August 24, 2012  |
| | | Thought of the Day | | What you get is a living, what you give is a life. --Lillian Gish
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| Quote of the Week | | I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money. --Pablo Picasso
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| | German Customs Seizes Guarneri | | TOKYO -- German customs seized a $1.2 million violin from Belgium-based Yuzuko Horigome on Wednesday and are demanding she pay 190,000 euros ($238,400) in import duty to get it back. As of today that has yet to happen, according to her management, and she has had to hire a lawyer to help facilitate the process. The violinist was passing through Frankfurt Airport last week after performing in Japan. When she tried to walk through the green gate for travelers arriving in the EU with nothing to declare, customs officers stopped her and said she needed to pay 190,000 euros in duty on her 1741 Guarneri violin. The Tokyo Shimbun reports that she is also expected to pay fines, bringing her total costs (not including the lawyer) to 380,000 euros ($475,000). Customs confiscated the instrument for lack of documentation of Horigome's purchase of it in 1986. "I have used Frankfurt Airport many times and never had problems like this before," she tells the Shimbun. I don't know why this happened." Horigome has worked in Europe for three decades. |
| |  Hans Ulrich Schmid, founder of Konzertdirektion Schmid, died earlier this month at age 86. His agency was among the first of its kind in Germany, representing artists on a worldwide basis. Today the company handles overseas activities by the likes of Andris Nelsons, Hans Graf, Yo-Yo Ma, Murray Perahia, Mitsuko Uchida, and Christian Tetzlaff. In a tribute on the firm's website, KDS President Cornelia Schmid describes her father: "A professional musician himself, he was a pioneer in the international music industry as artist manager, presenter and, above all, as tour contractor. He was a true entrepreneur of the post-war era in Germany: with bold visions, a strong instinct for talent and quality, but also always as a fair and honest dialogue partner and mentor for all who encountered him." |
| | | Ojai Festival Exec to Caramoor |  Jeffrey P. Haydon, executive director of the Ojai Festival since 2003, is to succeed Michael Barrett as chief executive at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY. Barrett was also general director; Haydon will be responsible for administrative functions. Presumably Caramoor has additional plans for its artistic leadership. Barrett announced in February that he would step down after ten years in the job; he remains associate artistic director and co-founder of the New York Festival of Song and artistic director of the Moab Music Festival. Prior to Ojai, Haydon, 37, worked with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Aspen Music Festival. A native of California, he holds a BA in business administration from the University of Puget Sound. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Classical Brits to Honor John Williams |  In an effort to expand their purview -- and their audience -- the Classic BRIT Awards 2012 will honor composer John Williams, 80, with its Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented Oct. 2 at the Brits annual ceremony in the Royal Albert Hall scheduled for broadcast on ITV1.
Across his six-decade career, Williams, who has scored all but two of Stephen Spielberg's films, has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven UK BAFTA Awards, and 21 Grammys. He has been nominated for 47 Oscar awards, the second most nominated person ever, after Walt Disney. His first album release was the score for Checkmate, in 1960. Since then, his output has encompassed 130 studio albums, 49 compilation albums, and 23 singles. To name a few of his hits: Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Harry Potter, and War Horse. Nominations for the Classic Brits will be announced early next month. |
Michael Feinstein Named Pops Conductor |  Michael Feinstein, the former assistant to Ira Gershwin who has gone to become a highly acclaimed singer/pianist of popular classics, has a new gig: conductor. To his own surprise, he has been asked to succeed his late colleague Marvin Hamlisch as conductor of the Pasadena Pops. The position is officially titled the Marvin Hamlisch Chair at the Pasadena Pops. It will be his first time leading an orchestra. Feinstein is also artistic director of the Carmel, Indiana, Center for the Performing Arts. He calls his new gig, which starts next year, "a delicious challenge." He last appeared with the Pops at Hamlisch's last time conducting the orchestra, on July 21. The two occasionally performed together on duo pianos. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Eugenia Zukerman's Tanglewood Vlog |  | | John Harbison, on the Climate at Tanglewood |
Composer, pianist, teacher, recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, John Harbison is one of the most honored musicians in the world. He loves being at Tanglewood, where the climate does not always co-operate, but it makes him "feel dedicated to his art." That dedication has made him prolific and successful in many fields, from poetry to jazz to artistic administration to teaching, to conducting. The world premiere of his BSO-commissioned work, Koussevitzky Said:, for chorus and orchestra will take place on Sunday, August 26, with Rafael Frübeck de Burgos conducting. |
| Can I Cancel If They Perform In My Backyard? | |  To submit a question to GG Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com
Dear Law & Disorder: After we booked an artist, the artist's agent booked them to perform two weeks later at another venue 25 miles away from us. It's a smaller venue that charges less for tickets than we do. This will impact our sales. Can we cancel? I was told that exclusivity was industry standard.
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| Mostly Mozart's Genial Firebrand | 
From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark I ran into Mostly Mozart's music director, Louis Langrée, prior to Yannick Nézet-Séguin's concert that I reviewed last week, and told him how much I was looking forward to hearing the Lutosławski and Bartók works he was conducting a week later. His eyes widened and he smiled broadly, saying how much he loved their music. New Yorkers are used to this genial maestro's elegant performances of baroque and classical repertoire, but now I suspect that Langrée's restrictive MM connection has caused us to lose out on a more well-rounded musician than we realized. The conductor's demonic fervor in Lutosławski's Bartók-flavored Musique funèbre (1958) was palpable. No less so was the surprisingly rich tone that he drew from the MM Festival Orchestra strings - no non-vibrato nonsense here! Equally stirring was Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 (1945), with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet in the solo seat. The Third was once thought inferior to the composer's more aggressive First and Second; program annotator Paul Schiavo's descriptive weasel words are "user-friendly," placed in quotes so we won't accuse him personally of condescension. True, Bartók was dying of leukemia and tailored the concerto for his wife to play when he was gone. But its standing in the composer's oeuvre is no less distinguished than the first two: It's just different. Read the full story
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| 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 Anievas, Agustin, piano, added, Parker Artists Berkowitz, Michael, conductor, added, William Reinert Associates Bizzozero, Luca, conductor, added, Artistainternational Jarman, Georgia, soprano, removed, Guy Barzilay Artists Kocsis, Tamás, violin, added, Parker Artists Lyniv, Oksana, conductor, added, Artistainternational McVeigh, John, tenor, removed, Guy Barzilay Artists
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