Message from Paul Silverthorne, lynchpin of the LSO:
Dear Friends,
Twenty five years ago this summer I first played with the LSO and in October I leave my position there at the end of a tour of Japan where it all started.
It has been a wonderful period in my life and certainly the most important part of what has been a wonderfully varied career.
However it’s not all over yet! In January I face a new challenge; I shall be taking up the position of Professor of viola at Soochow University in the beautiful ancient city of Suzhou in China. It is a new music school within one of the oldest and most highly regarded universities in China, I shall be joining a fine international faculty and we hope to attract students from all around the world. If anyone wants information about studying in Soochow the website is here and I’m happy to be contacted direct.
I shall be returning frequently to the UK and continuing to perform and teach internationally. I hope to see many of you when your touring brings you to China. Now back to my Mandarin homework!
The car-makers are to be main sponsors of his Berlin outdoor events. See here.
Intriguing history in the South China Morning Post of a Vietnamese refugee who was mouldering in a camp when an audition to the Asian Youth Orchestra put his life back on track.
Today, Khac-Uyen Nguyen is music director of a London chamber orchestra.
Nguyen says: ‘Before arriving [in] Hong Kong I had only ever been to two cities and those were in Vietnam. I had never met a foreigner… Suddenly there I was, wearing an AYO T-shirt travelling, playing music and making friends with people from all over Asia.’
Khac-Uyen Nguyen (l) with dancer Huynh Kien Binh in Hong Kong in 1991.
Roland Valliere has quit overnight as president and CEO of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, after less than two years in the job. Earlier this year he told the music director she could go because the orch cannot afford one.
Players have taken a 38% wage cut. The orchestra in Elvis city is fast disappearing.
Sixty years ago, railway worker Roy Harrison was among the founder members of the Derby County Orchestra. As a young man he held down a job as a fitter and millwright at the Locomotive Works.
Later, he requalified as a music teacher.
He carried on playing the flute into his 80s despite suffering from pulmonary fibrosis probably contracted at his first job. Roy credited his ability to play with lungs scarred by asbestos inhalation to good diaphragm technique.
The brief and oddly unsatisfying era of sexual contortions by (mostly) female soloists is mercifully over.
No major-label classical video – opera excepted – is likely to require the new age ratings.
The composer of many of the films of Claude Chabrol has died in the Ardèche, aged 85.
Pierre Jansen had his early works premiered at Darmstadt, but from 1960 became the trusted collaborator of Chabrol and other leading film-makers.
His celebrated scores for Les Biches and Une Femme Infidèle brought atonality to the big screen.
The Salzburg Festival has issued a family photo of its newest Nestle conductor competition winner, Lorenzo Viotti.
He is the son of the much-lamented Swiss conductor, Marcello Viotti, who died ten years ago at the age of 5o.
This s one of the last pictures of the Viotti family before Marcello’s death.
l-r: Marina is today a mezzo-soprano, Alessando a horn player, Milena is 3rd horn at Bavarian Opera, Lorenzo Viotti is one from the right with his mother.
Photo: Bayerischer Rundfunk/Georg Thum
The Manchester-born composer Roger Smalley, who has died in Sydney at 72, started out as Stockhausen’s assistant, an enthusiastic purveyor of all things electronic.
Then he moved to Australia, taught at Perth, and wrote a symphony and piano concerto. His Variations on a Theme of Chopin is described as ‘a milestone in Australian repertoire for solo piano’. In 2011 Roger was appointed to the Order of Australia (AM).
May he rest in peace.
The Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto is to be artistic director of ACO Collective, an offshoot of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Agent’s press release below.
Finnish violinist, Pekka Kuusisto, has been appointed as Artistic Director of ACO Collective (formerly known as ACO2). The appointment starts in 2016 and runs for three years, and a main-stage tour in February 2016 will form his first project.
Kuusisto will work closely with the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Artistic Director, Richard Tognetti, who said the following about the announcement: “Pekka has a calling to turn things on their head. A musical insight that is as disturbing as it is compelling. He’s a musician for the new world and, therefore, his appointment to the newly branded ACO Collective couldn’t be bettered. I look forward to working with Pekka and eagerly anticipate how he will evolve new forms from ancient traditions. This is a big appointment for the ACO, and for the future of music in Australia, and we confidently entrust Pekka with these responsibilities.”
ACO Collective combines musicians of the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Australia’s most talented young professional musicians at the outset of their careers, selected from the ACO’s Emerging Artists’ Program, to create a combined ensemble with a fresh, energetic performance style. Kuusisto already has a long history with the organisation – his debut tour with the ACO was in 2001 and he has performed regularly with both the ACO and the former ACO2 ever since.
The immensely popular and outspoken Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor has posted a breakdown of receipts from her German tour. She got paid 500 Euros for three shows. The agents took 12,000.
Here’s the receipt. Below is Sinead’s rant. Couldn’t happen in classical, could it?
Sinead: Observe below… What I got paid for three shows in Germany, FIVE HUNDRED EURO as compared to what everyone else got paid. The last two figures on this list amount to what the agent Rita Zappador and Modus In Rebus got, €11,700.00.
The €47,700.00 is the total of what my four and a half hours’ work generated. Pls note the document is page 9 of 7! This is the type of dodgy documents we are being provided with. This is the sodding insurance document !!!
In the end the agent didn’t even pay me the five hundred. SHE DOCKED ME FOUR THOUSAND! So my work generated almost €48k but cost me €4k. Pls note bands do not arrange these things themselves. One’s business managers and agents do. One trusts one is not being lied to when one is seduced to go on tour by being assured of earnings. Our job is to shake our asses and sing nice. Management’s job is to fight off every cunt that wants to rip us off. MASSIVE negligence cases to be brought by me against every member of my now ex management team.
Not only for the below but for several even more appalling and wreckless negligences, which have cost me hundreds of thousands of euro which I was illegally told was my obligation to pay, and it was NOT my legal obligation. In short I have been ass raped by Rita Zappador and Modus in Rebus with the full (written, and totally behind my back, without my knowledge) support of Simon Napier Bell, Bjorn De Water and my now ex accountant. ALL of whom need to lawyer up, and get ready for the fraud squad.
The Lahti Symphony Orchestra has named Dima Slobodeniouk as principal conductor and director of its Sibelius festival. He succeeds Okko Kamu in September 2016.
Lahti has had a good run of Finnish chiefs in Vänskä, Saraste and Kamu.
Slobodeniouk came to Finland to study conducting with Leif Segerstam, Jorma Panula and Atso Almila, as well as the visiting Ilya Musin.
He will continue to serve as music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia.
