April 13, 2012  |
| | | Thought of the Day | | Genuine music...it fills the soul with a thousand things better than words
--Felix Mendelssohn
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| Quote of the Week | | If I would be in this business for business, I wouldn't be in this business. --Sol Hurok
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| | IMG Artists Names President | | 
As of next Monday, IMG Artists has a new president and CEO, Jerry Inzerillo, president of the Kerzner Entertainment Group and apparently a whiz at attracting celebrities to help build brand awareness. According to IMGA, Inzerillo has produced "900 major events globally, including star-studded launches of the Atlantis Resorts in the Bahamas and Dubai." He succeeds Jeff Fuhrman, who will stay on as an advisor. IMGA, heretofore a mostly classical artist manager with clients such as Murray Perahia, cellist Steven Isserlis, and soprano Renée Fleming, is positioning the move as an expansion into all the performing arts, along with travel, tourism, food, wine, "and other lifestyle events." In March the company announced that owner Barrett Wissman would be returning, having stepped down as chairman shortly after he was indicted for securities fraud in 2009. Wissman now serves as co-chair with co-owner Moscow-born executive Alexander Shustorovich, while Charles Hamlen, brought in as chair during Wissman's absence, will exit in June. (Hamlen is a cofounder, with Edna Landau, of IMG Artists.) Shustorovich called Inzerillo, "the right man at the right moment for IMGA."
MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Soprano Ailyn Pérez Wins Tucker Prize | Lyric soprano Ailyn Pérez has won the 2012 Richard Tucker Award, an annual prize with a cash purse of $30,000 and plenty of prestige. Named for the late American tenor, the prize honors a singer "at the threshold" of a major career. Perez, 32, is the first Hispanic ever to win in the award's 34-year history. Her husband, tenor Stephen Costello, also won the Tucker prize, in 2009. They are in illustrious company: past winners include Renée Fleming, Deborah Voigt, David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, and Lawrence Brownlee.
Pérez has yet to make her Metropolitan Opera debut, although that is scheduled, but she has sung pretty much everywhere else, from La Scala and Covent Garden to the Vienna Staatsoper and the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| | | 100 Years Ago: The Titanic Band | | From the pages of Musical America 27 April 1912  THE TITANIC'S BAND
The following are the last words of the story of the sinking of the Titanic (15 April 1912), by Harold Bride, the ship's rescued second wireless operator, given to a daily newspaper reporter upon the arrival of the Carpathia in New York with the survivors: The way the band kept playing was a noble thing. I heard it first while still we were working the wireless, when there was a ragtime tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating out in the sea with my life-belt on, it was still on deck playing "Autumn." How they ever did it I cannot imagine. That, and the way PhilIips kept sending after the captain told him his life was his own, and to look out for himself, are the two things that stand out in my mind over all the rest. Read About the Titanc's Musicians: Heroes All |
Universal to Revive Mercury Label | | 
The Mercury label, whose pedigree dates back to the 1940s, is about to make a comeback, this time with a focus on projects that bring "fresh perspective to classical music" and that help to "redefine the genre in the 21st century."
Dr. Alexander Buhr, a ten-year veteran of Universal's Deutsche Grammophon label, is to be managing director. "There has rarely been so much opportunity to find new ways of looking at classical music," said Buhr in his comments. "There is an audience hungry for new experiences and the boundaries between musical genres are becoming more penetrable." The revived label will be called Mercury Classics. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Plans Afoot for Mannes College Move | | 
Mannes College the New School for Music, the smallest of Manhattan's three conservatories, is reducing its $13 million budget by 5 percent, resulting in a number of class reductions and some consolidation with The New School, which purchased the conservatory in 1989. Since then there has been talk of closing the Mannes building on West 85th Street, and now, with the $353 million, 366,800-square-foot building The New School is erecting at Fifth Ave. and 13th Street, consolidation of Mannes with its parent would seem inevitable. Parts of the new building are scheduled to open in September. In an interview, Mannes Dean Richard Kessler confirmed that the Mannes building on West 85th Street will "probably" be sold, although he made it clear there was no specific timetable. He also said that Mannes would be consolidating its extension and prep divisions to form one "community music school," although he again was noncommittal about the time frame.
MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Bournemouth Symphony Taps New Chief | The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concluded a year-long search with the appointment of Dougie Scarfe as chief executive. Scarfe starts his new job July 2. The orchestra has been in search mode since Simon Taylor left to become chief executive of the Ireland's National Concert Hall in Dublin, Taylor's birthplace.
Scarfe has been with Opera North for 23 years, first as a horn player, then as manager, now as director of the orchestra, chorus, and concert program. He's been lauded for his collaborative work with other presenters, for his fund-raising prowess, and for pulling off the company's first-ever Ring cycle. Terence O'Rourke, chairman of the BSO, observed that, with the financial pressures arts organizations are facing today, the BSO board "carried out an exhaustive and demanding search," to find someone up to the challenge. |
| Cavalleria Rusticana: Easter in Rome | | 
From "A Rich Possession" by James Conlon "There is no disputing taste," "fashions change," "to each his own," and "vive la difference." Certain pieces come in and out of the classical music repertory, while others never get a foothold; still others seem omnipresent. Classical music institutions today have to grapple with balancing repertory over the course of years, to make sure everything that must be played is played; new music that stimulates the muse of our most creative composers is given a hearing; that neglected or unknown works from the past are heard. I have spent the last ten days in one of the cities I love the most: Rome. I have been rehearsing and conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of Italy's leading cultural institutions since its inception in 1908. I conducted three concert performances of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana ("Rustic Chivalry" is the literal translation of its ironic title), an opera that has enjoyed international success since its premiere, in Rome, in 1890. One of the world's most popular operas (it ranks as the tenth most-performed work at the Metropolitan Opera), it is loved or scorned by musicians and music lovers; on both sides, many are vocal, few are neutral.
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| Can I Fire My Board Members? |  To submit a question to FTM Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com Dear Law and Disorder: Many years ago I founded a successful non-profit dance company. Over the years, we have continued to grow by adding board members, increasing donations, and critically acclaimed performances. However, my current board has become too invasive. In the past, I have always given them reports about the upcoming season, plans, new artists, etc, and they have focused on fundraising. As the founder and artistic director, it has always been clear that I was always in charge. Now, some of the newer board members are starting to demand financial reports and budgetary control. The new board chair recently wanted to be involved in interviewing a new development director I wanted to hire! My understanding has always been that the legal role of the board was only to raise money. How do I stop this situation before it gets worse? Is this something I can address in the by-laws? Can I fire the board members? What are my legal options? Read the full story |
American Mavericks, Part 2 (the Tax Man Cometh) | | 
From "Why I Left Muncie" by Sedgwick Clark I really should be working on my taxes . . . . Cage, Cowell, Adams, Varèse The first concert to involve San Francisco musicians in the series, on Tuesday in Carnegie Hall, began with the most anticipated event of the series: Cage's whimsical 1970 Song Books, with Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, and Joan La Barbara the unlikely trio of vocalists, and Tilson Thomas miming various actions. Cage provides nearly a hundred numbers to be executed, organized by the performers. MTT chose a half-hour selection for this occasion. Frankly, the So Percussion concert the previous evening provided far more fun in Dan Deacon's less pretentious Cage knockoff, Take a Deep Breath. |
| Latest Roster Changes |  Musical America is helping presenters keep up with its advertisers! Managers whose rosters appear in the 2012 edition of the Musical America Directory should write to listings@musicalamerica.com with the names of artists and attractions that have been either added or removed, and please be sure to indicate "added" or "removed." NEW THIS WEEK Diamond, Mark, baritone, added, Fletcher Artist Management
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