David Lister: The Week in Arts

Two issues dominated the arts this week. And the affable director of the Proms, Nicholas Kenyon, played a significant role in both.

Mr Kenyon cuts an unusual figure among arts administrators. He started off as a classical music critic, not a calling noted for thrusting ambition or even always sociability. But Mr Kenyon possessed both and made his way first to run Radio 3 and then the Proms. Later this year he takes charge of the Barbican Centre.

He retains some of the characteristics of his first calling. He can occasionally be found with odd socks and holes in his jumpers. But in the main he is a premier-league mover and shaker in the arts.

He is also something of a maverick. Thus after the story broke that the arts world "had united" in protest at the way money was being diverted from culture to the Olympics, Mr Kenyon quietly but firmly dissented.

Buried away in an interview he gave about the Proms were these words: "I'm a total fan of the Olympics. This is a huge opportunity. Look at it this way. Culture is non-competitive. It enables people to do things together. That's been my outlook at the Proms, and the results with Proms in the Park and so on have been astonishing. I honestly believe the money will follow the Olympic enterprise."

I can't profess to understand much of that. But take out the Kenyonesque non sequiturs and you have clear evidence that the arts world is not united at all, despite what the press and TV say. One of its key figures does not toe the party line. I fear he may be drinking alone at the next gathering of the cultural great and good.

I am grateful to Mr Kenyon for being brave and maverick enough to declare that there is a more complex debate to be had over arts vs Olympics funding. But in his second show of maverick behaviour this week, I am less grateful to him.

I refer to his launching of this year's Proms season. Much of the news coverage dwelt on the fact that he had programmed among the symphonies and concertos a concert by Michael Ball, best known for his performances in Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. Mr Kenyon explains this by saying it is the job of the Proms "to cover the whole waterfront". Stand by your phones, McFly; the call could come at any minute.

Of course it's not the job of the Proms to cover the whole waterfront. It's the job of the Proms to present the best, most imaginative and most adventurous classical music, traditional and contemporary. West End musicals are not classical music.

Mr Kenyon says that Michael Ball is "one of the great intelligent singing artists alive today". I'm not privy to Mr Kenyon's CD collection, but I doubt that the great intelligent singing artist gets too many plays between the Beethoven and Bruckner.

My hunch is that Kenyon thought rightly that Ball would get the Proms programme in the news and give the season a feel of extra accessibility. In so doing, Mr Kenyon may again be maverick, but this time he is not brave. The braver course would have been to shout about, and only about, the great orchestras and virtuosos who are coming, and the music they will be playing.

But even classical music's most obvious spokesmen tend to be afraid to do that. They feel the need to spice it up with a little pop or a touch of West End glamour. That's a pity. Classical music doesn't need showbiz to make it accessible. Nor do the Proms.

Did I hear right? Hope not

For years I imagined the late Jimi Hendrix to be at the forefront of the gay rights movement. His record "Purple Haze" contained, I was convinced, the lyric "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy". It was a remarkably progressive line for the 1960s, and it came as a disappointment when I eventually discovered that his words were "'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky".

Peter Fonda, actor brother of Jane, once confessed to becoming a player in the drugs counterculture in reaction to the line "I get high" in the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". He must have felt a twit when John Lennon told him that what he actually sang "I can't hide".

We often hear lyrics incorrectly. But, I'm not thrilled by the announcement from Yahoo! this week that it is going to put the lyrics to 400,000 songs on the web, in guaranteed accurate form so that no one need ever get them wrong again. The misheard words can be better, and life-changing.

* It has been a while since I mentioned theatre ticket prices, but an initiative at the Royal Court in London is definitely worthy of note. The new artistic director, Dominic Cooke, shares my belief that the way to encourage younger audiences is to lower the ticket price. It can often be that simple.

Mr Cooke is introducing a "500 for £5" season, whereby all shows in the main auditorium will have 500 seats available across a show's run, priced at £5, exclusively for those aged 25 and under. The young theatregoers will have prove their age at the box office.

The Royal Court has no sponsor for the scheme, so it will have to meet the cost from its own funds. Mr Cooke tells me that he sees it as an investment - a way of building and developing a new audience. He's right; it is an investment. And the Arts Council should fund it as such.

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