October 4, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." --James Dean |
| Quote of the Week | | "A great artist is always before his time or behind it." --George Edward Moore |
| | | Stagehands and Carnegie Hall Reach Agreement | | 
Carnegie Hall and its stagehands have come to a meeting of the minds on a contract, the Hall has announced. Members of the union, IATSE/Local One, cratered the venerable venue's opening night Oct. 2 by going on strike. Their gripe was that there were no plans for the union to have a role in the hall's new education wing, set to open in fall 2014. The new agreement calls for the union to have "limited jurisdiction" in the new space, according to the Hall's statement. Other terms were not disclosed, but at least five of the hall's stagehands earn in excess of $300,000 each, and one earns close to half a million. "Carnegie Hall is very pleased to reach this new agreement with IATSE/Local One, one that meets all of our institution's education needs as we work toward fulfilling the potential of our new spaces in Carnegie Hall's Education Wing," said Carnegie Hall Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson in a statement. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Vänskä to Conduct Minnesota Musicians This Weekend | |  Osmo Vänskä is not leaving the Minnesota Orchestra without saying goodbye. Yesterday, the musicians announced that their now former music director would conduct the concerts they organized for this weekend at the Ted Mann Concert Hall at the University of Minnesota. Emanuel Ax will be the soloist, just as he was supposed to have been in the season's official opening in the newly refurbished hall this weekend.
The orchestra has been locked out for one year. Vänskä resigned because of it, on Monday. In their statement, the players defined the concerts as "Vänskä's farewell to the community and audience that have supported classical music so passionately." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
"U.S. Orchestras Are Greedy and Overpaid" | | 
An observer across the pond is aghast at the salaries earned by musicians employed full time in U.S. orchestras. Using the passing of the Minnesota Orchestra deadline, and the consequent loss of Osmo Vänskä as music director (not to mention a full year of concerts) as his jumping off points, Ivan Hewett writes in the Telegraph, "The accusations [between the two sides] continue to fly back and forth, but none of the commentary in the U.S. points to a single overwhelming fact that to an outsider appears blinding obvious: the top tier of American orchestras overpays its players. These gilded bands exist in some strange never-never land, where questions of pay are discussed in complete isolation from the wider world." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| | |  |
| City Opera's Slow and Painful Demise | |  The New York City Opera has announced that it will fold; on Oct. 1, it began bankruptcy proceedings. The 70-year-old onetime font of new American talent, the company where the likes of Samuel Ramey, Plácido Domingo, and Beverly Sills [pictured] launched their careers, has been in a major freefall in the last decade. The first signs of it surfaced in 2004, when Susan Baker, the new chairman of the board, began what was clearly a very "hands-on" regime in an attempt to reduce its $3.5 million deficit. That move kicked off a series of actions and reactions that, in retrospect, only led the New York City Opera farther and farther down the hole. Baker, a onetime investment banker at Goldman Sachs, raided the endowment to pay off the company's debts. When she arrived it stood at $57 million. By the time she hired George Steel as general manager, in 2009, the endowment had been reduced to $16 million and the $3.5 million debt had grown to $15 million. |
| | | Met Soprano Withdraws, Pregnant with Alagna's Babe | | 
The Metropolitan Opera announced yesterday that soprano Aleksandra Kurzak had withdrawn from the entire run of Rigoletto and would be replaced by two sopranos making their Met debuts: Russian soprano Irina Lungu for the first three performances in November and Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva for the last five, into December. Kurzak has withdrawn because she is pregnant with her and Roberto Alagna's child. According to the Associated Press, Alagna married soprano Angela Gheorghiu in 1996 on stage at the Metropolitan Opera with then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani presiding. They divorced in 2009. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| New Artist of the Month: Chad Hoopes | 
CLEVELAND -- Chad Hoopes was 13 when he won first prize in the Young Artists Division of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in 2007. He made his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra the same year playing Lalo's Symphonie espagnole, and he's since performed with orchestras around the world. Until fairly recently, the phrase "child prodigy" described him perfectly. Now, at age 19, Hoopes is moving into a new phase. "You have to transition into an artist," he said recently over tea at a coffee shop in Cleveland's Shaker Square. "I'm in the same category as the other big artists out there. I'm not a child anymore....That transition is difficult. You have a lot to prove." He already has. With a charismatic blend of poetic refinement and commanding virtuosity, he's seized the ears of musicians, critics, and audiences. He'll take a big step in November, when he makes his first recording, a pairing of the Mendelssohn and John Adams violin concertos, with the Leipzig Radio Orchestra and conductor Kristian Järvi for the French label Naïve Records. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
100 Years Ago...in Musical America: 11 October 1913 | | 
MAGGIE TEYTE CORRECTS SOME FALSE IDEAS ABOUT DEBUSSY French Composer "Most Misunderstood Man in Artistic World," Declares Interpreter of His Works--Not a "Poseur, Dilettante and Iconoclast"--Music of His Songs So Expressive that Words Are Scarcely Needed--He Realizes Possibilities of His Present Style Are Exhausted |
| Does The Government Shut Down Also Shut Our Doors? | | 
From Law and Disorder by Brian Taylor Goldstein Dear Law and Disorder: I have several visa petitions pending as well as applications for Central Withholding Agreements. What impact will the government shutdown have? Do I need to be worried? |
| Where Has Civilized Behavior Gone? |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark "Hope you are having a good week," ended an unwitting e-mail this morning. To begin with, my last week of deadline for the Directory is never good. Carnegie Hall and its stagehands have come to a meeting of the minds on a contract, the Hall has announced. Members of the union, IATSE/Local, cratered the venerable venue's opening night Oct. 2 by going on strike. Their gripe was that there were no plans for the union to have a role in the hall's new education wing, set to open in fall 2014. The new agreement calls for the union to have "limited jurisdiction" in the new space, according to the Hall's statement. Other terms were not disclosed, but at least five of the hall's stagehands earn in excess of $300,000 each, and one earns close to half a million. "Carnegie Hall is very pleased to reach this new agreement with IATSE/Local One, one that meets all of our institution's education needs as we work toward fulfilling the potential of our new spaces in Carnegie Hall's Education Wing," said Carnegie Hall Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson in a statement. [Will wonders ever cease? Carnegie Hall and the stagehands union settling so quickly after dithering for over a year? "Civility" and "IATSE/Local 1" appearing in the same sentence? Perhaps someone at the union realized that news reports in Musical America and on the front page of the New York Times stating that "at least five of the hall's stagehands earn in excess of $300,000 each, and one earns close to half a million" didn't sound good.] 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 Heine, Gavriel, conductor, added, Alpha Artists Management
Nasseri, Soheil, piano, added, Parker Artists
Quigley, Patrick Dupré, conductor, added, Kaylor Management |
| | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment