The fund set up by London’s Mayor for disadvantaged children with musical ambitions is disbursing its first £400,000 ($650,000) in scholarships to 100 kids aged between 7 and 11.
There’s a big fundraiser on Wednesday with pianist Stephen Hough, clarinetist Julian Bliss and guitarist Miloš Karadagli?, and beatboxer Shlomo is offering to share his special skills with talented youngsters in need of tempo adjustment. I might send him a couple of conductors.
Sent on behalf of the Mayor’s Fund for Young Musicians
PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGOED UNTIL MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2011
100 MUSIC SCHOLARSHIPS FOR LONDON CHILDREN, AS £400,000 ANNOUNCED TO SUPPORT TALENTED YOUNG MUSICIANS
The Mayor’s Fund for Young Musicians (MFYM) has announced awards worth £400,000 to support thousands of talented young musicians from across London.
From January 100 children will receive funding in the first round of the Mayor’s Music Scholarships programme. The scholarships have been awarded to children aged 7-11 who show outstanding potential and commitment to learning an instrument but whose families struggle to pay for lessons. They will benefit from weekly tuition, membership of ensembles, performance opportunities and a dedicated mentor. Scholars will also take part in special events with MFYM patrons, including trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom and beat-boxer Shlomo.
In addition, MFYM is awarding £100,000 to fund six Music Partnerships. Thousands of 7-18 year-olds will get inspirational opportunities to learn and perform with London’s top professional musicians. The six partnerships will bring together 19 borough music services, six professional music groups including London’s world-class orchestras, and music college students.
Launched earlier this year, MFYM has been working with London’s 32 borough music services, plus their local schools and partners, to identify these talented children. From January there will be approximately three scholars in every borough. This figure will increase year on year.
“Thanks to the enormous generosity of individuals and businesses around London, every single Mayor’s music scholar will receive up to four-years of intensive musical learning. These are the most talented students who would have to stop learning without our support. By 2016 we hope to be funding up to 1,000 young scholars,” said MFYM Chief Executive Ginny Greenwood.
Every music scholar will receive approximately four hours of music tuition a week in addition to that provided within the curriculum. They will have access to instruments, small group tuition during the school day and after school, attendance at Saturday morning music centres and the opportunity to perform in as well as attend concerts.
“We are very grateful to the individuals and companies that are already sponsoring a scholar. Their money will transform the life chances of these young people. However we still need more if we are to make a lasting difference to London’s social and cultural life. In return for an annual commitment of £1,000, we provide each benefactor with their scholar’s name, age and instrument, a group photograph, regular reports and an invitation to special concerts, so that they are truly involved in the child’s musical development. I like to think of them as Musical Godparent,” said Ms Greenwood.
MYFM is seeking to raise up to £1million and this Wednesday (14 December) is hosting a special fundraising gala concert at Kings Place, with pianist Stephen Hough, clarinetist Julian Bliss and guitarist Miloš Karadagli?. Other fundraising events are planned for 2012.
The Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who is MFYM’s Founder Patron, could not be more delighted: “Huge congratulations to The Mayor’s Fund for Young Musicians for a brilliant start to their programme. We know that learning a musical instrument can have a powerful impact on a child’s life, helping in their social, emotional and academic development. Sadly, too many families in London cannot afford to pay for music lessons, even for very talented children. By investing in these scholarships and partnerships programmes, the fund will be enriching the lives of thousands of children and also make sure London remains the top city in the world for all kinds of music. I wish these talented young people every success”.
Case study:
Emmanuel from Tottenham is 11 years old. He has been playing the violin for 2 years and according to his teacher Vicky Miller is “the most talented musician I have come across in many years. He always practises after his lessons and will try extra repertoire in his book without prompting”. West Green Primary head teacher Vivette Sewell was thrilled to receive a call from Ginny Greenwood giving her the good news. ‘Wow! Amazing!’ she said. “For financial reasons, Emmanuel has not been able to continue this term. He says he misses the violin desperately and wants to play again, this is just fantastic.”
NOTES TO EDITOR:
The Mayor’s Fund for Young Musicians is hosting a special fundraising gala concert at Kings Place this Wednesday 14 December, with pianist Stephen Hough, clarinetist Julian Bliss and guitarist Miloš Karadagli?. Tickets cost £55 for the concert only and £95 for the concert followed by a reception with wine and bowl food. Tickets are on sale at www.kingsplace.co.uk or via the Kings Place box office – 020 7520 1490.
The official awards celebration will be held at City Hall on Friday 27 January.
