Family members are reporting the death of John Eaton, who composed an opera on Shakespeare’s The Tempest with a libretto by the late New Yorker critic Andrew Porter. It was premiered at San Diego in 1985.

Eaton, who was 80, taught at the universities of Indiana and Chicago. In early days he worked with Robert Moog on synthesisers. Later, he developed a genre of Pocket Opera and wrote in microtones.

In a sure sign that peace has broken out since the horrendous 16-month lockout, musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra have donated the rest of their lockout fund to the organisation’s community outreach initiative.

The orchestra itself announced a small surplus.

Read here.

After 40 years on the CSO Members Committee, bass player Roger Cline will not run for re-election.

His daughter Jenny Mondie, plays viola in the National Symphony Orchestra and chairs its committee. Jenny writes a vivid reminiscence in the CSO players’ journal, Backstage with Chicago Symphony Musicians (not available online). Here’s a sample:

I was not quite a year old when Dad won the CSO bass audition in 1973. There are stories about him putting me in my infant seat on the dining room table and practicing excerpts at me before that audition. Mom, Dad, and I moved to the north suburbs of Chicago that September and straight into a four-week lockout. While it was an immense honor and very exciting for Dad to have this new prestigious position (he was previously in the West Point band playing sousaphone), the lockout must have been quite a strain for a young family. My Dad is very logical and likes finding creative solutions to problems, so it was probably inevitable that he would be drawn to serving on the Members’ Committee, but the experience of joining an orchestra during a labor stoppage probably sealed his fate.

Jenny writes of her experiences at the NSO:

Once after a meeting, I was criticized by one of my Committee colleagues as being too dour towards our management. Distraught, I called Dad. His response was “If there isn’t someone scowling on your side of the table, how will they know you’re really paying attention?”

Read the full article here.

Andrew Green reports on the Classical Music site that Radio 3 is to halve the amount it pays to musicians for concert relays. The amount is usually 20-30 percent of the artist’s performing fee.

Radio 3 controller Alan Davey and his sidekick Edward Blakeman made the announcement to a gathering of artists’ agents.

The amount saved is tiny as a proportion of BBC overheads – possibly less than Alan Yentob’s salary.

UPDATE: Statement to Slipped Disc by the BBC: ‘We’re  presently in a series of ongoing and confidential discussions with the industry on this matter.’

We broke exclusive news yesterday of the admission of two women, Karin Bonelli and Patricia Koll, as full members of the Vienna Philharmonic, a red lipstick day in the orchestra’s dark history of male dominance.

We also broke news that Ekaterina Frolova had been admitted on trial to the first violin section, the start of a compatibility process that usually takes three years.

Today, our mole in the orchestra informs us of a fourth woman who has been quietly admitted.

Adela Frasineanu passed her trial last week for the second violin section and will play in the New Year’s Day concert on television.

Well done, Adela.

Vienna has just begun to move into the second half of the 20th century. This week might prove to be historic.

The BBC’s creative director has stepped down, following concerns about his handling of the Kids Company charity.

Few will regret the departure of a man who wielded too much power, often unwisely, and clung on long past his sell-by.

Alan Yentob is 68. We wish him a happy semi-retirement.

He will, it has emerged, continue to produce and present the arts-puff series, Imagine.

As chairman of Kids Company, Yentob warned of social mayhem if the celeb-fronted charity was allowed to collapse. He also sought to influence BBC news programmes in their coverage of the fiasco. Stern resistance by Newsnight exposed his machinations. Many expected him to be fired, but D-G Tony Hall showed signs of having an emotional dependency on Yentob and was unable to pull the trigger.

Yentob’s resignation has relieved him of that unpleasant duty but leaves Lord Hall further weakened. Hall called Yentob today ‘a towering figure in television, the arts, and a creative force for good for Britain.’

That’s not a view widely shared within the BBC, let alone beyond.

UPDATE: Last week, Tim Davie, head of BBC Worldwide, was cross-examined by a House of Commons select committee over the share of revenues that Yentob might be taking from international sales of the Imagine series.

Future of Music Coalition has conducted an earnings survey among US composers and musicians and followed it up with detailed financial case studies.

They arrived at the conclusion that there are 42 ways that musicians are augmenting their income, including ringtone revenue (big for Boccherini), ‘neighboring rights royalties’ (is that the people next door paying you to let them sleep?) and ‘composing original works for broadcast’ (not much money there).

That’s 42 ways to feed the family.

Then they found three more. Read the full 45 here.

Knoxville Opera’s ageist, lookist casting policy has drawn first blood. Dr Claudia Friedlander, who runs a voice studio, has published an open letter to the opera company that can’t apparently get much right.

Claudia writes:

The objectification of singers based on age and appearance is ill-conceived and highly detrimental to opera as an art form. Opera companies prioritize these attributes over vocal excellence at their peril. The vocal and artistic maturity required for superb performances of these roles has nothing to do with the age of the singers, and the shape of their bodies ought to reflect the physical demands of singing rather than some preconceived aesthetic. Because opera is such a buyer’s market these days and there are more gifted singers than the profession can possibly employ, it might appear possible to cull singers over a certain age or weight from your applicant pool and still end up with a viable cast, but if opera is to not only survive but thrive we must be showcasing not merely viable singers but transcendent ones. 

There won’t be much transcendence at Knoxville any time soon.

Read Claudia’s full letter here.

He has signed a one-year extension to 2018 after which he will be known as Emeritus Music Director.

Slatkin, 71, says he’s done what he can: ‘I’m very proud of what everybody has done. There wasn’t too much left to do in terms of new initiatives. This is exactly the right time to think about turning it over.’

In fact, he’s changed the weather. After surviving near-bankruptcy and a bitter strike in 2011, Slatkin and DSO president Anne Parsons rebuilt both the orchestra and its audience.

They hired 30 young players, including all principal positions, and attracted the student community with a $25 come-anytime card. They put on events for young people with disabilities. They streamed concerts worldwide and earned the Detroit Symphony its highest international profile since the auto industry heyday.

Scanning Slatkin’s 40-year career as chief conductor – St Louis, London (BBC), Washington DC, Lyon – Detroit is where he has made a lasting difference.

This weekend, he conducts Mahler’s Resurrection. That’s what he has achieved in Detroit.

Very sombre news from Finland.

In 2006 the Nordea bank founded the Nordea Jean Sibelius Orchestra for young players. The conductor is Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the Sibelius Academy helped with tuition.

Knoxville Opera has put out a notice for auditions on social media.

Under the cautionary heading ‘Restrictions’, it announces: ‘Knoxville Opera will cast age appropriate, attractive artists in these roles’.

Oh, really?

Here’s another howler from Knoxville Opera’s Fb page: ‘Just wanted to make something clear. Our annual gala event this Saturday is “The Prima Donna Ball” not “The Pre-Madonna Ball”. This is important.’

Gets better and better.

We are hearing directly and indirectly from musicians in Venezuela that they are being press-ganged into voting for the Chavista government next Sunday. The director of one of the Sistema nucleos writes:

‘They sent at 2:00 pm all the nucleos directors on a national level a form of 1×10 and told us we had one hour to fill it out. We had to write on it 10 names and identity numbers of people that we committed to take to the voting centers to vote for the Chavista party. I had to make my personnel fill them out as well. But the form also came with a couple of calls from functionaries on the 18th floor pressuring us saying it was a direct order from Eduardo Mendez and Andres Gonzalez, who are now the two managers who have the power as the Fundamusical Executive Director and Manager of Development.

‘I answered, ”Well, tell your boss that I will wait for the call to force me personally to do it. Now they are going to force us to do what they force all the other public employees to do. The next thing will be to force us to go to the marches.” Our musicians today are victims of the politicization of El Sistema.’

Several musicians have independently corroborated that El Sistema officials are working for the Chavista machine. There has been no statement from the El Sistema founder, José Antonio Abreu.