These guys do.

Read here.

Following moves by Colorado Symphony musicians to disaffiliate from the AFM, session musicians in Los Angeles are agitating for non-union recording in the film studios. One activist, Richard Kraft, predicts this will happen in a matter of months. Read his post (below) from the rebel website.

WHEN DID THE AFM JUMP THE SHARK?

RICHARD KRAFT

While things have been awful for LA Session Players (dropping from a $50 MILLION a year industry to one worth only $15 MILLION), there was always a sliver of hope something would somehow save the day.

Things took a dramatic turn for the worse over a year ago when the Union decided to direct its focus on its infamously embarrassing and completely ineffectual LISTENUP campaign that tried to drum up work by shaming potential customers. That ended disastrously.

On the heals of that blunder they idiotically and recklessly shifted their attacking and accusing tactics towards their greatest allies, COMPOSERS blaming them for their woes.

This started with them bring up Austin Wintory on charges, continued by calling out the extremely well-liked and respected John Debney and then peaked recently when Ray Hair sent out a letter smearing composers within his Motion Picture Agreement ratification package.

I suspect history will see that as the tipping point in this whole drama.

The domino aftereffect of that ultimately reckless action already includes the normally apolitical Society of Composers and Lyricists stepping up and denouncing those actions and, for the first time, clearly laying out options for its members, including Fi-Core.

Messing with the Composer community was THE dreadful mistake paving the way for a series of almost inevitable fallouts. The downward dominos will most likely continue to fall when the Task Force assigned to finding paths to address revitalizing recording will come back shortly empty handed (rumor is they are doubling down on no buyouts, even in video games).

It will be abundantly clear that all the AFM will have to offer to address their plight will be meaningless tax incentive gibbilty-goop, prattle of “enforcing” their existing deals, and some gibberish about sister Unions and government officials lending support.

It is most likely the Task Force will emerge with nothing but empty words and no game plan.

This will force those clinging to any hope of a Union reversal of direction into needing to consider other options for themselves.

All of this will set the stage for the eventual rise of open non-Union recording in Los Angeles.

I suspect this will happen within months.

Once the Shark has been Jumped, there is no going back.

Opera Platform was launched today at the Opera Europa conference in Madrid.

Supported by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme, the website links cultural broadcaster ARTE and 15 opera companies including Covent Garden and Welsh National Opera in the UK. The aim is to offer free content, including live performances from the 15 opera participating companies.

First up is La Traviata tomorrow from Madrid followed, on May 16, by Szymanowski’s opera Król Roger from Covent Garden.

Bookmark the new site here.

Although no-one’s saying it, Opera Platform is, in part, a bid to break the Met’s global streaming hegemony.

The founding participants are:

·         Wiener Staatsoper

·         La Monnaie/De Munt Brussels

·         Finnish National Opera, Helsinki

·         Festival d’Aix-en-Provence

·         Opéra national de Lyon

·         Komische Oper Berlin

·         Staatstheater Stuttgart

·         Teatro Regio di Torino

·         Latvian National Opera Riga

·         Dutch National Opera and Ballet Amsterdam

·         Den Norske Opera og Ballett Oslo

·         Teatr Wielki/Opera Naradowa Warsaw

·         Teatro Real Madrid

·         The Royal Opera

·         Welsh National Opera

Programme of the opening six months

8 May Launch of The Opera Platform

Live transmission from Teatro Real de Madrid of La traviata de Verdi, conducted by Renato Palumbo and directed by David McVicar, with Ermonela Jaho, Francesco Demuro and Juan Jesús Rodríguez

16 May Live transmission from Royal Opera House Covent Garden of Król Roger by Karol Szymanowski, conducted by Antonio Pappano and directed by Kasper Holten, with Mariusz Kwiecień, Georgia Jarman and Saimir Pirgu

23 May Transmission from Finnish National Opera Helsinki of Kullervo by Jean Sibelius, conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste and directed by Tero Saarinen

