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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > October > 28
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Let the Arthouse renovations begin!
With a few ceremonial whacks of a sledgehammer against a wall, Arthouse officials along with Mayor Lee Leffingwell and former mayor Will Wynn kicked off the start of the major renovations on the Congress Avenue contemporary arts institutions.
The $6.6 million architecturally adventurous re-design of the building comes at time when many arts groups have scaled back on programs and future plans. But with $5 million already raised, the Arthouse expansion is on schedule. Re-opening is planned for fall 2010.
New York architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis forward-thinking design promises to be a smart update of the historic downtown building. Check out the project web site.
A model of the Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis designs for Arthouse — with the multi-purpose roof amphiteatre — stands against a pile of debris leftover from the recent wildly popular ‘24 Roman Reconstruction Project,’ artist Liz Glyn’s participatory adventure that had the public building, and then destroying, a miniature version of ancient Rome.
Everything on the buildings first floor — including the staff offices, here just a pile of rubble — will be remodeled. However, the design calls for many features of the historic structure to be preserved.
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‘The House of the Sun’
Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara based his opera ‘The House of the Sun’ on the true tale of two sisters who fled the Russian revolution in 1917 and lived in virtual isolation in Finland for almost 70 years, refusing to believe that the revolution had ever happened and that their previous life of luxury was over. Finally in the winter of 1987, the sisters froze to death in their house in the woods, a house called Solgården (‘Sun’s garden’).
The Butler School of Music collaborates with the Sibelius Academy of Finland in this new production.
Sometimes characterized as a mystic or romantic composer, Rautavaara nevertheless employs a fundamentally post-modern musical language in which theirs a blend of modern and traditional tonalities and elements.
‘The House of the Sun’
7:30 p.m. Thursday through Sunday
McCullough Theatre, UT campus
$10-$20
www.music.utexas.edu
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