December 7, 2012   |
| | | Thought of the Day | | Patience is the companion of wisdom. --Saint Augustine
|
| Quote of the Week | | I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life. --Jean-Michel Basquiat
|
| | Musical America Awards Get Zingy |  NEW YORK -- Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse was once again the site of Musical America's annual award celebration last night, sponsored by Deutsche Grammophon, honoring the 2013 winners and in the process attracting a large crowd of classical music's movers and shakers. The event was a bit zingier than usual: Following Publisher Stephanie Challener's welcoming remarks, the official Trumpet Ensemble of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra launched into a mini recital, a little Gabrieli here, a little Sousa there. The full orchestra is in town to perform as part of Carnegie Hall's Voices of Latin America festival. The fearless leader of the pack -- and also of the Los Angeles Philharmonic -- sat quietly and listened for a change, later mounting the podium to accept his award as Musical America's 2013 Musician of the Year. But more about Gustavo Dudamel later. |
Flap at La Scala over Verdi Snub |  MILAN -- The dual bicentennial of the births of composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner is turning into a dueling bicentennial. La Scala General Manager Stéphane Lissner this week dismissed as "ridiculous" the national media's criticism of the decision by the Milan opera house that was once Verdi's musical home to open the season tonight with Lohengrin. No less than Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano has entered the fray, writing a letter to Music Director Daniel Barenboim rejecting press rumors that his decision to miss the gala season opener is a deliberate snub. The Milan daily Corriere della Sera launched the opening salvo, publishing a piece asking whether "the Germans would have inaugurated a Wagner year with a Verdi opera." The piece was headlined Milan and the curse of Lohengrin. |
| | | | |  HARTFORD, Conn. -- Jazz composer and pianist Dave Brubeck, whose pioneering style in pieces such as Take Five caught listeners' ears with exotic, challenging rhythms, has died. He was 91. Brubeck died Wednesday morning of heart failure after being stricken while on his way to a cardiology appointment with his son Darius, said his manager Russell Gloyd. Brubeck would have turned 92 on Thursday. His career spanned almost all American jazz since World War II. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951; he was the first modern jazz musician on the cover of Time magazine (Nov. 8, 1954); and he helped define the swinging, smoky rhythms of 1950s and '60s club jazz. The seminal album Time Out, released by the quartet in 1959, was the first-ever million-selling jazz LP, and is still among the best-selling jazz albums of all time. "When you start out with goals -- mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically -- you never exhaust that," Brubeck told The Associated Press in 1995. "I started doing that in the 1940s." And, at the time of the interview, he still was.
MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Old White Guys Boo Bartoli at La Scala |  Cecilia Bartoli returned to La Scala Monday night, after a 19-year absence, to open the La Scala Philharmonic's season. Daniel Barenboim, instrumental in getting her back to the house, was on the podium. One eyewitness reports the she was tense at the start, but warmed up as the evening progressed. Repertoire included Handel arias, Mozart's Exultate, jubilate; two Rossini arias, "The Willow Song" and prayer from Otello; and "Non più mesta" from Cenerentola, in which "the vocal fireworks shot in all directions." All was going well until the crusty, mostly male Golden Age crowd took over. "Distributing themselves carefully around the upper galleries, they waited for Bartoli's last note to die away before booing and whistling." There ensued a five-minute "slanging match" between Bartoli's fans and the it-was-better-in-the-old-days crowd, until Barenboim "told everyone to shut up" and Bartoli got on with her encore. |
Rochester Philharmonic Music Director Fired |  Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit has been fired as music director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, a job he has held for just over a year. (He succeeded Christopher Seaman in fall 2011.) According to local sources, the deed was done via an email from the board of directors. Relations between Remmereit and President/CEO Charles Owens were reported in October to be so chilly that the two were not speaking. The RPO currently has an operating deficit of $700,000 on a budget of $9.8 million. Remmereit's attorney, Glenn Pezzulo, claims the Philharmonic breached his client's contract by creating a hostile working environment. He also said Remmereit will fight to keep his job. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| New Artist of the Month: Daniela Fally | |  VIENNA -- A few years ago, I noticed Daniela Fally always seemed to be singing wherever I went: Anna in Weill's Die sieben Todsünden given by Neue Oper Wien on the far edge of the city; single-handedly saving a dreary Die Zauberflöte at Volksoper Wien with her vivacity as Papagena; whirling onstage in one of opera's more bizarre roles, the Fiakermilli in Arabella; and then, in a true "a star is born" moment, walking off with the evening as Zerbinetta in a new Ariadne auf Naxos on opening night at Stadttheater Klagenfurt.
That night marked a turning point in the career of the young coloratura, especially after she conquered Zerbinetta's 10-minute marathon aria -- frequently considered the single most difficult ever written, making Mozart's Queen of the Night sound like Home, Sweet Home. In addition to declamatory passages and long legato sections, it is rife with trills, runs, leaps, tempo changes, and high Fs above the staff. At its finish, there ensued several minutes of applause, screams of "Brava!" (including some from me), and utter pandemonium. And to think it was her first-ever Zerbinetta. |
| 'Mahlermania' at the Deutsche Oper's new Tischlerei | |  From Berlin Times by Rebecca Schmid In the final scenes of Mahlermania, a 'dramatic fantasy with music by Gustav Mahler' conceived by the troupe Nico and the Navigators in cooperation with the Deutsche Oper to inaugurate the West Berlin opera house's new alternative stage Tischlerei on November 27, manuscript paper and fur coats scatter across the stage in front of a dismembered composing hut. An actress representing Alma Mahler, donning a fur hat and trench coat, douses herself with champagne. In the midst of a chamber performance of Abschied from Das Lied von der Erde, a figure representing the alter-ego of the composer lets out a blood-curdling howl. "Es gab Mozart, Schubert," blurts out Alma. "Damit muss man sich abfinden" (There was Mozart, Schubert. One was to resign oneself to it.). The Viennese seductress is reduced to a superficial socialite when a dancer, also Alma, waves at the audience Miss America-style. Read the full story . |
| Silence Is Not Golden! |  Dear Law and Disorder: Help! We are a small agency. We booked an engagement for one of our artists at a venue that has now cancelled the date. We had a series of emails with the venue confirming the date and fee and then sent them a formal contract that was never returned. We followed up with more emails confirming the date and asking for the contract to be signed and returned, but they never did. The venue is now claiming that because they never signed and returned the contract, they were never obligated to do the show. Are they correct? Don't the emails count for anything? How to we keep this from happening in the future?
|
| A Studio of Entrepreneurs |  From Ask Edna by Edna Landau
For the answers to the questions below, click here. I have often wondered whether violists are more entrepreneurial than other groups of musicians. I have written about Nadia Sirota and have had Jessica Meyer as a guest on this blog, to name just two whom I admire greatly. This idea was reinforced when I had occasion to meet Fitz Gary, a violist in Juilliard's Master's program, who together with a very entrepreneurial cellist (!), Avery Waite, mounted a concert last June called Music Feeds Us in their home town of Charlottesville, Virginia. Inspired by Music for Food Boston, founded by the esteemed violist Kim Kashkashian, they raised $6,483 and 482 pounds of food for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which is equivalent to 26,333 meals. A Google search for further information about Fitz Gary led me to the website of The American Viola Society, and a most fascinating blog emanating from the Juilliard studio of Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Steven Tenenbom, a.k.a the "ACHT" Viola Studio. (Robert Vernon, Principal Viola of the Cleveland Orchestra, also works with many of the students.) Hosted by the American Viola Society, it is called the AVS Pedagogy Blog, or From the Studio. Each day of the week, the studio's students, teachers, teaching assistants, as well as alumni, post columns on the blog which break down into five categories: Outreach and Resources, Pedagogy, Repertoire and Interpretation, Technique, and The Cast. The Cast typically introduces students in the studio in an interview format, hence a column entitled Introducing Fitz Gary!, in which he reveals that when he was in fifth grade and had to choose an instrument, he chose the viola because the line to try it was the shortest. Read the full story |
| Musical America's Annual Joy |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark December is a special time for us at Musical America because we have the great pleasure of honoring a group of the finest musicians in the world and introducing the latest issue of our annual Directory. At our Awards party Joy to the World reigns, we forget about our gnashing of teeth over cancelled bookings, dried up press outlets, and orchestra deficits. Last night (Thursday, December 6) was no exception. Our five 2013 awardees were eloquent and humble in their expression of the art to which they have committed their lives. They are: Musician of the Year: Gustavo Dudamel Composer of the Year: David Lang Instrumentalist of the Year: Wu Man Vocalist of the Year: Joyce DiDonato Educator of the Year: José Antonio Abreu Read the full story |
| 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." Bowden, Mary Elizabeth, trumpet, added, Parker Artists Hagen String Quartet, added, Arts Management Group The Hit Men, nostalgia, pops, added, Sciolino Artist Management (orchestral appearances) Read the full story |
| | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment