for arraignment on Dec. 20. JEFF LEEDS

Playful Pastiche Restored

One of the strangest and most beloved creations by the great 19th-century British architect Sir John Soane has been restored to its original place after being disassembled more than 100 years ago. His "Pasticcio," below, a 23-foot column that incorporated ancient and contemporary stone fragments as a playful tribute to architecture itself, was built in 1818 as part of Soane's home in Lincoln's Inn Field, London, and dismantled as unsafe in 1896. As part of the renovation of the home, now Sir John Soane's Museum, the column - inspired by Soane's favorite building, the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy - has been reassembled at a cost of nearly $300,000, with missing pieces meticulously recarved. The column now stands in the building's Monument Court on its original Moorish capital, decorated with garlands and rosettes, topped by a cast-iron element culminating in a pineapple. PAM KENT

Atlantis Found, Again?

The legend of Atlantis has surfaced again. An American research team announced last week that it had found remnants of the city's walled hillside 50 miles off the coast of Cyprus. The leader of the team, Robert Sarmast, an American architect turned Atlantis quester, said he was "absolutely convinced" that the formation, found with sonar on a secret expedition, were the walls of Atlantis, the fabled utopian island-state first mentioned by Plato around 360 B.C. Other researchers have put the island, which was said to have been destroyed by an earthquake, as far away as Spain, Ireland and Cuba. ANTHEE CARASSAVA

Pop CD's in Release

It looks to be another big week for the music industry, with several highly anticipated new albums to be released tomorrow. Among them are U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (Interscope), which thanks to a promotional campaign for Apple's iPod has gotten even more publicity than a new U2 album usually receives. Reuters reported that the record label was making an initial shipment of 2.2 million copies of the album. Among the other potential big sellers this week are "Love, Angel, Music, Baby" (Interscope), the first solo album by Gwen Stefani, the platinum-blonde leader of No Doubt, with songs produced by Andre 3000 of OutKast, the Neptunes and Dr. Dre; and "With the Lights Out" (Universal), a four-disc boxed set of hits and rarities by Nirvana, including a DVD of films of the band early in its career. Also being released: Kenny G's "At Last ... the Duets Album" (Arista), with Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Daryl Hall, LeAnn Rimes and Burt Bacharach; "Lonely Runs Both Ways" (Rounder) by the bluegrass star Alison Krauss and her band Union Station; and two albums by "American Idol" alumni: "I Need an Angel" by Ruben Studdard and "Free Yourself" by Fantasia Barrino, above (both on J Records).

Sculpture Meets Dance

Martha Graham once said that she could have done nothing without the set and prop elements created for her dances by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi. "Always he has given me something that lived on stage as another character, another dancer," Graham said. His sets for nine of Graham's dances will be on view in "Noguchi and Graham: Selected Works for Dance," an exhibition that opens on Dec. 2 and runs through May 1 at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens. Produced in collaboration with the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, the exhibition includes about 35 objects intended to be danced on or around as well as films of the dances, archival photographs and ephemera, and drawings and sketches by Noguchi that suggest the evolution of his designs for Graham and their influence on his other projects. JENNIFER DUNNING

Footnotes

Attention, White Stripes fans without DVD players: AMC Theaters will be showing the new White Stripes concert DVD, "Under Blackpool Lights," on Dec. 9 at movie theaters in 13 cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco (Jack White, lead singer, above). The DVD, filmed earlier this year at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England, features performances of the band's hits like "Seven Nation Army" and "Hotel Yorba" as well as covers of Bob Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" and Son House's "Death Letter." The DVD will be released by V2 on Dec. 7.