November 22, 2013   |
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| Thought of the Day |
"Fortune and love favor the brave."
--Ovid
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Quote of the Week
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"I don't believe in art. I believe in artists."
--Marcel Duchamp
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Juilliard Songfest Celebrates Benjamin Britten
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 The next generation of singers takes the Alice Tully Hall stage on Tuesday, December 3 at 8 PM to celebrate Britten's centenary in a program curated and performed by pianist Brian Zeger, Artistic Director of Juilliard Vocal Arts.
Works include Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, and other favorite Britten songs.
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Google Music Searches Lead Mostly to Illegal Sites
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The British Recorded Music Industry, or BPI, has sent its 50 millionth "take-down notice" to Google, demanding the search site remove links to content that infringes on copyrighted material--specifically, recordings. BPI sent its first notice in June of 2011; thus far, Google has ignored every one.
BPI reports that it recently searched the titles of the Top 20 singles and Top 20 album (U.K.) charts on Google and found that "on average 77 per cent of first-page search results for singles and 64 per cent of first-page search results for albums pointed to illegal sites."
"Google leads consumers into a murky underworld of unlicensed sites, where they may break the law or download malware or inappropriate content," said BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor. "Google knows full well...which sites are illegal. Yet it turns a blind eye."
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Is Opera di Roma in Denial?
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BOLOGNA -- Despite repeated optimistic statements from its superintendent, Catello De Martino, Opera di Roma is on the verge of bankruptcy. The figure for 2012 accumulated debt has not been disclosed, but at the close of 2011, it had reached about 29 million euros. The Board of Auditors has continuously warned, to no avail, the governing bodies of the Fondazione, as well as Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino, and, most recently, National Minister for Culture Massimo Bray, of the "pathological crisis" at the theater. In 2013 alone, suppliers' invoices for around nine million euros went unpaid and Social Security contributions for 5.5 million euros were skipped. Coffers are now empty and the salaries for November and December are at risk.
In early December, when the current Board of Directors' terms expire, receivership is all but assured.
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Bloomberg 'Muse' Section Dropped
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Financial news source Bloomberg has succumbed to the malaise of most mainstream news outlets, cutting back drastically on its arts coverage, largely grouped under the eight-year-old "Muse" section, which has been dropped accordingly. Theater critic Jeremy Gerard is among the casualties; founding "Muse" Editor Manuela Hoelterhoff, onetime Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for the Wall Street Journal, will remain with the company.
To the degree that there is arts coverage, it will emphasize luxury brands, according to an internal memo from Editor in Chief Matt Winkler [click below] issued Monday.
In other Bloomberg casualties, reporter Michael Forsythe was suspended for leaking information on a piece that was killed about China's wealthiest man, Wei Gu. There is speculation that the piece was killed because it would have damaged the expanding market for Bloomberg's hugely expensive financial-data terminals [pictured] in China.
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Michael Kaiser Will Exit KenCen Early
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Michael Kaiser will step down as president of the Kennedy Center on Aug. 31, 2014, rather than Dec. 31, 2014, as originally announced. And he will take one of his key programs at KenCen with him--The DeVos Institute of Arts Management--to the University of Maryland at College Park, where he will join the faculty.
"As the institute has grown, we wanted to do more, and this is a great way to expand," Kaiser tells The Baltimore Sun. "We can add more academic work to the program. And we have the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center [pictured] to use as a training ground."
Kaiser launched the program in 2001, when he started at Kennedy Center.
UM President Wallace Loh indicated that the school was interested in expanding its arts programs and that, with Kaiser on board, a degree in arts management was a future possibility.
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Mezzos Rule at the Tucker Gala
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NEW YORK -- Avery Fisher Hall was packed on Sunday evening for the annual Richard Tucker Gala, an event with special luster this year since it paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of its namesake's birth. All the singers on the program were American, and a celebrated bunch they were. Orchestral support was provided by members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra led by Riccardo Frizza.
Isabel Leonard, winner of the 2013 Richard Tucker Award, was among the four mezzo sopranos to perform, and confirmed her qualifications for the $50,000 prize (upped by $20,000 from 2012). Stephanie Blythe was in stentorian voice for the duet from Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila with bass-baritone Greer Grimsley. Susan Graham was delightfully mischievous in an aria from Offenbach's La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein. But the evening's star was Joyce DiDonato [pictured], who matched technical flair with strong declamation in Romeo's double aria "Se Romeo t'uccise un figlio" from Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
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| 100 Years Ago in Musical America: 22 November 1913 |
"GIOCONDA" RINGS UP THE CURTAIN AT METROPOLITAN
A Spirited Performance with Caruso in Good Form at Head of the Cast--Amato, Destinn and Toscanini at Their Best--Audience Plays Its Own Brilliant Part Brilliantly--Geraldine Farrar's Cold Gives Ponchielli a Distinction That Belonged to Massenet
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| A "Thank-You" Note Is Not The Same As A License |
From Law and Disorder by Brian Taylor Goldstein
Dear Law and Disorder:
I was wondering if I have my own blog and post a music video from iTunes in the blog, giving full credit to the musician, including the musician's original link, would this be legal? And can you please specify on what full credit means. Further, if I can't do this, how do you go about getting permission from the musician?? Thank you!
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| The Road Unexpectedly Taken |
 From Ask Edna by Edna Landau
It is no secret that a large number of today's most successful arts administrators in music at one point studied an instrument, voice, conducting or composition but moved on in a different direction that was inspired by their earlier experience. Not one of the many individuals I know made this choice out of feelings of inadequacy or, even worse, failure, yet it is still comparatively rare for music school or conservatory students to be exposed to their stories and the joy they experience in their current careers. I have chosen to spotlight two such individuals whose current occupations hearken back to defining moments in their younger lives.
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| Those Amazing Juilliard Students |
Fr om Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark
So it's time for my annual paean to the Juilliard Orchestra. I love to hear these young musicians--their passion, their commitment, their maturity, their technical polish. Last Friday (11/15) they played a varied program of 20th-century works by Adams, Barber, R. Strauss, and Ives. Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky, whose work I had encountered previously with Juilliard's excellent contemporary-music group Axiom, was mighty impressive--surprisingly so in Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils because I didn't expect such a sinuous performance from a contemporary-music specialist. So much for my preconceptions.
John Adams's Tromba lontana, a quiet, four-minute fanfare for two trumpets opened the concert. Samuel Barber's Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto (1962), commissioned for Lincoln Center's opening week, received a balanced mix of expressiveness and virtuosity by soloist Kevin Ahfat. Barber biographer Barbara B. Heyman writes, "The Piano Concerto marks the high point in Barber's career." Surely that isn't a qualitative judgment, which it could be of the frequently performed Violin Concerto (1939). Despite the praiseworthy Juilliard outing last week, it remains an oddly disjunct piece, with solo and orchestral passages alternating disconcertingly as if the composer had not had the time to integrate them. A major performance of the Piano Concerto hasn't turned up in a New York concert hall since May 1987 with John Browning, the work's faithful first soloist, Leonard Slatkin, and the St. Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall. A check with its publisher, G. Schirmer, finds scattered performances at music schools and second- and third-tier orchestras around the U.S. in the past 20 years.
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| 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
BODYTRAFFIC, dance, added, CAMI Spectrum
Paremski, Natasha, piano, added, Arts Management Group
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