April 19, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won....Think of it--always." --Mahatma Gandhi |
| Quote of the Week | | An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. --James Abbott McNeill Whistler |
| | Putting Audiences at the Edge of their Seats! | | ADVERTISEMENT Click here to watch an excerpt of Avner Dorman's Cello Concerto Celebrated composer Avner Dorman's new Cello Concerto, written for Inbal Segev, is a visceral experience featuring amplified cello and rock rhythms, interspersed with lyrical, haunting moments. The Anchorage Daily News raved, "Soloist Inbal Segev's ferocious energy had the listeners on the edge of their seats as if they were watching a NASCAR race in sound." For information email Richard Lee, rlee@barrettvantage.com. |
Berklee College of Music Gets $8.1 Million |  The 67-year-old Berklee College of Music in Boston has received an $8.1 million gift from a gentleman who used to enjoy coming to student concerts and listening to jazz, his favorite. Berklee, which emphasizes contemporary music, recording, and music-business skills, rather than typical conservatory fare, will name one of its performance halls on Boylston Street for the donor, Oliver Colvin, who died in 2011. The gift was a bequest. Colvin was chair of a family business that made industrial humidifiers. According to the school, it is the largest gift made to any arts-education institution in the last year. |
| |  Alec Treuhaft has resigned as senior vice president of IMG Artists and director of client management in New York. Treuhaft is best known for his work with stars of the vocal world, including Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Karita Mattila, Deborah Voigt, Dawn Upshaw, Eric Owens, David Daniels, Matthew Polenzani, and many others. In a recent restructuring, Treuhaft was also managing instrumentalists and conductors of equal caliber. Numerous phone calls and emails to several different departments at IMG Artists for comment have not been returned. In other news from the New York office, Senior VP and Artist Manager David Lai has been re-assigned as a consultant. |
| | | Lunch with Sir Colin (and Friends?) |  "By his own admission," Michael Schwirtz wrote in an obituary of Sir Colin Davis, the great British conductor who died on April 14, "he was hot-headed and short-tempered in his younger years, and his relationships with musicians and musical organizations early in his career were often tempestuous." I had an opportunity to see that hot-headedness in action once in 1979, on assignment from the now defunct Keynote magazine to cover a recording session of Sir Colin leading the Royal Concertgebouw in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Afterward, he (and I, much to the PR person's chagrin) lunched with the orchestra manager and recording executives. Watching him hold forth in what turned out to be a combative discussion under a genial veneer left me with an appreciation of Davis's quick wit and determination. It also pulled back the curtain on the dance between orchestras and conductors when each side has its own ideas about repertory and interpretation. |
| Award-winning Juilliard Alumna Zhang Zuo in Tully Hall Recital Debut | |  ADVERTISEMENT
Hailed by the L.A. Times as "powerful, passionate, and compelling representation of pure artistry," Zhang Zuo performs works by Ligeti, Ravel, Liszt, Schumann, and a NY premiere by Zhou Long, as winner of the Petschek Piano Award on Thursday, May 9 at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. Past Petschek notables include Jeremy Denk, Akira Eguchi, and Joyce Yang. Tickets $30, $15. |
| Caroline Shaw Wins Pulitzer Prize for Music |  NASHVILLE, TN--Caroline Shaw, a 30-year-old grad student at Princeton University and a New York-based freelance violinist and vocalist, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her winning composition is Partita for 8 Voices, written for her vocal octet Roomful of Teeth. The Pulitzer committee describes it as "a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects." "I think up to now people have known me as a violinist and then more so as a singer," Shaw said in a phone interview. "I guess now people are going to know me as a composer." The jury was led by Jeremy Geffen, director of artistic planning at Carnegie Hall, and included musician Muhal Richard Abrams, Swarthmore College professor Gerald Levinson, Harvard University professor Carol Oja. and Chicago Tribune jazz critic Howard Reich. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| Glass Opera Launches New Theater in Linz |  LINZ, Austria--Serious talk about building a new opera house began 20 years ago in this Danube city midway between Vienna and Salzburg, and the path to completion has been sometimes tortuous. But the Musiktheater am Volksgarten, as Linz's new, $234 million theater is officially known, finally opened its doors last weekend with the world premiere of Philip Glass's Spuren der Verirrten (Traces of the Lost). Operas written to inaugurate new theaters are by definition charged with a special ceremonial function, which may be one reason they often fail to catch on. Chances are slim that this one, with its bewildering string of tangentially related events, will take the world's opera houses by storm. But it did show off the Grosser Saal (main auditorium), with its traditional horseshoe design and dark wood with red upholstered seats. Plus, no one is more skilled or more experienced in bringing Glass's musical patterns to animated life than Dennis Russell Davies. To say he was in his element on Friday evening would be an understatement. |