30 May Transmission from Latvian National Opera Riga of Valentina by Arturs Maskats, conducted by Modestas Pitrenas and directed by Viesturs Kairish

7 June Live transmission from Wiener Staatsoper of Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, with Evelyn Herlitzius, Stephen Gould, Falk Struckmann, Boaz Daniel and Caroline Wenborne

8 July Live transmission from Festival d’Aix-en-Provence of Die Entführung aus dem Serail by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, conducted by Jérémie Rhorer and directed by Martin Kušej, with Jane Archibald, Rachele Gilmore, Daniel Behle, David Portillo, Albert Pesendorfer and Tobias Moretti

August Focus on Festivals dedicated to and founded by composers, including features on Rossini Opera Festival Pesaro and Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival

September Focus on Norway : new horizons for opera. Transmission from Den Norske Opera og Ballett of La bohème by Giacomo Puccini, conducted by Eivind Gullberg Jensen and directed by Stefan Herheim, with Marita Sølberg, Jennifer Rowley, Diego Torre and Vasilij Ladjuk

October Focus on Italy: birthplace of opera

Aida from Teatro Regio Torino conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and directed by William Friedkin

Live from the streets of Vienna.

h/t: Basia Jaworsky

The classical sales situation in the US has hit the pits. Aside from Andrea Bocelli, who trundles on at around 400 a week – cds and downloads combined – the best performer on Nielsen Soundscan was the Anonymous 4, chirping sweetly on a farewell tour with just 189 registered sales.

Sales are so bad that Hilary Hahn, at number 10, failed to clear 100.

What does an artist have to do in 2015 to make a mark on the US market?

Not even American heritage sells.

Two months after the death of Jennifer Ward Clarke, much-loved cellist of the Salomon Quartet, we regret to report the death of Trevor Jones, the quartet’s founding viola player.

Founded in 1982, the Salmons were the first quartet to make recordings on period instruments in an 18th century set-up. The original formation on Hyperion Records was Simon Standage, violin; Micaela Comberti, violin; Trevor Jones, viola; Jennifer Ward Clarke, cello. Micaela died in 2003.

(in this picture: Simon Standage, Catherine Martin,  Trevor Jones, Jennifer Ward Clarke)

In the run-up to Sunday’s general election, President Bronisław Komorowski unveiled a monument to Ignacy Jan Paderewski in the city of Poznań. The city has a conservatoire named for the great pianist, who represented Poland as both prime minister and foreign minister at the 1919 Paris peace conference.

Paderewki died in New York exile in 1941. His body was repatriated in 1992.

‘Paderewski used to say that Poland is his only party. He kept stressing that Poland is our common cause and that it should be respected, irrespective of one’s political sympathies and party affiliation,’ said president Komorowski.

This is the second airline assault reported to us in as many weeks. It comes from Nicholas Gold, cellist with the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera orchestra.

On Wednesday May 6th 2015, I flew into Nashville and this is what I found. I was flying Southwest Airlines. The cello was never handled by TSA… I always gate check the instrument and it’s always fine.

Pierre Azzuro, 31, principal horn of l’Orchestre régional Avignon-Provence, has been named first horn at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Guess that’s why they call it the French horn (or is that only in English?)

The trial has opened in Bonn of Sergei Kurochkin, a principal cellist in the Beethoven Orchestra, who is accused of strangling his wife, the Belgian pianist Kate de Marcken, and burying her body in a forest.

The accused, 55, led police eventually to the burial site. He has remained silent in court.

Reports here (in German) and here (in Flemish).

Margaret Garwood, who turned Hawthorne’s novel into an opera for Philadelphia, has died at 88.

Der Tagespiegel, one of the leading German dailies, has listed the Russian-based Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis as a candidate for the Berlin Phil. Tagespiegel rate him so highly that his profile is published just behind those of frontrunners Christian Thielemann and Andris Nelsons.

If we ran a Berlin betting shop, we’d give odds of 200-1. But miracles do happen and it’s worth keeping a wary eye on Currentzis as a wild-card outsider.