May 11, 2012  |
| | | Thought of the Day | | Music is the shorthand of emotion.
--Leo Tolstoy
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| Quote of the Week | | If one plays good music people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk. --Oscar Wilde
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| | Pittsburgh Opera Fans Protest Governor's Award | | 
PITTSBURGH, PA -- Fans are protesting the Pittsburgh Opera's plan to give Gov. Tom Corbett and his wife Susan a Lifetime Achievement Award this Saturday at the opera's gala. "I'm kind of horrified by the rationale the opera is using to justify this," wrote one Kathleen Andreassi of Butler, a fan of the Pittsburgh Opera for about 10 years. Andreassi, 61, is one of hundreds of people who have posted notes of protest on the opera's Facebook page. An online petition currently has nearly 1,600 signatories. "Any respect I had for the Pittsburgh Opera is now gone! You are honoring the man who has cut 1 BILLION dollars from the education budget in one year. Really? Please don't ask for financial support from me again." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Benjamin Zander Launches Youth Orchestra | Benjamin Zander is back. The venerable music director of the Boston Philharmonic, having been fired as music director of New England Conservatory's Youth Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this year, is launching his own youth ensemble, the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Since the NEC orchestra is not necessarily comprised of full-time matriculating NEC students, it will be interesting to see how many of that band migrate to Zander's new, tuition-free one. By all accounts, the NEC group's students were devastated by Zander's firing, threatening to not show up at a rehearsals, signing a petition, posting videos in protest. The university took to posting guards at the doors of the rehearsal hall and threatening to dismiss them all. Auditions for the BPYO are scheduled for May 11 and 12 and June 1 through 9. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| | | Detroit Symphony Taps Concertmaster | | The Detroit Symphony has a new concertmaster. She is Korean-born violinist Yoonshin Song, 30, also the newest member of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Song is the DSO's first new concertmaster in 24 years, succeeding Emmanuelle Boisvert, who left about a year ago to become associate concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, after the Detroit orchestra's long and near-crippling strike. (Dallas has since found itself on very shaky ground, financially.) "Yoonshin, in only a few days, established herself as one of the very best," said Music Director Leonard Slatkin in his comments about the new recruit. Song, 30, played as guest concertmaster last weekend. Her appointment was announced from the stage after intermission at Sunday's concert, which was webcast to about 30 countries, according to the orchestra. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Reality Opera: Stranger than Fiction, by a Mile | | 
CHICAGO--What can be more operatic, more extravagant, more over-the-top than television news? Once brought to us in tightly edited, 22-minute morsels every evening, it is now a non-stop, round-the-clock video and audio stream of war, politics, imploding celebrities, and fad diets. In his newest work, The News, Dutch composer Jacob Ter Veldhuis (a.k.a. JacobTV) has shaped hundreds of clips from TV news programs around the world into a compelling, sometimes confounding 90-minute survey of the human condition that he calls "reality opera." The News is fast and loud, a flood of visuals so expertly edited, so shrewdly paced that, unlike many real news broadcasts, it never overwhelms. The score -- for three saxophones, trumpet, trombone, percussion, guitar, bass, and keyboard -- blends classical and pop styles with lush orchestrations, catchy melodies, and upbeat, punchy rhythms. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Minnesota Orch Lays Off 16 Staffers | MINNEAPOLIS -- The Minnesota Orchestra says it's laying off 13 percent of its permanent staff to save money. The orchestra announced Tuesday that it was eliminating 9 full-time and 7 part-time positions, though no musicians will be affected. The move is aimed at reducing the orchestra's $2.9 million deficit. Staff reductions will save the orchestra about $450,000 a year. The layoffs touch virtually every department, from finance and development to marketing and public relations. Orchestra officials say job duties will be reassigned to other staff members and that audience members won't notice the reductions. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| If We Paid For It, Don't We Own It? |  To submit a question to FTM Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com Dear FTM Arts Law: I am writing on behalf of our non-profit theater group. Several years ago, one of our volunteers designed a new logo for our theater. We paid her $500. At the time, she was friends with our Artistic Director, but they had a falling out. She recently sent us a letter saying we can no longer use our logo. She claims she owns the design and we can't use it without her permission. Although we have nothing in writing, we did pay her, so don't we own it? Is she right? Read the full story
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| Job Hopping | |  For the answers to the question below, click here. Dear Edna: Although my question is more of a general workplace question than a musical one, I am writing in recognition of the many years you spent at the helm of an artist management agency in hopes that you will give me an honest reaction based on your personal experience. I am a flutist with an undergraduate degree from a school of music. Because I wasn't drawn to apply for orchestral positions, I decided to take a job in the Dean's office, just out of school. After one year, I saw an ad for a position in a public relations agency and decided to apply for it, since I have often been told that my writing skills are excellent and it paid more money.(I also didn't see any opportunities for advancement at the school.) I got the job and have been there for one and a half years. Although I like the people I am working with, I am not enjoying writing press releases and calendar listings nearly every day. Opportunities to actually interact with the press are rare. I recently noticed a job for an assistant artistic administrator at an orchestra in a city where I already have many friends. I have read the job description and I believe I have the necessary qualifications. I think I would love working for an orchestra but I'm afraid that they would be reluctant to consider me, as it would be my third job in three years. Do you have any advice for me? -D.R. Read the full story |
Death in the Concert Hall | | 
From "Why I Left Muncie" by Sedgwick Clark Mahler Meets Shostakovich German baritone Matthias Goerne and Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes performed a fascinating recital of songs by Mahler and Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall on 5/1, all to do with death. Neither composer is Mr. Rogers, but Mahler has been in such vogue for the last 40 years and is such a compelling tunesmith that his dark side and irony are readily accepted. Not so Shostakovich, whose terror under the Stalinist and later regimes and his own increasing physical infirmity late in life produced music of an often uncompromisingly grim nature. For instance, he sets 11 poems about death in his Fourteenth Symphony (1969), and I've never attended a performance where elderly audience members didn't begin exiting halfway through the piece in increasing numbers. The recitalists chose well, interspersing six of the 11 songs from Shostakovich's 1974 Michelangelo Suite with ten Mahler songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder. Andsnes contributed fine, if monochromatic, accompaniments. (I much prefer the orchestral settings.) |
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