Thomas Mansbacher is retiring from the Cleveland Orchestra cellos after 37 years. Lorin Maazel gave him the job and nothing that happened since has matched those early thrills.
Interview here.
A violinist sacked in cuts to the RTE orchestra has received twice her original payoff in a Labour Court ruling.
The musician, who was 22 months into a two year contract and had been assured of a further three years, received 13,500 Euros for upheaval and financial loss.
This is Santi Cazorla, a midfield maestro, beating the fans into eve-of-season disharmony.
There’s still silence all round on the mediation efforts at the Met, but one report has it that Peter Gelb previously spurned a 5-year pay freeze offer from the stagehands union, insisting on an immediate 14.5% wage cut.
Report here.
Dear Members,
Recording Artist Jackie Evancho is scheduled to perform in the following cities, with a locally-hired orchestra in each venue:
August 10, 2014 American Music Theatre (Lancaster, PA)
November 22, 2014 – Mayo Performing Arts Center (Morristown, NJ)
February 22, 2015 – Peace Concert Hall (Greenville, SC)
March 26, 2015 – Ruth Eckerd Hall (Clearwater, FL)
April 23, 2015 – Grove Theatre (Shippensburg, PA)
The Producers of this event have been resistant to file Local AFM agreements for these engagements, which is troubling in light of the Producer’s intentions to film one or more of these concerts for a planned public television project.
If you are called to perform services for this event please contact your Local union to ensure a proper Agreement is in place.
If you discover or are called for taping for a public television project featuring Jackie Evancho, please contact Pat Varriale at the New York office of the AFM, (917) 229-0234, or by E-mail pvarriale@afm.org. This applies even if you are asked to mime to pre-recorded tracks, as the AFM covers this employment as well.
Again, the producers of this program have not entered into the AFM National Public Television Agreement and, therefore, your services will not be properly covered.
Thank you for your assistance.
Patrick M. Varriale
Assistant Director
Electronic Media Services Division
American Federation of Musicians
Posted by Colorado violinist Sara Avery:
#BritishAirways breaks violins! We had hoped they would do the right thing, but after British Airways agents in Beirut forced my friend to check her violin (to Denver, routed through Paris) and crushed it in the baggage hold, they are being completely unresponsive, saying it was her fault, and refusing to reimburse her, after telling her to get an appraisal for replacement value. Many people carried on bigger bags. There is no excuse for this, British Airways! You have destroyed the means by which she makes her living!
UPDATE: A representative from #BritishAirways did call my friend yesterday to get the claims process rolling. (A representative at the Denver airport the night of her arrival did start that process, but the representatives she talked to the next couple of days made it sound like they wouldn’t do anything for her.) So, it’s moving in the right direction. I’ll keep updating this post as things develop. Thanks for all the shares! Even if they do the right thing, this airline must change its policy to let small instruments on board!
This is Alexandra Kalinowski, a former opera singer and classical pianist who now writes her own. And rides it.
We like this. You?
“Circles” by AK from alexandra kalinowski on Vimeo.
Fascinating article on Musicians on Call, an org that brings live music to bed-bound, critical and dying people in seven US cities. Read here.
pictured: Rolando Villazon as a medical clown
Newly retrieved film of Paul Hindemith conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in 1949 conveys some degree of tension between the composer, forced to emigrate in the late 1930s, and the somewhat threadbare resident players.
The commentary says he left Germany for America in 1934. This is untrue. Hindemith was not denounced by Goebbels until December 1934. He took a teaching post in Turkey in the hope he might yet return, moved to Switzerland in 1938 and finally fled to the US in 1940.
(Click on word ‘Post’ if video does not pop out)
Vasily, Vilde, the vest… Click here at 7pm London time.
Steve Donoghue, a reviewer we trust on Open Letters Monthly, considers it a tour de force. Read review here.
The Scottish composer John McLeod, 80 this year and widely feted, was thrilled to learn that his work, The Sun Dances, was to receive a London premiere at the BBC Proms.
photo (c) Wojtek Kutyla
The performance, by the BBC Scottish SO and Donald Runnicles, was all a composer could have wished for. The broadcast on BBC Radio 3 enabled the work to be heard in every home in the land and worldwide on the internet.
The cherry on the composer’s cake was a delayed broadcast of the concert on BBC4 television.
So imagine John’s dismay when he turned on the telly and found his work had been cut out of the BBC SSO concert. No time factors were involved. ‘There were 15 minutes left at the end before the next programme,’ John tells us, ‘and it was filled up with some nature documentary.’
Other composers have had the same experience. They get a work played at the Proms, but dropped off TV. John McLeod calls this ‘contemporary classical composer discrimination.’ He’s right. Last year they did the same to James MacMillan’s violin concerto.
The BBC are entirely wrong to censor contemporary music from the supposedly specialist TV channel. It is not just philistinism at work in TV. It’s a blatant waste of public money. We – through the BBC – paid for this premiere. By shutting it off TV, the BBC are not giving – or getting full value. What’s the excuse?
(Share this post on social media if you agree with its premise. Let’s save some poor composer’s work next year.)