The San Antonio Symphony has abruptly canceled the remainder of its 2017-18 season.
Photo courtesy of Tobin Center for the Performing Arts
It appears that Sunday will go down as the day the music died for this season of the San Antonio Symphony. As reported by Texas Public Radio, contract negotiations between the symphony's management and musicians' union have ended, effectively canceling the remainder of the season.
The final performance will be held this weekend in celebration of the city's tricentennial celebration.
This is the latest in a series of sour notes for the symphony. This summer, the nonprofit Symphonic Music in San Antonio was formed to help alleviate financial issues plaguing the organization.
Over the past few months, the nonprofit has taken financial control over the symphony from the Symphony Society of San Antonio, which has overseen the organization since 1939.
In late December, the nonprofit SMSA issued a statement alluding to the Symphonic Society underfunding the musicians' pension fund by more than $4 million. The Symphonic Society board chair Alice Viroslav countered, telling the Rivard Report, the Symphonic Society "was and has been current on its payments to the pension on the musicians’ behalf.”
On December 27, the SMSA returned control to the Symphonic Society.
With the musicians' contracts expired as of December 31, the parties returned to the bargaining table on January 3. After a lengthy meeting, talks were abandoned and the decision was made to cancel the remainder of the season
The musicians took to Twitter to voice their reaction. "This is a shock to all of the musicians of the San Antonio Symphony," they tweeted. The group's final 2018 performance will be Saturday, January 6 at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.
Mabel (Piper Kurda) and King George (Bobby Moynihan) in Hoppers.
For the first 15 years of its history, animation studio Pixar delivered one classic film after another, an astonishing streak that included their first 11 movies. Things got bumpy starting with Cars 2 in 2011, and even though the majority of their output has been good-to-great ever since, their releases are no longer considered slam dunks like they once were.
They’re back with an original film, Hoppers, trying to return to form by going back to the animal world. The film centers on Mabel (Piper Kurda), a 19-year-old environmentalist who’s trying to stop a new highway being built by Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) in the fictional city of Beaverton. Her activism has as much to do with helping displaced local animals as it does with being nostalgic for her youth, in which she spent years observing nature with her Grandma Tanaka (Karen Huie).
She finds an unlikely possible solution when she discovers that her college professors have created a system that allows them to transfer - or hop - their consciousness into animal-like robots. Hijacking a beaver robot, Mabel joins up with the local wildlife, including beaver King George (Bobby Moynihan), to try to convince them to help her execute her plan. But with the highway almost complete and Mayor Jerry willing to do anything to make it happen, Mabel might be too late.
Directed by Daniel Chong and written by Jesse Andrews from a story by Chong, the film cycles through a variety of genres in its 105-minute running time, including comedy, drama, thriller, and even a touch of Pixar-style horror. When Pixar has been at its best, it seamlessly goes back and forth between genres, trusting that audiences will go along with it for the ride, and Hoppers feels like a return to form in that respect.
Humor rules the day as Mabel adjusts to being part of the animal world while her professors desperately try to get her and their robot back. Mabel encounters not only wildly confusing things like “pond rules” (if a predator catches you, you don’t fight it), but also the existence of a hierarchy within the world that involves kings or queens from various animal classes like reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, and insects. Her one-track mind and the way of the world she is invading clash in a variety of funny ways.
As the film goes along, Chong, Andrews, and the rest of the filmmaking team also find a way to burrow into the audience’s heart. There are many elements that threaten to tip into eye-rolling territory, but the filmmakers consistently pull back before that happens. The number of fun characters on both the human and animal side helps in that regard, as does the simple yet profound message they’re trying to convey.
Pixar has assembled one of the best voice casts in recent memory for this film, including such big names as Meryl Streep, Dave Franco, Melissa Villaseñor, Vanessa Bayer, and the late Isiah Whitlock, Jr. However, due to the sheer number of characters, only Kurda, Moynihan, and Hamm truly stand out. Still, they all fit together well and give the always-stellar animation even more life.
Since the pandemic, Pixar has only released one truly great film (Inside Out 2), but with Hoppers and the seemingly bulletproof Toy Story 5 coming within a few months of each other, they might go back-to-back on that front. Like the classic films from the studio, it has goofy, heartfelt, and exciting parts, mixing together for an enthralling time at the theater.
