Leonard Slatkin will cease to be music director at the Orchestre National de Lyon from September 2017. He will become Directeur Musical Honoraire, which means he can carry on conducting without administrative responsiblities. Slatkin, 71, has been music director in Lyon since 2011.
It makes a lot of sense. Having put in the hard years, Slatkin can now fly Zubin Class and enjoy the ride.
Here’s what will be announced later today:
On September 1, 2017, Leonard Slatkin will become Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Orchestre National de Lyon. The recruitment process for a new music director has been launched.
Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre National de Lyon have agreed to continue their collaboration beyond August 31, 2017. From this date, Leonard Slatkin will become Directeur Musical Honoraire – an honorary title awarded for the first time by the Orchestre National de Lyon – and will continue regular collaborations with the orchestra’s musicians for at least 3 additional seasons. Since arriving in Lyon, with support from CEO Jean-Marc Bador, the staff and the musicians, Leonard Slatkin has created unprecedented artistic vitality and influence around the Orchestre National de Lyon. In recent years, Auditorium attendance has increased by almost 40%, reaching 220,000 spectators in 2015 through innovative programming and attention paid to educational programs, cultural activities and new audiences.
Recording agreements led in particular to the ongoing release of a new collection of 11 discs of the works of Maurice Ravel on the Naxos label. International tours opened doors to prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, the NCPA in Beijing, the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Philharmonie de Paris. “Leonard Slatkin’s enthusiastic presence during all these years has transformed the orchestra and created the conditions for artistic innovation and community projects. His role as ambassador has contributed to the attractiveness of our orchestra and our city. I am grateful to him for having agreed to a smooth transition as we plan for the arrival of a new Music Director at the Orchestre National de Lyon,” says Jean-Marc Bador, CEO of the Auditorium-Orchestre National de Lyon.
From 2017 to 2020, Leonard Slatkin will perform regularly with the Orchestre National de Lyon – a minimum of 6 weeks during the 2017/18 season, and 4 weeks during the following season – enabling the expected completion of the process to recruit a new Music Director by 2018.
“This new deal gives me the opportunity to continue a long-term arrangement with an orchestra I dearly love. The past five seasons have been extraordinarily rewarding. Extensive recording projects, video broadcasts, and outstanding new additions to the membership of the ONL are among the many recent initiatives and accomplishments. Also, by the end of my tenure as music director, we will have toured on three continents, thereby increasing the orchestra’s international exposure and further developing a worldwide audience. The public in Lyon has responded most favorably to our innovative programming with full houses populated by many young people. The future for this orchestra is bright indeed and I’m proud to be part of it. I fully expect to be busy guest conducting, writing books and music, and engaging in other activities both personal and professional,” commented Leonard Slatkin.
Rachelle Roe, who left the Chicago Symphony quietly at the end of 2015, has been hired as Director of Public Relations for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, starting in May.
The move reunites Rachelle with former Chicago Symphony boss Deborah Rutter.
The Kennedy Center can expect a media profile upgrade.
The Hollywood actress Holly Hunter has been telling Finnish television how sorry she is that the New York Philharmonic failed to sign Esa-Pekka Salonen as its next music director. ‘We didn’t get him, darn it,’ she says, hand clutched to heart.
Holly speaks on this video at 2:40. She calls him ‘one of the most brilliant conductors in the world’.
But here’s the nub.
Sipped Disc hears from an impeccable source that the New York Philharmonic never made a formal offer to Esa-Pekka to be its music director. After months of hype and a high level of support from the players, NY Phil president Matthew Van Besien did not put an offer to the conductor and his agent.
When no terms were offered, Esa-Pekka announced in two interviews that he wasn’t up for the job. That’s how New York lost him. Now it can be told.
The busy Russian Dmitri Tcherniakov, 45, was dismissed when he failed to supply set designs on deadline for a new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
He has been replaced by the 82 year-old Achim Freyer.
The show opens in 10 weeks.
Tcherniakov’s Lulu
The soprano, fired in February 1994 by general manager Joe Volpe for impossible behaviour, is being invited back for a farewell recital. Battle, 68, is keen to mend bridges.
She is still represented by CAMI, James Levine’s agency, and is still supported by the ailing music director. Levine demonstratively accompanied her in recital at Carnegie Hall not long after she was fired from the Met.
She will sing a recital on Nov. 13 titled, ‘Underground Railroad-A Spiritual Journey.’