| Claude by Thierry Escaich, Opéra National de Lyon, April 14, 2013 |  From An American in Paris by Frank Cadenhead Today in the New York Times: "Op-Ed: Gitmo Is Killing Me. No charge. No trial. And I'm being force-fed while bound to a chair." Last night, at the Opéra National de Lyon, stormy applause at the final performance of an important new opera by Thierry Escaich, Claude, a tale told by Victor Hugo about an everyman who is locked up, dehumanized, and executed by guillotine. The major difference: the second story has an ending; the first as yet does not. The applause began to crescendo when Escaich acknowledged his librettist, Robert Badinter, seated in the audience. Badinter is now 83. Claude is his first published libretto. But he was the right man to write it: Badinter was the Minister of Justice when the French government ended the death penalty in 1981. |
| A Visa Substitution Requires an Artist to Substitute |  To submit a question to GG Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com Dear Law and Disorder: I have a substitution/visa question for you....We were intending to use someone from the US as the eighth singer for one of our groups coming to perform with a symphony in July 2013. It's now looking like the group might have to replace the intended US singer with a singer from the UK. The rest of the group have visas that have already been approved and issues. Obviously, the singer from the US was not included in the original visa application, so I'm wondering how it would work if we're now substituting a singer from the UK for the US singer. Would we have to do an entirely new visa application for the new (UK) singer, or would we still be able to add this new singer to the existing (approved) visa petition as a replacement for the US singer? Any light you could shed on this, either by answering these questions or by referring me to another resource where I might be able to get an answer to these questions would be extremely helpful and very much appreciated. Thanks so much! Read the full story |
| The Art of Booking |  From Ask Edna by Edna Landau If you ask anyone in the artist management business how things are going these days, they will tell you that everything seems harder than it used to be. Some concert series have ceased to exist or have been significantly cut back, a number of orchestras have also disappeared or have been seriously challenged by budget shortfalls and labor difficulties, and an increasing number of presenters are reluctant to take risks, preferring to book artists who are familiar to their audiences and who are likely to generate a healthy amount of box office income. In light of all this, what can a manager or self-managing artist do to enhance the chances of securing one of the highly sought after slots in a presenter's season? |
Colin Davis and Adolphe Herseth, Inspired Musicians |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark New York music lovers were fortunate to hear many performances by the British conductor Colin Davis and the Chicago Symphony's longtime principal trumpet Adolph ("Bud") Herseth in its concert halls. Last weekend the music world lost both artists, who afforded me some of the most inspiring musical experiences of my life. How lucky we are to have so many examples of their artistry on record and in our memories. Colin Davis (1927-2013) How many musicians give their finest performances at the end of their lives? Colin Davis did. When word of his death at age 85 hit the Internet last Sunday, April 14, his revelatory Beethoven Missa solemnis with the London Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall on October 21, 2011, leapt instantly to mind. With infinite wisdom, he had conveyed the composer's emotional message as never before in my experience. It turned out to be his final New York performance. Six years before, he had led the LSO with blinding commitment in Vaughan Williams's Sixth and Walton's First symphonies. Indeed, the Walton far surpassed his highly regarded recording on the LSO LIVE label. And on April 3, 2008, he led the New York Philharmonic in a searing realization of VW's Fourth Symphony that rivaled the composer's own hellbent 1935 recording. Read the full story |
| Latest Roster Changes |  Musical America is helping presenters keep up with its advertisers! Managers whose rosters appear in the 2013 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 Cumming, Edward, conductor, added, Chesapeake International Artists Gigliotti, Eve, mezzo-soprano, added, Fletcher Artist Management Kanasevich, Gleb, clarinet/composer, added, Chesapeake International Artists Read the full story |
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