Emirates recently broke my Gibson ES – 335. They took their time to tell me that they will not be claiming any responsibility whatsoever and will not be reimbursing me at all. Further, they have told me this “In conclusion, I do hope that you will not allow this unfortunate incident to mar your impression of our airline and that we can look forward to the pleasure of welcoming you on board our flights again soon.” Shame on you Emirates. My MUSICIAN friends and Non-Musician friends.. I seriously urge you to share this and help get the word out. Thank you! #shameonyouEmirates
Erin Keefe, concertmaster in Minnesota and newly married to its conductor Osmo Vanska, has told the New York Philharmonic to take her off its search list. Erin’s telling friends: ‘I’m lucky and fortunate to have such fantastic colleagues bin Minnesota’.
The betting’s open on the next chief of the NY Philharmonic, but even at 50-1 you’d get few takers on an American contender.
First, the last two music directors, Maazel and Gilbert, have been made in the USA. Time for change.
Second, no American is presently in contention for front-line vacancies, in Berlin or elsewhere.
So who?
First in mind is Sir Simon Rattle who springs free from Berlin just as Gilbert steps down in New York. Rattle has avoided New York until now as a proverbial Babylon. He may find it preferable to the LSO.
Riccardo Chailly will be a contender if he doesn’t take Berlin. Christian Thielemann will come into the reckoning. The New York Times is tipping Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has said repeatedly he does not wnat the responsibility of heading another major orchestra. And Gustavo Dudamel, who has already turned down New York once, will be high on the players’ list.
But there’s a long way to go between now and 2019.
Alan Gilbert will step down in mid-2017, after eight years in the job. The official release says he has timed his departure to coincide with the renovation of Lincoln Center, allowing the next chief to start in 2019 with a clean sheet.
Gilbert has brightened up the NY Phil’s repertoire, maintained high playing standards and formed strong relationships across the music world, especially in China. Critics fault him for a lack of sparkling finish – for the gloss that only great charisma can bring. But he was by no means lacklustre, and he will be remembered more fondly than one or two of his recent predecessors. Matthew Van Besien, the orch’s president, has told leading supporters that ‘Alan has changed the orchestra’s DNA’.
A bold claim, but who’s next?
Berlin will expect to claim the most desirable conducting scalp in May. Will that leave New York scrabbling for seconds?
Susan McCulloch, a Senior Professor of Voice at London’s Guildhall School of Music and a performance consultant for the Royal Opera House’s Young Artists Programme, has shared her introduction to students with friends. We found it so clear-sighted that we obtained her permission to share it.
Dear Students
I am writing to you as a Professor. As someone who has had an international career as a singer. As someone who made a choice to become a teacher, about which I am passionate, because I wanted to help your generation of singers to learn to be great singers, to pass on some of the many things I learned both from other great musicians and also from the stupid mistakes that I made myself. I could have chosen to do many other things…. Become an agent, a director, a coach, changed paths altogether and left the music world behind, but I didn’t. I became a teacher through a powerful set of voluntary choices and am here, very proudly working in the vocal department at the Guildhall.
I believe that we (mostly) select some of the highest talent in each generation to come here. Young singers who audition and show us that they have something really worth investing in, nurturing and developing… And hopefully who will go on to find their niche in the music world of the 21st century. And hundreds (quite literally) of other young singers who are turned down, in some cases almost as good as the ones we accept, and each year, we hope we have made the right choices.
You are those choices. You are the chosen ones. You have a place that tens of other hopeful singers wanted to have, and didn’t get.
Whilst you are here, you will come into contact with many different people, colleagues your own age…. and teachers. Some of whom will make a big impression on you. Others less so.
Speaking for myself, I really want you to learn as much as you can. I really want you to be that little bit better than you think you can be; that little bit better than one of your peers at all the other music colleges and universities. I want you to leave college with a chance of finding your place in this absurdly overcrowded profession. The phone will not ring at the end of your time here, offering you riches, fame, work and a career simply because you have graduated. The profession has hundreds of hopeful wannabes who all want the work that you want. You have to be better than they are to get that work.
So how do you get that work?
Well. Obvious as it sounds, turning up to classes is a start. Punctually. Which means arriving five minutes beforehand so that the class/rehearsal can begin on time. This, by the way, is how the profession is run. You never know when you might suddenly have that lightbulb moment that changes the way you work. I plan my classes to try and enable you to be that little bit better than you believe you can be; to challenge your parameters so that you will sing better than someone who wants the same work as you do….. To try and light a spark that might encourage you to dig deeper and come up with something thrilling/moving/funny…. I want to see you growing and fulfilling that potential that we saw in you when you auditioned here as a raw talent several years ago. I don’t want to see a young singer, jaded, uninterested, bored, playing with a phone, drinking their coffee, studying different music…. Or just not even bothering to show up.
