press release:
Mondomusica and Cremona Pianoforte launch the “Cremona Music Award”
At Cremona fairgrounds from September 26 to 28
The award is divided into four categories: Performance, Composition, Communication and Project.
This year the Prize winners will be Alfred Brendel, Michael Nyman, Norman Lebrecht and the FuturOrchestra.

Mondomusica and Cremona Pianoforte, with their rich programme of events, present every year a series of opportunities aimed at promoting the music culture which represents one of the most important objectives of both exhibitions. Among this year’s news there is the creation of the Cremona Music Award, a prize recognizing the commitment of some renowned representatives and excellent projects to the diffusion of the music culture at global level. Each award category will correspond to a globally renowned figure of the music world:

“Performance” category – Alfred Brendel
Alfred Brendel’s place among the greatest musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is assured. Renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt, he is one of the indisputable authorities in musical life today and one of the very few living pianists whose name alone guaranteed a sell-out anywhere in the world he chooses to play.

“Composition” category – Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman is one of the most successful living composers, his work encompassing operas, chamber music, soundtracks and concertos. Notable works include soundtracks for several Peter Greenaway films, his operas The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1986) and Facing Goya (2000) and ballet music for choreographers  Nyman’s visual practice has been exhibited in Tate Modern, Reina Sophia Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His first major exhibition of film and photography was held at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, in 2009. He has collaborated with contemporary artists including George Brecht, Bruce McLean, Mary Kelly, Carsten Nicolai and Kutlug Ataman.

“Communication” category – Norman Lebrecht
Norman Lebrecht is a prolific cultural commentator and an award-winning novelist. He has written 12 books about music, which have been translated into 17 languages. A collection of Lebrecht columns was published in China in 2012, the first such anthology by any western cultural writer. A Lebrecht essay appears monthly in Standpoint, the cultural and intellectual magazine. Slipped Disc, Norman Lebrecht’s blog, has become the world’s most-read cultural news and views site in English, drawing well over one million readers every month. Norman Lebrecht is a popular lecturer at cultural institutions and leading universities. Other works in progress include a stage play, a radio series and television documentaries.

“Project” category – FuturOrchestra
Created as an opportunity to emerge from a situation of social disadvantage the Venezuelan project “El Sistema” by the Master Abreu is globally renowned as a real system of free musical education intended to be an effective tool to promote cultural and social integration. This experience, that produced important artists such as the conductors Gustavo Dudamel and Diego Matheuz, inspired the creation the Italia FuturOrchestra, the orchestra of the Lombardy region of the Italian System of Infant and Youth Orchestras and Choirs supported by Claudio Abbado and considered one among the most important examples of its kind. It has been created in 2011 and is already famous for its many prestigious partnerships and participations to important social projects.

www.cremonafiere.it/en/2014/08/01/mondomusica-and-cremona-pianoforte-launch-the-cremona-music-award/

Norman-Lebrecht.-February-007

After 18 months of fierce opposition, London’s South  Bank Centre has dropped plans to evict the skateboard park from beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The relocation was part of a £120m redevelopment project that has been denounced by the Mayor of London, the head of the National Theatre, prolitical groups on the left and right – everyone, in fact, except the supine Arts Council England which acts as godfather to the failing arts centre.

The South Bank chief, Alan Bishop, is a former advertising man and New Labour flunkey.

He needs to be moved on.

Read the skaters’ triumph here.

skateboard south bank  skateboard2

There is a cautionary story in Bloomberg about Kevin Rodgers, who resigned three months ago as global head of foreign-exchange trading at Deutsche Bank AG in London.

Today – tonight, more precisely – he’s singing opera in pubs, clubs, wherever he can get a gig.

Kevin, 52, is a bass-baritone. He has left it a bit late to get started, but there are plenty of roles for the older man, all the way up to Ochs and Falstaff.

Read his story on Bloomberg here.

kevin rodgers trader opera

 

Peter Williamson, a retired doctor who beat his taxi driver with a walking stick for fear he’d be late for the opera, walked out of court in London a free man yesterday.

The magistrate slapped him with a £200 compensation order and £165 costs.

Dr Williamson, 71, said he had acted in self-defence. His counsel said he was being treated for cancer.

The cab driver needed stitches.

The opera was Puccini’s Fanciulla del West at Holland Park.

Need to know more? Click here.

 

la-fanciulla-del-west1-1405421539-view-1

Johnny Rotella, who wrote for Sinatra, Dean Martin and other icons of his age, has joined them in another place.

Just listen to his showreel.

johnny rotella

Next year’s prestigious Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy, is under reconstruction.

Fabio Luisi, music director of Zurich Opera and the Danish radio orchestra, is to be its artistic director.

He has decided not to allow major teachers onto the jury. Instead, he tells Slipped Disc, ‘I will put people who really can help the winners to build up a career: general managers of orchestras (e.g. Filarmonica della Scala), agents, conductors, journalists’ – plus – a former winner of the competition and the concertmaster of an orchestra.

