Word: hurok
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...impresario, the late Sol Hurok used to say, "is a man who discovers talent, who promotes it, who presents it, and who puts up the money and takes the risk." In Hurok's case, the impresario was also a man who changed and enriched the taste of a people and persuaded nations to become cultural friends. For more than 50 years he brought to the U.S. the performing geniuses of his native Russia: Pavlova, Chaliapin, Oistrakh, Ulanova. His proudest accomplishment? "Bringing ballet to America and the American public to ballet...
Although he was in effect a one-man operation, Hurok liked to underplay his own indispensability. "A lot of people are mistaken when they say that if Hurok disappears his organization will fall apart," he would say. "It'll go on, as long as they have the artists." Last week -two years after Hurok died at the age of 85-the current management of Hurok Concerts conceded that almost three dozen of its biggest box office draws had quit. The stampede out of Hurok began one of the biggest shake-ups in the concert business. Items...
...major reorganization announced last week, Hurok Concerts worked out a deal with a smaller, rival manager, Harold Shaw, 53, and gave him most of its artistic leadership. Shaw will continue to run his own company, Shaw Concerts, which handles such artists as Guitarist Julian Bream, Contralto Maureen Forrester and Pianist Vladimir Horowitz. A merger may be possible in the future, but for now the move is comparable to Ford turning operations over to American Motors...
...Sheldon Gold, 46, who was with Hurok for 15 years, emerged as a powerful force in the management field. Last May, shortly after he was fired as Hurok's president, Gold announced the formation of his own firm, ICM Artists Ltd. Since then, the agency has signed up such onetime Hurok clients as Violinists Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman; Pianists Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Gina Bachauer and Daniel Barenboim; Cellist Leonard Rose; Conductors Erich Leinsdorf and Julius Rudel; and Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. Zukerman switched, he explained, because "Shelly Gold is more than a manager...
Doing it seems to require the logistical genius of a Hannibal, the showmanship of a Hurok and the business acumen of a Howard Hughes. A traveling circus has to put up with the whims of the weather, moody animals, occasionally avaricious police and fire departments and frequently finicky bureaucrats who require a sheaf of licenses, clearances and permits...