Often, if you are lucky enough to get a job with an opera company or a choral society, a large amount of your time will be spent hanging around waiting. Staying interested, alert and participating.… Even passively……Whilst you are waiting around. And sometimes, everybody in the room will be waiting around whilst you are singing….. Learn the art of being a good colleague here and now. Somebody else who didn’t get the place at GSMD that you now have, would sacrifice a lot to sit and wait around in your place, just to be here and studying singing. Sometimes you may feel that the teacher is not offering anything of particular interest to you….. I can assure you from experience that many directors in professional circumstances are also, often, less than interesting and you still have to be there, alert and interested and ready to work….. Learn that art now! Find something to learn from them.
And, if you make a choice not to turn up to classes, and not to avail yourselves of all that your course has to offer, there will inevitably, be consequences. This is not a tacit threat but a reality. The reality is that you are tearing up and throwing away twenty pound notes by the handful for each hour you choose to absent yourself. You are paying for this course and each class costs you money. The reality is that you can learn something from each moment of every day: if you CHOOSE to….. If you keep an open mind and are present during that class. The reality is that if you don’t learn something, somebody else, somewhere else will be overtaking you and leaving you behind in the race for a place in the profession…. Somebody will have slightly better language skills, or understand the style a bit better or know more about how the voice works than you do. Because they chose to attend. And it was your choice not to attend. The reality is that many members of staff are in the position of influencing your progress as a professional singer, both internally and in the profession…. The reality is that if your head of department is asked to recommend singers to work with guest artists, he may be more likely to suggest someone who is present, who makes the effort to turn up on time, and comes up with a good standard of work. At every turn you are exercising your right to fail by not making the right choices for yourself.
It is not for me to make you come to a class. Hopefully if I make it interesting enough you will want to come, and want to see how your colleagues are able to change their skills by the choices I offer them, or enable you to see how you can change the way you approach something and spark an interest in growing and learning. Hopefully.
And if not, the hardest part of my job is accepting that you have the right to fail if that is what you choose.
And when you do make those wrong choices, I think of all those hundreds of other people at the auditions, who, on a minuscule moment of chance, on the turn of a phrase or the spin of a note, didn’t get the place that was awarded to you, and who might have made a far better job of being a music student than you have done. And that makes me sad for both you and them.
Step up to your own potential greatness, be the best student you can be, and don’t wake up when you are in your midlife years and wish you’d done it better. Be that person now.
This was Radio Shack’s Superbowl ad a year ago, watched by tens of millions.
Ousted from Denmark by the closure of his radio orchestra, Adam Fischer (brother of Ivan) has been named chief conductor in Düsseldorf, starting in September. He plans a cycle of Haydn and Mahler at the centre of his work. Alexandre Bloch, 29, becomes principal guest conductor.
Yes, it’s them, again. Oh, Canada.
British cellist Richard Harwood tried to book a seat for his instrument on Air Canada. They got out the tape measure and said, No.
Here’s, what Richard tells us:
In need of booking a direct flight with my cello from Toronto to San Francisco, I looked at Air Canada. I thought Air Canada’s musical instrument policy, after the viola debacle in October 2014, might be a safe bet as it used to state: ‘A cello may be accepted as checked baggage, or may be transported in the cabin if a seat is purchased for it.’ That’s pretty clear. You buy a seat – it gets on.
However, thepolicy has been changed to read:’In some cases, a seat may also be purchased for these instruments. Contact Air Canada Reservations for more information.’
So, that’s what I did. Contact them. And after dealing with someone that really had no idea, I got through to the North American office and spoke to someone who seemed to know the process (a BA type process), how to hold the reservation and how to send off the booking to the pricing and seating departments. All looking good. I gave my usual “safe” cello dimensions with a height of 120cm (cello cases are actually a little over 130cm) and received the following reply back stating I can only purchase an extra seat for a cello if the height is less than 74cm. Unless I’m going to go back to a quarter size cello, that’s going to be a tall order.
So, essentially, a cello dimension policy which restricts any cello playing adult. And a cello dimension that lists a height that is actually the length of a violin case. Since receiving the e-mail, I have spoken to Air Canada, explaining that I think they may have got their dimensions wrong and are very possibly providing me with a violin case length. And I asked them to check. However, after a long time on hold, I was told in no uncertain terms that, if my cello is larger than 74cm x 41cm x 43cm, it will not be able to travel with Air Canada. So, essentially, that rules out all cellos.