Like many of us, Fabio Luisi is disturbed by the whiff of insiderism arising from Indianapolis, where four finalists out of six are students of members of the jury.

It is not uncommon for teachers who appear on international competition juries to charge $1,000 per 45-minute lesson.

The revitalised Paganini Competition could help break the mould, and the racket.

paganini competition

 

Artshub, the specialist Australian website, reports that George Brandis, the arts minister, approved A$275,ooo (US$250,000) in special funding to a CD label, Melba Records. The grant bypassed due process and proper review.

Melba has a heavy board of Aussie worthies. It advertises itself as ‘a label of fragrant distinction’.

At issue is not whether the grant was deserved but the informal, underhand way in which it was given. Arts administrators in Australia are fuming. One arts chief told Slipped Disc: ‘We could of course expect this ultra-conservative minister to support backward-looking initiatives such as a CD label, rather than something a little more adventurous.’

melba records

What happened to the millions they raised? the land they sold? Who let the arts center get into such deficit?

Yesterday, 80 chorus members joined the musicians’ picket line.

 

atlanta chorus picket

press release:

 

 

Atlanta, GA September 18, 2014

 

On September 15th 2014, Woodruff Arts Center spokesman Randy Donaldson said that it was “totally laughable” to imagine that the WAC manipulated earned and contributed revenues in an attempt to engineer posted deficits.  (http://www.artsatl.com/2014/09/news-aso-lockout-enters-second-week/)  Yet in each of the fiscal years that preceded a lockout — 2012 and the current lockout of 2014 — significant funds were received by the Woodruff Arts Center that could have mitigated, or eliminated completely, the posted deficit for each operating year.

 

In November 2011, the Woodruff Arts Center received a $15 million gift from the Woodruff Foundation.  While $5 million was allocated to retire debt held by the Alliance Theatre and the High Museum, no part of this gift was allocated to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.  Contract negotiations with the Musicians were scheduled to begin only four months later.

 

During FY14 (June 1, 2013 – May 31, 2014), the Woodruff Arts Center sold the 14th Street Playhouse to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) for $1.9 million, and then donated all funds acquired from the sale.  WAC President and CEO Virginia Hepner admitted that, as “tempting” as it was to use the nearly $2 million to address the myriad needs of the WAC, donating the proceeds just felt like “it was the right thing to do.”

 

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra sold the14th Street land originally intended to house the new Symphony Center in April 2014.  With the proceeds received from this sale, $15.42 million was used to pay off debt associated with the bonds on that land; approximately $6 million was left in available funds to the ASO.  The WAC decided to use $4.5 million of the remaining funds to pre-pay loan payments – payments that had originally been scheduled to take place over four years – associated with the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.  The ASO was still left with almost $1.5 million in proceeds from the land sale.

 

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra also received additional anonymous gifts totaling $3.121 million during the last fiscal year.

 

With the enormous influx of funds due to the sale of two properties and the gifts received last year alone, the Musicians question how such a significant deficit was still posted by the ASO; a mere fraction of those earnings allocated to operating expenses would have eliminated the FY14 deficit.  It would make all the difference if the WAC would reconsider its decisions that prohibited financial balance to occur.  It is not that the Musicians are opposed to a wise debt retirement plan, but the Musicians are opposed to one that needlessly undermines the organization’s work by not allocating any earnings like these to it directly – in essence, starving the family to pay the bank.  The WAC has repeatedly told the Musicians that the ASO producing a balanced budget is the key to greater support from foundations and donors – including the WAC itself.  Yet, the WAC seems determined that the ASO continue to post operating deficits, particularly during negotiation years with the Musicians.  The Musicians would like nothing better than to work with a vigorous, unrestricted ASO fundraising initiative to produce not only a balanced budget, but a restored luster that will attract new audiences and new fiscal support.

Just as he seemed to be on the mend, the Canadian-born, London-based jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler died yesterday, aged 84.

 

Our sympathies to his family and many friends.

kenny-wheeler

The following big names have withdrawn from the first part of the Metropolitan Opera season.

Johan Reuther is out of Meistersinger – doesn’t want to undertake Hans Sachs.

Latonia Moore is out of Aida – pregnant.

Christine Schäfer is out of Hansel and Gretel – taking a season-long sabbatical.

Who’s next?

 

alice coote christine schafer

Teddy Abrams is a music director in a rush. He has taken over at Louisville, a once-famous orchestra that almost shut for want of Kentucky funds and public interest.

So he’s drumming up business any way he can – and if that means looping his pianos to an external sound system so the town can hear him practising, so be it. Read all about it here.

teddy abrams

 

The trial of a lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has been halted after the sheriff ruled it risked damaging his health.

Graeme McNaught, a concert pianist, is accused of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner towards his former partner, the popular author Janice Galloway. Ms Galloway told the court she feared becoming a victim of revenge porn.

A doctor and psychiatrist have now ruled that McNaught is unfit to continue facing trial.

The sheriff dismissed the jury and will now decide alone whether he committed the alleged offence.

Details here.

graeme mcnaught