Scholarship analysis:
Number of boys 49. Number of girls 51
10-11 year olds 55%, 8-9 year olds 40%, 7 year olds 5%
Strings 50%, Brass 25%, Woodwind 20%, Percussion 5%
SCHOLARSHIPS: see attached
PARTNERSHIPS – boroughs and partners:
Harrow, Barnet, Ealing, Enfield, Bollywood Big Brass Band
Hounslow, Kingston, Philharmonia Orchestra, Rose Theatre
Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich, London Philharmonic Orchestra
Redbridge, Waltham Forest, London Symphony Orchestra
Wandsworth, Merton, Camden, Islington, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Royal College of Music, London Sinfonietta
Patrons: Alison Balsom, Sir Mark Elder, Sir Vernon Ellis, Raymond Gubbay CBE , Jools Holland OBE, Stephen Hough COMMA Steven Isserlis CBE, Julian Joseph, Soweto Kinch, Lord Lloyd-Webber, Rachel Portman OBE, Shlomo, Sir John Tusa
The querulous defendants of Richard Wagner have gone to law once more.
A great-granddaughter, Iris Wagner, is suing the Bayreuth Wagner Foundation and the City of Leipzig for her share of Gramps’s piano, a Bechstein given to the old boy by mad King Ludwig back in 1864.
Who’d sue over such a thing, nearly 150 years later? Only a Wagner.
After years of placing obstacles in the path of incoming entertainers, the State Department is offering a sprig of mistletoe to the world’s musicians.
Partnering with New York’s Bang on a Can group, the Dept has launched a OneBeat, one-month exchange programme for young musicians, slipped under the wire in the guise of ‘smart diplomacy’. It’s a small gesture, no more than that, but it might be the harbinger of a change in attitude. At least there is an awareness on Hillary Clinton’s part that the US needs to repair its relations with the world’s musicians. Release follows.
photo: bangonacan.org
For Immediate Release December 9, 2011
2011/2100
MEDIA NOTE
Bringing the World’s Music to Main Street America,
U.S. Department of State Announces “OneBeat”
Bringing musicians from around the world to communities across America, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced OneBeat today, an initiative that will bring up to 50 international musicians between the ages of 19-35 to the United States for a month-long exchange. OneBeat musicians will connect with Americans musicians and audiences, especially underserved youth, through people-to-people diplomacy and social engagement projects. It is slated to kick-off in the United States in September of 2012.
OneBeat builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power” diplomacy. It embraces the use of a full range of diplomatic tools, including music, to bring people, especially youth, together for greater understanding.
Partnering with Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, the OneBeat musicians will perform in collaborative ensembles that improvise across genres, reinvent traditional tunes, compose original work, record in the state-of-the-art OneBeat mobile studio, and prepare for performances and educational workshops. The groups will then tour in the United States. During the tour, they will perform the music they developed during the exchange, work with local musicians, and conduct social outreach workshops with local youth.
Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation is an eclectic group of artists who have a strong sense of social engagement. Working with people across the globe, from schools to prisons, from young to old, and partnering with local youth, social organizations, music festivals, and artists across all disciplines, Found Sound Nation creates a space that transcends geographic, linguistic, and political borders. The work of Found Sound Nation uses the expressive power of music and audio production to give voice to underserved communities, unlock the creative potential of youth, and build bridges between communities separated by cultures, economic disparities, and geography.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs promotes mutual understanding between the United States and other countries through a wide range of academic, cultural, private sector, professional, and sports exchange programs. The Bureau’s s cultural exchanges support U.S. foreign policy, foster America’s artistic excellence, and demonstrate America’s respect and appreciation for other cultures and traditions. For more information, visit www.exchanges.state.gov.
Media contact: Talley Sergent, U.S. Department of State, SergentRT@state.gov.
# # #
The New Russian Quartet gave their support to yesterday’s huge demonstrations in Moscow. The offered to pay from the main stage, but the sound would have been too thin. Instead, they played on the open balcony of a house nearby.
You can see and hear the demonstrations marching by as they play a movement from a Borodin Quartet. Watch the video here.
The NRQ are the resident quartet at the Moscow Conservatory.
It’s always dangerous for a foreigner to attempt to make sense of Hungarian politics, but the events that follow are widely corroborated. It appears the the Mayor of Budapest, under attack from professionals for appointing an extreme right-wing actor Gyorgy Dorner as director of the New Theatre, has bolstered his position with a notorious anti-semitic writer, István Csurka, as artistic director.
A former member of Parliament, Csurka has described the 9/11 attacks as a response to ‘the genocide in Palestine’ and has employed a range of euphemisms to attack Jews and ‘non-Hungarians’ as being responsible for all the country’s economic woes.
The conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi., grandson of a famous Hungarian composer, cancelled two concerts in Budapest, saying he refused to perform “in a city whose mayor entrusted the direction of a theater to two known, extreme right-wing anti-Semites.”
There have also been mass demonstrations, but the Mayor, Istvan Tarlos, is standing by his rabid pair, who will assume office in February. It might be a good year to stay away from Budapest.
Here’s analysis (in German) from Vienna.
