September 6, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | "If music be the food of love, play on." --William Shakespeare |
| Quote of the Week | | "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." --Twyla Tharp |
| | Minnesota Musicians Reject Latest Offer. Again. |  The latest news from the Minnesota Orchestra, announced Sept. 5 by the musicians at a press conference, has a sadly familiar ring. They have unanimously rejected the latest contract proposal management laid out on Aug. 29. They instead want the orchestra to accept the independent negotiator's proposal to "play and talk" for four months at their previous salary levels. "We do not believe that a 25 percent cut in pay keeps the Minnesota Orchestra as a world-class, major-league destination orchestra," said clarinetist Tim Zavadil, referring to management's latest offer to play and talk for two months and, absent a settlement, reduce average pay from $135,000 per annum to $102,000. "The musicians believe the best way forward is to listen to the only truly independent voice," Zavadil said. Trouble is, the "independent voice" is not an offer; it is simply a means of getting the musicians to negotiate. Music Director Osmo Vänskä has said he will resign if the orchestra is not back at work by Sept. 30. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Russian Conductor Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot | Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko has gotten off to a rocky start in his first concerts as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic. NewsinEnglish.no reports he "won rave reviews" for last week's opening concerts, but not for his comments about women on the podium, made to the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten. Orchestras, he said "react better" when there's a man on the podium. "When women get a family, it becomes difficult to be as dedicated as the branch demands." What about when men "get a family," such as the one he has? Not an issue, apparently. Petrenko was just getting started: Men, he continued, "often have less sexual energy and can focus more on the music. A sweet girl on the podium can make one's thoughts drift towards something else." Good grief. |
| | | | Christine Brewer Fires IMG Artists |  Christine Brewer has fired her management, IMG Artists, which, she says, double-booked her for an engagement next spring. She is scheduled to sing the Abbess in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Sound of Music, and so had to pull out from a scheduled date with the St. Louis Symphony. "My agent multi-booked me," she tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "It makes me look like a big jerk." Her agent was Alison Pybus, the recent VP of the IMG Artists vocal division; in April Alec Treuhaft quit as the longtime head of that division--making major news in the industry.
Askonas Holt recently announced Brewer's worldwide representation, after 20 years of handling her European bookings. |
Musical America Launches NEW Job Board |  JOB SEEKERS: From instrumentalists to executive directors and administrators, search over 4,000 jobs on MusicalAmerica.com.
Post resumes, create alerts, get hired! EMPLOYERS: Post your jobs for reasonable rates. Special discount packages available. Post a job, find the perfect hire! Visit Job Board |
Mortier Diagnosed with Cancer | | 
Gerard Mortier, 69, intendant of Teatro Real, has revealed that he has cancer and will be undergoing treatment in a German clinic over the next three months. The news was reported by the newspaper El Pais; Mortier was diagnosed in May and has already undergone surgery. His contract at Teatro Real is through 2016, but he has named potential successors--hopefully not to take over before his contract expires. Spain's ministry of culture has other plans and is aiming to insert one of three Spaniards; Mortier does not approve of any of them. True to his style, Mortier has threatened to quit if one of his candidates is not chosen and/or if he is not consulted before a new intendant is announced. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| Stolen Steinway Comes Home |  A 27-year-old male model has been charged with stealing a Steinway grand, estimated by local media to be worth $27,000, from Toronto General Hospital--the cardiac wing, to be precise. Artem Stanislav Timofeyev was arrested on Aug. 29. The heist took place on July 14; the instrument was discovered by police ten days later in a music store. The thief and his two moving men rolled the instrument out of the hospital in broad daylight, telling security that it was being taken in for repairs. The two movers have been cleared of wrongdoing, having had no idea that the job was illegal. The piano, now safely back at Toronto General, was donated in 2006 and is used for weekly performances by visiting artists. Pictured back home: piano restorer Radoslav Draskovic, piano technician and rebuilder Marc Decorte, and Steinway Toronto's Alex Thomson. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| New Artist of the Month: Sarah Silver |  At the opening concert of Tanglewood's annual Festival of Contemporary Music, first violinist Sarah Silver introduced Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 1 from a stage microphone. "The worst part of performing this piece," she lamented, "is that we've rehearsed it so much, and fallen in love with it, and now there won't be any rehearsal tomorrow."
The luminous, heartfelt performance by these Tanglewood Music Center fellows was perfectly honed--the musicians, here to study for the summer, played as if they would indeed never hear it again. Silver, 27, is a member of the New Fromm Players, an ensemble of advanced alumni of the Tanglewood Music Center, whose fellows are coached mostly by Boston Symphony Orchestra players on the spacious estate in Western Massachusetts that is the orchestra's summer home. While the BSO performs relatively conservative repertory in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, the New Fromm Players perform the heavy lifting--new or difficult 20th- and 21st-century repertory at the five-day festival within the two-month Tanglewood season. |
| | | ADVERTISEMENT  David Chesky's Opera, The Mice War, introducing children to the wonderful world of classical music!
David Chesky's opera for children, The Mice War, will receive its European Premiere at the Krakow opera house on Sept 12th with Yaniv Segal conducting. This fascinating and fun tale about why cheese is yellow teaches children about cultural diversity and peaceful conflict resolution while exposing them to classical music.
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100 Years Ago...in Musical America: 6 September 1913 | |  HAMMERSTEIN MAY USE THE MANHATTAN Possibility of Opening Opera Season There--Chicago Company Also Wanted It See the Original Page and Read the Full Story |
| We've Been Hacked! | | To submit a question to GG Arts Law write to  Dear Law & Disorder: Performing Arts Division, We are a small presenting organization, and we use an outside company to handle our ticket sales. The company provides us with cloud-based software, which we use to process both online and box office ticket sales. We were recently informed by the software company that they'd been hacked! The company told us that all of our patrons' relevant information may have been compromised, including their credit card information. A lawyer on our board said that we are responsible for notifying all of our patrons of the security breach. Is this true? There are over 8,000 patrons in the system, going back quite a few years! We don't have the personnel to devote to this type of project. One of the reasons we out-sourced our ticketing was to avoid handling and storing this type of sensitive information. If we don't handle the credit card information, why are we responsible if that information is stolen? Read the full story |
| Popularizing the Classics |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark In a thought-provoking article in the August 25th issue of The New Republic, Philip Kennicott addresses the crisis of American orchestras. "How an effort to popularize classical music undermines what makes orchestras great," reads the deck. What exactly does "popularize" mean, and what will it undermine? Is it "popularization" for the New York Philharmonic to play two pre-subscription season film-music programs in tandem with the films--the first being excerpts from five Hitchcock films (8/17 & 18) and the second a complete showing of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey with Alan Gilbert conducting the classical foreground score (8/20 & 21)? Or is popularization driving Carnegie Hall's opening-night mix (10/2) with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Seguin: classical bon-bons by Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel, with Josh Bell as soloist, followed by Esperanza Spalding in new arrangements for double bass from her latest CD? Or would orchestral arrangements of pop music be attempts at popularization? Well, of course they are, and what of it? Did members of the Philharmonic sully their artistry when they moonlighted in Bernstein's Deutsche Grammophon recording of West Side Story? No comment necessary. |
| 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 Cornell, Kara, mezzo-soprano, added, MIA Artists Management
Darlington, Jonathan, conductor, added, Bel Canto Global Arts
Galati, Gina, soprano, added, MIA Artists Management
Hamula, Julie Anne, soprano, added, MIA Artists Management
O'Connell, Margaret, mezzo-soprano, added, MIA Artists Management
Vasquez, Patricia, mezzo-soprano, added, MIA Artists Management |
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