June 21, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | Hitch your wagon to a star. --Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quote of the Week | | An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous. --Henry Ford |
| | Seattle Opera Names New General Director | The Seattle Opera has concluded its two-year search for a successor to the legendary Speight Jenkins. He is Aidan Lang, director of the New Zealand Opera since 2006 and little known in this country. He will join the Seattle company in March 2014, working with Jenkins until he exits the following August. Jenkins, 76, has been with Seattle for the last 30 of its 50 years, turning the company into one of the country's best, and arguably its finest Wagner house, having presented 38 full Ring cycles in three different productions since 1975. Yet another round gets underway August 13, kicking off the 50th-anniversary season. Lang, 57, was one of 42 candidates from seven countries under consideration for the job. Jenkins in his comments said he "embraced and celebrated" the search committee's choice. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Bamberg Competition Winner Not as Expected |  BAMBERG, Germany--Up until the last minute, jury and journalists were in agreement at the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra-Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition last week. The competition, held every three years in this charming and historic Bavarian city, was launched in 2004 when a little-known Venezuelan by the name of Gustavo Dudamel took first prize. The three candidates participating in the finals last week seemed suitable contenders out of the wider (407 applicants, to be exact) field. The surprise came when first prize, an award of €20,000 ($26,000), went to Israeli conductor Lahav Shani, 24. Possibly because of his gestural clarity, he apparently established a good rapport with the orchestra, which gave him a noticeably warm ovation after his semi-finals performance. But in the finals, which were devoted solely to the first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, his performance suffered.... It seems likely that the judges accorded a premium to Shani's youth, but Tung-Chieh Chuang, one of the two second-place winners, displayed at least as much talent. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| | | | |  Several weeks before the opening of the Castleton Festival on his Virginia estate, Lorin Maazel has taken to social media to protest regie opera stagings. On his Maestro Lorin Maazel Facebook page (not to be confused with his "Lorin Maazel" Facebook page) the conductor posts a three-part rant against such "Philistinism," generating hundreds of "likes," "shares," and comments from his admirers.
He writes, "The roles of both stage director and conductor are essentially custodial, bringing into play only those actions which heighten and make clearer the intentions of librettist and composer.... To do otherwise is to pervert and despoil the work of masters. The egos of stage director and conductor (and his/her psychological problems) are never ever to come into play.
"An opera stage is not a psychiatrist's couch." |
| Joffrey Ballet Taps Executive Director |  Greg Cameron, a skilled fundraiser and seasoned Chicago arts executive, is to become executive director of the Joffrey Ballet starting July 1. His most recent job was COO of Chicago public broadcasters WTTW/WFMT. He also ran the development offices at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the department of cultural affairs. Cameron, in other words, is an experienced fundraiser among Chicagoans. Which is a good thing, since his predecessor, Christopher Clinton Conway, who left in March after eight years in the job, was brilliant at finding money and charming the masses. Conway is credited with completing a $40 million capital campaign; doubling annual giving to the company; raising the Joffrey's profile; hiring a successor to founder Gerald Arpino, and increasing the subscriber base by nearly 300 percent--among other, equally impressive, accomplishments. "The Joffrey Ballet has grown artistically in recent years," understated Artistic Director Ashley C. Wheater. "In the arts, success is measured by the impact we have on our community.... I know that Greg shares this sense of purpose." |
Muti Wants to Stay with CSO Beyond 2015 |  Riccardo Muti has said, unofficially, that he wants to stay on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's podium after his current, five-year contract ends in 2015. "I think as far as the [CSO] is concerned, there is no reason at all to stop this musical relationship," he told WFMT radio and the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview. "I love this city, my children love this city. When I'm here I feel comfortable." There is no new signed agreement, but having spent three successful seasons at the helm, toured internationally with the CSO, and earned two Grammys with it, the Rome-based maestro is confident of his future in the Windy City, calling the orchestra "the instrument mainly with which to make music in the future." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| Columbus Symphony MD to Exit |  In what appears to be an amicable arrangement, the Columbus Symphony and its music director, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, will part ways at the end of next season. Zeitouni, who has a new baby girl in his home base of Montreal, will have been in the job just four years. "That's a big change in my life," he tells The Columbus Dispatch. "I do have to spend more time in Montreal because she is here and is very young." The other prime mover is his career: The orchestra would have liked to have seen more of him, but the 38-year-old French Canadian conductor has other commitments, including being artistic director of Orchestre de chambre I Musici de Montréal, and principal guest conductor of Les Violons du Roy. He is also an active opera conductor. Principal bassoonist and Orchestra Committee Chair Betsy Sturdevant tells The Dispatch that the conductor is in high demand internationally. "We're not eager to close the chapter," she says, "but we knew it would have to happen." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| Bruno Bartoletti |  From A Rich Possession by James Conlon Several great classical musicians have passed away in recent months. Van Cliburn, Henri Dutilleux and Sir Colin Davis have each left an enormous mark on our world, and their passing, in keeping with their international status, has been rightly observed on several continents. Today I offer a personal homage to the conductor Bruno Bartoletti, who died last week in Florence, a day before his eighty-seventh birthday. He was known, and will thus be remembered by those of us who had the fortune to know him, for his extraordinary knowledge, artistic vision, elegance, courage and tenacity. In Florence, at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the many colleagues, musicians and chorus members whose lives and careers he influenced over the course of decades feel his loss. His colleagues and public in Chicago also acknowledge the same appreciation, where his association and artistic leadership saw the newly born Lyric Opera grow into the international opera company it is today. Read the full story |
| Your Move or Mine? | | To submit a question to GG Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com Dear Law and Disorder: If I am booking an artist, whose job is it to draft the contract? Some venues ask me to send them my contract, but other venues seem to have their own. What's the normal practice? |
| Something to Prove at the NYPhil |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark Lionel Bringuier, an exuberant 26-year-old Frenchman with an apparent need to prove something, conducted the Philharmonic last Thursday (6/13) in an entertaining program of conservative 20th-century music at Avery Fisher Hall. The cartoonish side of Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice was appropriately raucous, but the achingly slow, rubato-laden treatment of the Assez lent intro would have been better suited to the Tristan Prelude. Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos the exemplary soloist, received a fine accompaniment. Kodály's Dances of Galánta seemed more stop and go than usual; the tempo changes are in the score, to be sure, but the older Hungarian conductors on record had more convincing ebb and flow in their blood. Stravinsky's 1919 Firebird Suite was a crowd pleaser, as always. Still, I wonder if the Philharmonic players liked their young conductor? The violins were accurate but coarse in tone throughout. Perhaps his just-ending, six-year tenure as resident conductor of the LAPhil in the velvety acoustic of Disney Hall didn't prepare him for Fisher Hall's uningratiating fortissimos. Moreover, the orchestra's virtuoso French horn player Philip Myers, reverting to his misbehaving pre-Masur days, was at least four times too loud in his f espr. solo on the second page of the Kodály, and parts of the Firebird sounded like a horn concerto. None of the musicians applauded until Bringuier asked the woodwinds to stand for final bows. 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 Calidore String Quartet, added, Opus 3 Artists
Edwards, Leah, soprano, added, Encompass Arts
Kluxen, Christian, conductor, added, Hazard Chase
Nelman, Rod, bass, removed, Encompass Arts
Vikre, Anna, soprano, removed, Encompass Arts
Wachner, Julian, conductor, added, Opus 3 Artists |
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