Dame Josephine Barstow leads a stellar line-up to celebrate the life and roles of Richard Angas, the effervescent bass who died last August.
Cast and booking details here.
Dirty, wet, concrete desolation.
I’m going there tonight. That C P E Bach had better be good.
Tom Strini was at the Wisconsin Lutheran College Recital where Frank Almond played the Lipinski Stradivarius – just before he was tasered by criminals, knocked to the ground and robbed of the object dearest to him in life. Read Tom’s report here.
We have heard from Frank who is physically fine and lying low, avoiding media and doing his best to help the police recover his precious Stradivarius.
A fascinating study from artsHub on the true state of the UK arts industry.
More than 3 in 4 employees are young women. Most have 5 jobs in 10 years. More than half work in London and their job satisfaction is sky-high.
Oh, just read the whole thing and give us your take on it. Far more interesting than anything you’ll hear at orchestra conventions.
Chrissie, Anna, Laura, …. everyone. We want to hear why you are happy with so little.
Oh, and let’s hear, too, from the 0.2% who earn over £200,000 a year.
The Berlin Philharmonic has let it be known that Gustavo Dudamel will take over its open-air Waldbühne concert on June 27 and an Italian tour it has planned that week, when Sir Simon Rattle and Magdalena Kozena are expecting the birth of their third child.
Bruce Broughton, a former governor of the Motion Picture Academy and head of its music branch, had one of the five best original song nominations in this year’s Oscars.
That’s nice, except it was in a movie hardly anyone paid to see. Bruce has been accused of getting his industry pals to boost his vote. The song, Alone Yet Not Alone, has now been struck off. ‘Using one’s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one’s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage,’ said Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Academy President. Statement below.
BEVERLY HILLS, CA — On Tuesday night, the Academy’s Board of Governors voted to rescind the Original Song nomination for “Alone Yet Not Alone,” music by Bruce Broughton and lyric by Dennis Spiegel. The decision was prompted by the discovery that Broughton, a former Governor and current Music Branch executive committee member, had emailed members of the branch to make them aware of his submission during the nominations voting period.
“No matter how well-intentioned the communication, using one’s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one’s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage,” said Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Academy President.
The Board determined that Broughton’s actions were inconsistent with the Academy’s promotional regulations, which provide, among other terms, that “it is the Academy’s goal to ensure that the Awards competition is conducted in a fair and ethical manner. If any campaign activity is determined by the Board of Governors to work in opposition to that goal, whether or not anticipated by these regulations, the Board of Governors may take any corrective actions or assess any penalties that in its discretion it deems necessary to protect the reputation and integrity of the awards process.”
An additional nominee in the Original Song category will not be named. The remaining nominees in the category are:
“Happy” from Despicable Me 2
Music and Lyric by Pharrell Williams
“Let It Go” from Frozen
Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
“The Moon Song” from Her
Music by Karen O; Lyric by Karen O and Spike Jonze
“Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Sony Music have announced the sad, early death from lung cancer of Steve Ferrera, senior VP of A&R at Columbia Records. A granduate of NEC and Juilliard, Steve looked after the likes of Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Heather Headley, Ne-Yo, Rod Stewart and Bon Jovi. But when it came to merging the RCA’s classical Red Label into the Sony machine, he was notably sensitive to the anxieties and needs of artists and classical personnel and is warmly remembered by them.
The Pittsburgh Emcee Jasiri X has released a video, ‘Checkpoint’, which makes Israelis out to be Nazis. We share it as a sophisticated example of the political propaganda that is going out these days under the guise of mainstream music. The lyrics are printed below.
Any station that plays this stuff should have its license reviewed.
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that’s machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you’ll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It’s Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that’s surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I’d rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn’t blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don’t give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I’m just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don’t look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It’s Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint.
Aron Zelkowicz warns us of an outbreak of one-eyed portraits in the cello world. Lots more here. Other instruments are getting infected. What is going on?
Aleksandra Kurzak and Roberto Alagna became parents today of a baby girl, Malena.
Congratulations!
Today’s annual statement of the German orchestral association (DOV) shows a continued pattern of gentle decline.
The number of orchs is 131, down from 168 in 1992.
The number of jobs is down 20 percent from 12,159 in 1992 to the present 9,825.
However, chamge can also mean progress. Some 30 percent of orch seats are now occupied by women. Even more encouraging, of young orchestral musicians aged 25 to 30 the proportion of women is now just over 50 percent.
The future is bright. The future is female.
(Don’t tell them in Vienna.)
Aleksandra Kurzak and Roberto Alagna have become parents of a baby girl, Malena.
Pics to follow (we hope).