Pianist Joel Martin will accompany, together with a choir under the direction of James Davis Jr., director of music ministries and fine arts at New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church.
press notice: The Boston Symphony Orchestra welcomes violinist Bracha Malkin and violists Rebekah Edewards, Leah Ferguson, and Danny Kim to its ranks beginning with the 2016-17 BSO season opener on September 24. BRACHA MALKIN, VIOLIN Violinist Bracha Malkin has performed worldwide in recital and with such ensembles as the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony, Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, Simón Bolívar Orchestra, Bogota Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfonica of Teatro Municipal de Sao Paulo, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Rishon Lizion Symphony Orchestra, Bologna Symphony, Nederlands Promenade Orchestra, and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed as a regular substitute violinist with the New York Philharmonic. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with Yuri Bashmet, Irena Grafenauer, Gary Hoffman, and Lynn Harrell at Kronberg Academy’s Chamber Music Connects the World 2008 (Germany). She spent two summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed at the Menton Music Festival (France) and the Delft and Storioni festivals in the Netherlands, and appears regularly at the Academy of Music Summer Festival in Nyack, New York. Ms. Malkin is a member of the “Malkin Duo” with her sister, Anat Almani. She is a prizewinner of the Wieniawski and Paganini International violin competitions. Ms. Malkin studied with her father, Isaac Malkin, at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege as well as Aaron Rosand at the Curtis Institute of Music, Miriam Fried at Indiana University, and Boris Belkin at the Maastricht Conservatory in The Netherlands.
REBEKAH EDEWARDS, VIOLA Rebekah Edewards was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and began studying violin at age seven. While attending the Meadowmount School of Music, she started playing viola, switching over completely in her junior year at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM). Ms. Edewards studied viola with Mark Jackobs and violin with Linda Cerone, receiving her bachelor of music degree in viola performance, with a violin performance minor, in 2008. Her senior year at CIM, she was awarded the annual Horace & Marie Arnold Viola award. Before joining the BSO, she held positions with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra and was principal of the Charlotte Symphony, Akron Symphony, and Erie Philharmonic. During her tenure in Charlotte, she was a featured soloist performing the Walton Viola Concerto under the baton of Christopher Warren-Green. In addition to Meadowmount, she has spent her summers at the Blossom Music Festival, the Verbier Festival, and the Cabrillo Festival in California.
LEAH FERGUSON, VIOLA A native of Chicago, Leah Ferguson recently earned her bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music under the guidance of Robert Vernon. She is currently pursuing a graduate diploma at The Juilliard School as a recipient of the Kovner fellowship, studying with Heidi Castleman and Cynthia Phelps. Previously she studied with Mark Jackobs and Roland Vamos. Recent engagements as a soloist and chamber musician include performances at Severance Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and New York’s MoMA and Kaufman Center. As a chamber musician Ms. Ferguson has participated in festivals including Music@Menlo, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, and the Perlman Music Program and performed as a guest artist with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble. She has performed with ensembles including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, as Assistant Principal of the Rochester Philharmonic, and as guest Associate Principal of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Her performances have been featured on WQXR’s The Greene Space, WCLV Cleveland, WFMT Chicago, and HBO television show “Masterclass.” Leah Ferguson plays a viola made in 2007 by Stefan-Peter Greiner.
DANNY KIM, VIOLA Violist Danny Kim, a native of Saint Paul, MN, earned his master of music degree in viola performance from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Samuel Rhodes. He began his musical studies at a young age on the violin with his mother, Ellen Kim, and then transitioned to the viola in high school under Sabina Thatcher. Mr. Kim completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he studied with Sally Chisholm, and received a BA in viola performance and a certificate in East Asian Studies. He was a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, where he won the Maurice Schwartz Prize, and has participated in such festivals as Marlboro, Pacific Music Festival, and Aspen, and as a teacher was in residence with El Sistema in Caracas and Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute in Ely, MN. He has performed with distinguished ensembles and artists including the Metropolis Ensemble in collaboration with Questlove and The Roots, New York Classical Players, Camerata Virtuosi New Jersey, and Symphony in C and appeared on Sesame Street with conductor Alan Gilbert. As a chamber musician, Mr. Kim has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, members of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pro Arte Quartet, and collaborated with artists including Joseph Silverstein, Peter Wiley, Marcy Rosen, Richard O’Neill, Charles Neidich, Anthony McGill, Nathan Hughes, and others. He toured South Korea in 2014 with his string quartet, Quartet Senza Misura, and violist Richard O’Neill. He also was a tenured member of Madison Symphony Orchestra.
From the organist and composer David Briggs:
Thrilled to be back in New York for the first performance of my new transcription of Mahler 8. An 18-month journey and one of total immersion! This week we have about 24 hours of rehearsal, before the concert on Thursday 7th at 7.30pm. The dress rehearsal and the concert will be recorded by Fred Hohman (Pro Organo records). It should be quite a sound, with 380 singers (Manhattan School of Music Symphony Chorus/Oratorio Society of New York), childrens chorus, 8 soloists and the unique Skinner organ at SJD.
Mahler said: ‘A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything’. It has long been an ambition to transcribe Mahler’s Eighth. It follows on from my transcriptions of the Fifth (1998), Sixth (2006), Third (2009), and Second (2012). I hugely value the opportunity to give the world premiere of the new transcription at St John the Divine – with its unique acoustic and stunning Skinner organ, and such voluminous choral resources. Making the transcription took the best part of nine months, and learning it rather more! Without doubt, Mahler included some of the most beautiful music he had ever written. For me it represents his never-ending quest for faith and completeness. The final apotheosis is completely overwhelming – even more so on the organ than the orchestra, in my humble opinion. Although he didn’t know it at the time, this was the last music he was to ever conduct in Europe (at the premiere at the Neue Musik-Festhalle in Munich, in September 1910).
Thursday’s performance will be dedicated to John Scott, my longtime friend and extremely distinguished Organist and Director of Music at St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, who died extremely unexpectedly and prematurely in August last year. We miss him so much.
Our New York operavores, Elizabeth Frayer & Shawn E Milnes, went to the city’s premiere of Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, willing it to succeed.
Trouble is, Charlie’s dead before the opera begins.
He doesn’t want anyone to know he has died because he wants to compose one last musical masterpiece before news of his death becomes public. Unfortunately this plot point fades away and we veer into vignettes of his life that don’t have anything to do with him writing this musical masterpiece, nor do they give much insight into his life beyond one dimensional views of drugs and women and music.
The cellist Sergei Roldugin, who has been accused of laundering money in Panama for the Russian president, plays Alexei Orlovetsky’s second sonata, with the composer as accompanist.
Nice piece, but the intonation is not always squeaky-clean. Judge for yourselves.
Some parts of this music degree course appear to be interesting and innovative, others dispense with essentials of literacy and structure.
Read on:
In Andrew Hicks’ new class, students build instruments, learn the science behind sound waves and investigate how human ears “hear” sound and relay it to the brain.
Judith Peraino approaches the study of music through diverse repertories of sound and music, including Qu’ranic recitation, Gregorian chant, punk rock, hip hop, and more. “We’re equipping the students with critical tools to understand the music they know as well as the music they are encountering for the first time,” Roger Moseley said.
…
Peraino, who specializes in popular music as well as medieval music, said the new classes also reflect the diverse ways current student engage with music.
“I don’t think you need to be able to read music to be a musician or to be a keen interpreter of music,” she said. “You have to have a good set of listening skills and technical vocabulary, but if you can hear the 12-bar blues and understand the blues structure, you don’t have to read it, you just have to be able to hear it.
“Remember that none of the Beatles knew how to read music.”
![[Bracha Malkin]](https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/125yQalSP0Ecy3Z-uIz-rDiW399h4MoZ1FMcVpd4avzJ9wNwzUHH8qVa6ky5T87Yr7BZmUpojR6sc4Wlm5rGWm1nTRnYipevjubION5Ar_rU7T0nKiyHbYz-mPhhmg=s0-d-e1-ft#http://media.mail2app.lynch2.com/media/50/501130/Press/brachamalkin2.jpg)
![[Rebekah Edewards]](https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/USQ8uopTRMHFc2Ze6qTVUpt2xIQ9JULia6COh-vKmB3bt6ObIBvrbs-FERF5g3A1lk1IEil6OhdJrRJEHXTJxz7Csck2POAosdqP2Oz5IHWD10Zq0cbVg6gYjIk3gmT60A=s0-d-e1-ft#http://media.mail2app.lynch2.com/media/50/501130/Press/rebekahedewards2.jpg)
![[Leah Ferguson]](https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/dJeSDZ8LRDijpNIjz0xdNxEiXRE8xnvL88mCRB7NBmv7a1aJGCiN-UEZ1vnjwJJak95wz9EF3zcDIscr2cVISi1PgcrJNKR_Eq82A4SVcth-_lOgXqDZIgQ2AnaPvQ=s0-d-e1-ft#http://media.mail2app.lynch2.com/media/50/501130/Press/leahferguson2.jpg)
![[Danny Kim]](https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-QudXd25I9EJOIy6eUUAsD_oBJTps3Rsi5aezSXgU-jLnfG929ZabzNAryAlDbnhW1Mg64gQKY1EDQHVZkZ3JkzOuNeb2qOjP5jPmb7u0y0K6iAXdrkcEb_9=s0-d-e1-ft#http://media.mail2app.lynch2.com/media/50/501130/Press/dannykim2.jpg)