In the interest of clarity, I’ve included a screenshot of the e-mail I was sent. I may have dodged a bullet though as this is how Air Canada, unique across all air travel, secure cellos:
Following a blast from Anne-Sophie Mutter, the heads of Bavarian Radio’s orchestras have issued a public onslaught on the minister-president, Horst Seehofer, demanding to know why he went back on his commitment to build a new concert hall. We publish the questions below in German (feel free to translate, if a nyone has the time). It is very rare for a public authority in German to challenge an elected leader with brutal frankness.
Das Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks hat die am vergangenen Montag von Ministerpräsident Horst Seehofer und Oberbürgermeister Dieter Reiter vorgestellten Pläne zum Thema Konzertsaal in München mit Entsetzen und Unverständnis vernommen. Das Abrücken vom seit vielen Jahren ins Auge gefassten, notwendigen Bau eines neuen, zusätzlichen Konzertsaals gefährdet nicht nur die Zukunft des Symphonieorchesters als Spitzenensemble, sondern setzt auch Münchens und Bayerns Ruf als international bedeutende Musikmetropole aufs Spiel.
Wir wollen den verantwortlichen Entscheidungsträgern in diesem Zusammenhang folgende Fragen stellen:
Welche Bedeutung messen Sie dem Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks für das Musikleben in München und Bayern zu?
Warum waren bei der Erarbeitung des vorgeschlagenen Modells nur die Münchner Philharmoniker, aber nicht die privaten Konzertveranstalter und nicht das Symphonieorchester vertreten?
Weshalb ignorieren Sie die Ergebnisse einer hochrangigen Expertenkommission und entscheiden sich für ein ungeprüftes Modell?
Warum soll den Münchner Orchestern und Konzertveranstaltern auch für die kommenden Jahrzehnte nur eine unzureichende Infrastruktur zur Verfügung stehen?
Warum sagen Sie nicht offen, dass Ihre Pläne substanzielle Einschränkungen für ca. 40.000 Klassik-Abonnenten mit sich bringen werden?
Wie rechtfertigen Sie die massiven negativen Auswirkungen auf die privaten Konzertveranstalter?
Warum reagieren Sie auf das rasante Bevölkerungswachstum im Großraum München und die erheblich steigenden Konzertbesucher- und Abonnentenzahlen mit einer Reduktion der Konzertsaal-Kapazitäten?
Wer sind die von Ihnen angesprochenen „Fachleute“, die – allen Erfahrungen der letzten Jahre zum Trotz – einen Publikumsrückgang im Münchner Konzertleben prophezeihen?
Auf welchen Fakten basieren deren Einschätzungen?
Wie sollen die Münchner Orchester im weltweiten Wettbewerb konkurrenzfähig bleiben, wenn die Arbeits- und Planungsbedingungen in München mit den sich stets weiterentwickelnden internationalen Standards nicht mehr mithalten können?
Wie können Sie es verantworten, dass angesichts einer Überbelegung der vorhandenen Konzertsäle die Musikvermittlungs- und Jugendarbeit der Münchner Orchester in Zukunft nicht weiter ausgebaut werden kann?
Wie rechtfertigen Sie die hohen öffentlichen Ausgaben, die Ihre Pläne vorsehen, obwohl diese weiterhin eine Beschränkung des Musiklebens in München festschreiben?
Warum nehmen Sie die Chance nicht wahr, durch einen zusätzlichen Konzertsaal der Bayerischen Landeshauptstadt eine führende Position als Musikmetropole im 21. Jahrhundert zu sichern?
München, den 04.02.2015
Der Orchestervorstand
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Glenn Donnellan, a violinist in the National Symphony Orchestra, plays acoustic in the orchestra – and electric on a baseball bat. Watch.
He’s on tour this week.
A persistent audience pest was arrested on Wednesday night at the Vienna Opera after a police chase through the most expensive boxes. The man, 63, was finally cornered and handcuffed in the Gustav Mahlersaal.
The intruder had a habit of attending the opera on a ticket to the standing places before sneaking into one of the boxes and enjoying the show in comfort. Spotted by ushers, he would nip from one box to the next, evading expulsion until the final curtain.
Despite an alert on all doors, during Josephslegende on Wednesday he invaded the presidential box where he was spotted by audience members, who called the cops. When stopped in the Mahler Room, he claimed to be a journalist.
He is presently immersed in Fidelio.
The long-running, rough-and-ready Radio Shack, with 2,400 stores across the country, has finally gone bust. It never bothered much with display and marketing and customer comfort, but where else would you find that missing accessory? Now, you’ll have to throw out the whole system and start over.
