The Times Higher Educational Supplement, looking at rewards for academic fat cats, has provided a search engine for salaries at most UK institutions of higher education.

So here’s the 2015 pay scale we’ve derived for running a music college or conservatoire in the UK:

 

royal academy of music

1 Royal Academy of Music – Jonathan Freeman-Attwood – £286,613

2 Royal College of Music – Colin Lawson –                              £217,431

3 Trinity Laban – Anthony Bowne –                                          £186,211

4 Guildhall School of Music and Drama – Barry Ife –            £171,000

5 Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – Jeffrey Sharkey –         £159,000

6 Royal Northern College of Music – Linda Merrick –         £146,000

7 Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts – Mark Featherstone-Witty – £136,884

There are some glaring anomalies here. The two London-based royal institutions appear to enjoy inflated wages. Impossible to justify paying the Royal Academy chief twice as much as the head of the Royal Northern (or is it cos she’s non-male?). Why are the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Birmingham Conservatoire unlisted?

On a national scale, the highest paid university chiefs are those at Durham, Middlesex and Salford, hardly the greatest centres of excellence.

Read the full THES article here.

 

Fascinating article by the Telegraph’s deputy finance editor on how Georg Frideric Handel played the London markets during the boom years of the South Sea Bubble and after.

Apparently, Handel performed much better than Sir Isaac Newton, achieving a thousandfold return on his initial investment.

Handel’s investing career took a perhaps familiar course: after an initial, highly risky foray into the stock market, he decided to stick to safer assets that paid a steady income. In fact the shares he chose to buy in the early days were in the notorious South Sea Company, which ruined many investors, including Sir Isaac Newton.

The German-born composer, however, was luckier and appears to have liquidated his holding in the enterprise by 1719 – just a year before the share price suffered its notorious, spectacular collapse.

Read on here.

handel halle

Elisabeth Braw in the Economist reports an alarming phenomenon by which some leading churches have become breeding grounds for trivial pop exploitation bands.

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Die Prinzen, one of Germany’s most popular pop bands, consists of former pupils in the St Thomas Choir of Leipzig (pictured). So does the internationally-celebrated Amarcord, a classical group. The Choirboys, a British boy band, consists of two former trebles at Ely Cathedral and one from Southwell Minster. The members of Elliot Minor, a punk group, met as trebles at York Minster.

Read on here.

BBC - The Impossible Orchestra

The Gothenburg Symphony has announced Santtu-Matias Rouvali as its next music director, ending a rather dull four years with Kent Nagano.

Rouvali, 30, is presently music director at Tampere in Finland.

rouvali

 

He says: ‘I am proud to follow in the footsteps of previous Principal Conductors of the Gothenburg Symphony, Neeme Järvi, Mario Venzago and Gustavo Dudamel among them. I have enjoyed some fantastic concerts with the orchestra and look forward to making music with these wonderful musicians again this autumn. Finland and Sweden both have a rich musical culture, which is why I can’t wait to bring the best of both together in Gothenburg and on our international tours.’

Santtu-Matias Rouvali

He’s older than he looks

Watch video here.

There’s a scheme in the northeast of England by which people who need a boost can call an opera singer to come round and sing an aria.

Like a home-delivered pizza, only less fattening.

Suzanne was given an appointment for 11am which is when a singer called Carole, who used to be with English National Opera, arrived with “a little sound system”.

“She sat down and asked me to tell her about the problem and listened attentively. Then she said, ‘The aria I’ve chosen for you is Musetta’s Waltz from La Bohème’. It’s one of my favourites. She told me the story and then she sang it. I was really overcome. Three bars in, I burst into tears.”

Read all about it here.

This scheme needs to go national.

opera helps

 

Jason Heath’s always entertaining blog has taken a turn for the macabre:

There’s an absurdist part of my personality that enjoys saying strange things (within reason) to large groups of teenagers and observing their reaction.  It’s a good way to break up rehearsals, and it can make you seem quite mysterious if applied judiciously.  I’ve told many a crazy gig story in orchestra rehearsals, which results in a lot of laughter and quizzical looks.

So… I had to decide… do I talk about the dead body with my orchestra?

The next day, I found myself up on the podium in front of one of my orchestras (about 60 students), and they were merrily playing, tuning, chatting, and settling into rehearsal.  I couldn’t help myself.

