April 26, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | Honor lies in honest toil. --Grover Cleveland |
| Quote of the Week | | Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. --Og Mandino |
| | | 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. |
Harry Bicket to Santa Fe Opera |  Harry Bicket, currently doing a smash-up job at the Met Opera with Giulio Cesare, is to be the next chief conductor of the Santa Fe Opera, effective in October. The British early music specialist, 52, succeeds Frenchman Frederic Chaslin, who quit unexpectedly at the end of the season last summer. He had been in the job just two years. General Director Charles MacKay called Bicket's appointment a "coup" for Santa Fe. Bicket will next conduct Fidelio in summer of 2014, its first ever appearance at this mountain-top opera house. Other productions planned for next season include the American premiere of Huang Ruo's Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Stravinsky's Le Rossignol, part of a double bill with Mozart's The Impresario. |
Woodruff Arts Center Employee Pleads Guilty |  ATLANTA--A former employee of the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $1.1 million from the organization, whose auspices include the Altanta Symphony, the Alliance Theater, and the High Museum of Art. Former facilities director Ralph Clark, 42, entered a guilty plea in federal court after reaching a deal with prosecutors, who are recommending a sentence of 41 to 51 months in prison. Clark was authorized to approve vendor contracts up to $50,000. Prosecutors say he stole more than $1.1 million between November 2005 and October 2012. He used his wife's apartment cleaning business to bill the arts center for non-rendered services and hired a maintenance company on the condition that it give him kickbacks of 30 percent. |
| | | An Opera at Once Modest and Compelling |  NEW YORK--The temptation in describing something as small-scale yet perfect as Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David et Jonathas--heard at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week--is to fall back on lapidary terms: "gem" or "jewel." But those words carry connotations of glitter and hardness that don't apply either to the tactful, homely work or the disarmingly charming way it was presented by Les Arts Florissants. Conductor William Christie's immaculate musical taste and pinpoint control of his band are legendary, but what perhaps impressed me the most was how utterly familiar he made this obscure music sound. The music-making felt wonderfully transparent, as if it were being improvised on the spot in response to the emotional states of the characters onstage. The performance, then, was not comparable to jewelry, extravagantly trivial, but rather something lovingly hand-carved for human use. |
| Boston Symphony Headed to China |  In announcing its 133rd season, the Boston Symphony Orchestra revealed plans to tour China in May 2014 under Lorin Maazel, marking its first appearance in that country since 1979 with Seiji Ozawa, and its first overseas visit in seven years. On the itinerary are Beijing and Shanghai, plus a stop in Tokyo. Other 2013-14 highlights include performances of Golijov's St. Mark's Passion, led by longtime Golijov collaborator and Atlanta Symphony Music Director Robert Spano (also a onetime BSO assistant conductor). Britten's War Requiem will be conducted by Charles Dutoit; Andris Nelsons, at one time considered a possible candidate for the still-vacant BSO music director spot, conducts Salome in concert with German soprano Gun-Brit Barkmin; Daniel Harding makes his house debut with the U.S. premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Speranza; and Thomas Adès conducts his own image-laden Polaris. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| Jonas Kaufmann Gets (Another) Opera Award |  U.K.'s Opera magazine has jumped on the annual award bandwagon, with Oper Frankfurt and tenor Jonas Kaufmann among the first recipients, for "opera company" and "male singer," respectively. The awards, at a gala dinner in London, are to be known as "the Operas" and were established by the magazine's editor, John Allison, and British businessman Harry Hyman. There are 23 categories in all, with "accessibility" going to the Metropolitan Opera, presumably for the HD initiative. Among other winners were the Cape Town Opera in the chorus category, Salzburg as opera festival, Antonio Pappano as conductor, George Benjamin's Written on Skin as world premiere, Nina Stemme as female singer, and the MET Orchestra for opera orchestra. Among the ten jurors, the majority of them male, were San Francisco Opera Artistic Director David Gockley; Salzburg Easter Festival Managing Artistic Director Peter Alward; Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu; Guus Mostart, manager of the Nationale Reisopera in Enschede; and Brit journalists Hugh Canning, Rupert Christiansen, and Andrew Clements. The complete list follows. |
| From Flower Pots to the Pulitzer Prize |  From Ask Edna by Edna Landau Caroline Shaw is a typical 21st century musician, except that she just won the Pulitzer Prize in Music - at 30 years of age, the youngest recipient ever of this prestigious award. Her remarkable prizewinning a cappella piece, Partita for Eight Voices, was written for Roomful of Teeth, a vocal group with whom she has sung since its founding in 2009. Ms. Shaw is a multi-talented individual who seems to excel in everything she does. Despite her new accolade, she will undoubtedly continue to refer to herself as a musician, rather than a composer. She surrounds herself with friends and musicians who, like her, enjoy multiple musical pursuits. Over the past week, I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking with not only Ms. Shaw, but with Brad Wells, Director of Vocal Activities and Artist in Residence at Williams College in Massachusetts, and also the founder and conductor of Roomful of Teeth, as well as Judd Greenstein, co-director of New Amsterdam Records/New Amsterdam Presents, and a prolific composer. He has written three of the works on Roomful of Teeth's debut album, which was released by New Amsterdam Records in October 2012. Greenstein and Wells have been friends for over a decade. They are thrilled about Ms. Shaw's well-deserved recognition and feel that it is a cause for communal celebration for all who were involved. |
Whatever Happened to Christian Thielemann? |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark Christian Thielemann is Germany's most sought-after conductor. Twenty years ago, he was on the hot track to a big U.S. career. He made the customary rounds of the majors and, I can attest, led some impressive concerts over five seasons with the New York Philharmonic between 1995 and 2002, excelling in the widescreen tone poetry of Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony and Ein Heldenleben. When leading Der Rosenkavalier at the Met in 1993, he stood up to Kathleen Battle's diva demands and her career never recovered. He began recording for Deutsche Grammophon. He conducted Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1997 and seemed to be connecting with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the mid-1990s. But until last week his most recent appearances locally appear to be at the Met for Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten in January 2002. 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 Gödde, Henrietta, contralto, added, Artistainternational Macelaru, Cristian, conductor, added, IMG Artists (global general management) Read the full story |
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