UPDATE: And here’s a fuller account in English of the present state of Hungarian racism. These people claim to be the New Europe. The Old Europe has yet to do anything about them.
At the Alte Oper, Frankfurt.
The retired pianist, 80, is giving a lecture on ‘Character in Music’. 
He previews it here in the FAZ.
Maybe when I retire, I’ll start giving piano recitals.
Dear Richard Branson
As a man who is quick with legal writs to protect his reputation, you’ll be interested in my reason for charging you with robbery.
On Friday, I boarded a Virgin Train from Liverpool to London. I had booked my ticket well in advance and carried both a seat reservation and an online proof of purchase. Unfortunately, I could not find the actual ticket for the journey.
Despite having paid for it once already and showed email proof of purchase, I was charged full fare for the journey. You know full well that I could not possibly have reserved a seat without having bought the ticket. Any airline (except perhaps Virgin) would have let me fly on the papers I presented. But you have trained your staff to extort money with menaces.
This, Branson, is highway robbery. Making someone pay twice for the same product or service when proof of ownership is presented may not be illegal under UK jurisdiction but it is unethical by any code you might pretend to follow from the Holy Bible to Harvard Business School.
Robbing people is wrong, Branson. Didn’t they teach you that at school? From the reactions of other passengers, I gather you do it all the time on Virgin Trains. Your ticket inspectors take great satisfaction in extracting double payment.
How a man who robs innocent travellers is allowed to own a bank is a matter only this Conservative Government can explain.
You’re a robber, Branson. Admit it. Then go bury your head in lawyers.
Yours faithfully
Norman Lebrecht
Liverpool reached the end of its Mahler cycle on Thursday night with a ninth symphony so taut and thoughtful that its dying fadeout felt more like a climax than a slipping away.
Vasily Petrenko has magnetised the city and its orchestra more than any conductor since Libor Pesek in the 1980s and the turnout, in a filthy Atlantic gale, filled the house and more. My own seat turned out to be double-booked. This was a night to remember.
The opening movement was oddly hesitant, the heartbeat uncertain. The ensuing Ländler took a few moments to find bucolic warmth. But the concentration throughout the house was absolute; I have seldom heard fewer coughs in a December audience, none at all once the drama took hold. Orchestra and audience were at one in wanting to find out how the story would end.
The Rondo Burleske was an object lesson in controlled fury, the helplessness of humanity against its ultimate fate, and the finale amplified the tension with a pregnant question – resistance, or resignation? There were ten full seconds of silence before the conductor dropped his hands and the applause raised the roof.
The Phil in Liverpool just get better and better. James Clark’s concertmaster solos in the finale were sweet with strong yearnings; Jonathan Aasgard drove the cellos with intense determination. It would be unfair to name any of the woodwind or brass; all were top class (oh, all right then: Katherine Lacy depped brilliantly on clarinet).
This orchestra is going places and Petrenko 
(photo (c) Mark McNulty) is going nowhere: he’ s signed up for another three years, at least. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, if they’re as keen as reported, will have a long while to wait.
Nor is Vasily finished with Mahler. A chat over a pint from the Liverpool Organic Brewery, 
the concert sponsors, touched on plans for more next season and beyond. Can’t wait.
I have been reading about a composer in Stuttgart, Florian Käppler, who, to commemorate the deportation and murder of 959 Jews one day 70 years ago, has created a sound installation with the notes arranged according to the intials of the victims names. He calls it The Symphony of Names.
My novel is called The Song of Names 
It centres on a similar act of musical commemoration, though in a subtler, more adhesive form.
Coincidence? I guess so. There’s no ownership of an idea and I’m quite curious to hear Mr Käppler’s installation.
1 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/just-in-orchestra-sacks-conductor-who-is-arrested-wearing-only-a-towel.html
2 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/tragic-death-of-rising-cellist-28.html
3 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/just-in-simone-young-calls-time-on-hamburg.html
4 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/classical-covers-to-cry-for-2.html
5 http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/a-parents-concerns-more-questions-for-troubled-music-school.html
It’s another big splash by the little oil state.
The composer Vangelis has created an extravaganza for the opening of a Greek-style amphitheatre in Katara Cultural Village in the presence of the Royal Family and several heads of state.
The Qatar Philharmonic, the Yurlov State Academic Chorus, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna are on the bill, Jeremy Irons is presenting, Yvan Cassar conducting and Hugh Hudson of Chariots of Fire is filming the event. It probably costs more than the Greek national debt.
Here’s a sneaky first peek from
the general rehearsal:
In typical stuttering style, Levine and the Met have broken the next pase of cancellatioons – not just the rest of this season, as originally reported to the media, but much of the next as well. Gelb has talked of managing ‘a very delicate situation‘. It’s not that delicate, and he’s not managing it well.
See also here.