“Hey guys, guess what?  I found a dead body!

Note to self: if you ever want the total, rapt attention of a large group of high schoolers, just say the words “dead body.”  Never have I heard a room fall so eerily silent.  I had their complete, rapt attention.  If only I could get that attention when trying to give them a new bowing!

I related the story, they asked some questions, and we proceeded with a very somber rehearsal.

Coincidentally, my orchestra director colleague at my school has also found a dead body….

jason heath

Read on here.

 

A new work by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies will be performed next week to commemorate the fallen on both sides in the naval battles of the First World War.

The Golden Solstice will be heard in a commemorative service at St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney attended by the German president Joachim Gauck, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Princess Royal, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence and descendants of those who served at the Battle of Jutland.

Performers include the Kirkwall City Pipe Band, the Band of HM Royal Marines Portsmouth and the Marinemusikkorps Kiel.

maxwell davies caricature

Fragments of a peanut, that’s what.

A country-by-country survey of one musician’s earnings in Digital Music News is interesting both for the regional variations it shows and for the micro-sums that Apple ekes out to musicians for every stream and download.

How little? Less than one-hundredth of one US cent per i-play.

That’s 10,000 plays for one dollar.

See here.

 

apple music

The company they brought back from the dead is showing vital signs of life.

Next season, its first since returning from bankruptcy, New York City Opera will stage six productions.

They include a Harold Prince production of Bernstein’s Candide; a double bill of Rachmaninov’s esoteric Aleko with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci; Respighi’s La Campana Sommersa (The Sunken Bell); and the New York premieres of Peter Eotvos’s Angels in America, based on the Tony Kushner play, and Tobin Stokes’ Iraq War saga, Fallujah.

In addition, the company has commissioned a supermodel bio-opera, American Venus, on the life of Audrey Munson, from Tobias Picker for 2019.

All this on a budget of $6.4 million.

It’s fresh, it’s different, it’s not the Met.

What’s not to like?

anna nicole roh

A cautionary word: it was a supermodel opera, Anna Nicole, that sank City Opera last time round.

The outgoing Berlin Philharmonic chief calls the EU decision to defund the EUYO ‘an embarrassment’ and expresses the hope ‘someone will change it quickly’.

He describes the decision as ‘one ignorant signature’.

Losing the EUYO, he adds, would be ‘an unnecessary loss’.

It’s not the strongest of statements, but Rattle has been active behind the scenes rallying German government support for reversing the Brussels dictat to defund the EUYO.

Watch his statement here (in English).

rattle screen grab

The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana, already signed to Warner, has quit the IMG warehouse to join boutique agency, Primo Artists, for north and South America.

Primo is run by ex-IMG high-flier Charlotte Lee. She looks after Itzhak Perlman, Nicola Benedetti and some others.

beatrice rana

Beatrice, a silver-medallist at the Cliburn and a BBC New Gen Artist, is planning to devote much of her next season to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. On the piano, which is considered the opposite of cool.

Hot, in fact.

Thrilling news for residents of New Amsterdam York.

The incoming conductor of the New York Philharmonic has pledged to promote contemporary Dutch music with the orchestra.

Van Zweden was presented as Ambassador for New Dutch music at the Classical Next meeting in Rotterdam.

He said: ‘Met mijn benoeming als chef-dirigent van de New York Philharmonic is het een grote wens van mij om Nederlandse eigentijdse muziek nog nadrukkelijker te presenteren. Ik hou van nieuwe muziek. Dat draag ik graag uit. Ook daarom vind ik dit ambassadeurschap ontzettend eervol. Nederlandse muziek van de 20e en 21e eeuw verdient een plek in het repertoire van orkesten, ensembles en festivals. Ik wil er serieus werk van maken. In New York, maar ook met de andere prachtige orkesten waarmee ik het geweldige werk van nieuwe Nederlandse componisten onder de aandacht kan brengen.’

Or: ‘With my appointment as chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic it is a big wish of mine even more to emphatically present Dutch contemporary music. I like new music. … Dutch music of the 20th and 21st centuries deserves a place in the repertoire of orchestras, ensembles and festivals. I will take it seriously. In New York, but also with other great orchestras with which I can bring the great work of new Dutch composers in the spotlight.’

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