Steven Spielberg and John Williams were there to see Fox rename a site on its lot after a major film composer. The Lionel Newman Music Building honours the Oscar-winning composer of the Hello Dolly score, not to mention M*A*S*H and more. Read here.
Two British newspapers at the scummier end of the spectrum have been reporting the trial of a musician who is accused on one count of ‘sexual assault by touching’. The person in question is charged with making advances to a teenaged girl while simultaneously kissing her mother – not a nice thing to do, if true, but neither is it a matter of gross public outrage – unless someone in the trial is famous.
So both newspapers have assiduously described the accused as being a classical musician of international renown. He is not. In fact, he is barely known beyond his own district of London, and perhaps the odd cruise liner where he gets some work.
The newspapers know this. They distort the facts by inflating his reputation in order to justify publishing a story that is of no public interest beyond its salacious detail. And they give the trial report great prominence.
Please do not try to track down the story. It is not a story. It is just a pair of mid-market UK newspapers trying to whip up excitement among dying readers. For shame.
The trial continues.
Matthias Pintscher, music director at Ensemble Intercontemporain, has announced that he’s to be professor of composition in New York from September 2014. The catch? Student registrations close next week.
A date has been fixed next May for the former music director and his locked-out musicians. The programme at the Unniversity of Minnesota will replicate the orchestra’s very first concert on campus in 1929. Check it out here.
Ari Lesser has been filming an equality rap in his succah. Watch.
The first of our seasonal gifts has arrived.
Press release:
As she prepares to perform at next Sunday’s concert by the Atlanta Chamber Players, the group has announced that pianist and Artistic Managing Director Paula Peace will retire in early 2015 from the group she founded. Peace has led the highly regarded group for 38 seasons. During her tenure, it has performed in more than 250 cities in the U.S. Europe, and Mexico, and has premiered more than 125 chamber works.
“Through her vision and leadership, the ACP creates and presents chamber music to the very highest levels of acclaim,” Board President Jim Throckmorton said in a statement. “The board has been working with Paula for more than two years to prepare for this moment and we are sure that her legacy can be continued for at least another 38 years.” Peace will make her season debut in a trio with soprano Ann Marie McPhail and clarinetist Laura Ardan, performing Franz Schubert’s “Shepherd on the Rock” as well as with Elizabeth and Mike Tiscione on English horn and trumpet in
Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City.”
Psychotherapist Dr Gerald Stein witnessed the incident last week at the Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92nd Street Y. Why would someone do that? He wonders. And then he gives us free analysis.
Read on here.
We cheered when William Hassay, who has played in professional orchestras, went to court and won the right to busk on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ. We cheer again now that Bill has been awarded damages, plus $105,000 in attorney fees, for having his freedom of speech rights infringed.
More here.
On a day when Australia blew away England’s batting, a violinist has stepped up to claim the fastest-ever flight of the bumblebee. Never mind the intonation. Just be awed by the speed. This is Vov Dylan, 32, also known as Australia’s Andre Rieu.
Ahem. He’s still three seconds slower than the world record-holder, Ben Lee. Who is English.
The Southwest Florida Symphony has joined the growing trend towards transparency and public voting in the selection of its next music director. It has announced five candidates, all of whom will spend a week this season with the Fort Myers community.
First up is Chelsea Tipton, 49, from Oklahoma: ‘My favorite composer would probably be Brahms and Gershwin.’ Read here.
The other candidates are:
Guillermo Figueroa (Jan. 11) Figueroa is music director of the Music in the Mountains Festival in Colorado and artistic director of the Figueroa Music and Arts Project in Albuquerque. He’s former music director of the New Mexico Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony.
• David Commanday (Feb. 8) Commanday is artistic director of the Heartland Festival Orchestra in Illinois. He’s held music director positions with the Boston, Joffrey and Richmond ballet companies, as well as with the Peoria Symphony and the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra.
• Andreas Delfs (March 1) Delfs is a well-known concert and opera conductor who has served as music director of Opera Bern, Staatstheater Hanover, the Milwaukee Symphony and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
• Nir Kabaretti (March 29) Kabaretti is an acclaimed conductor who is music and artistic director of the Santa Barbara Symphony in California.
We have been informed by his executor that Conrad Susa, composer of two successful operas, died yesterday at the age of 78.
Transformations, his setting of poems by Anne Sexton, is one of the most widely seen US opera in modern times. Among many revivals it was staged at the Wexford Festival in 2006.
The Dangerous Liaisons was produced by San Francisco Opera in 1994 with Thomas Hampson, Frederica von Stade andRenée Fleming in the cast. It has since been revived at Washington Opera.
Conrad was chair of the composition department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
We send sympathies to his loved ones.
