The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra has named Gabriel Feltz as chief conductor from September 2017.
Feltz, 46, has been Generalmusikdirektor in Dortmund for the past three years. Before that, he was in charge at Stuttgart.
From the press release: The Belgrade Philharmonic will be the first non-German orchestra in which this sought-after conductor will occupy the leading and exceptionally important position. The cooperation with our orchestra started in 2008 and Feltz has returned to Belgrade several times, conducting a repertoire ranging from Wagner and Mahler, to contemporary programmes, and to James Bond film music.
Sonia Sielaff, an American based in Norway, is the new E-flat and sub-principal clarinet of the RPO.
She presently plays for the Norwegian Opera and Ballet and comes well prepared for the weather.
From Viviana Guzman, self-styled Flute Queen:
I play my flute for the whales, and they come! I was paddle boarding in Half Moon Bay, CA when all of the sudden a juvenile humpback leaped out of the water and lunge fed RIGHT NEXT TO ME!
Viviana is founder and artistic director at the San Francisco Flute Society & Festival.
The Daily Telegraph today offers pension advice to Alison Place, who worked as a freelance opera singer since 1980. Hopefully, she won’t need to draw on the pension for many years hence.
Friends are mourning the early death of Professor Gunhild Ott, principal flute since 1986 of the SWR Baden-Baden/Freiburg symphony orchestra, which gave its final concert this week.
Gunhild, who was 61, had been suffering from a prolonged illness. She was a prolific and popular teacher.
The orchestra was abolished by SWF broadcasting bosses in the middle of its 71st season.
André Isoir died today, July 20, on the day he was born in 1935.
He was organist in chief at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris from 1973, renowned far beyond France for his many recordings.
He received the Grand Prix du Disque no fewer than eight times.
His family were not musical; his father is a lorry driver and his mother works for the Bank of India. “It’s very strange in a traditional Indian household for someone to come and say I really want to be a musician,” he says. To explain, he showed his parents YouTube clips of the Indian conductor, Zubin Mehta. “That was one person that helped my family grasp what I was doing,” he says. “We’ve never met but he’s helped me out greatly.”
The principal bassoonist in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has broken her finger hours before a major international tour.
The orchestra is heading for a weeklong Buenos Aires residency with Martha Argerich as soloist, followed by visits to limelight festivals at Salzburg, Berlin, Lucerne and London(BBC Proms).
Without a bassoon.
Brains were racked, databases raided. Barenboim knew who he wanted.
David McGill, former principal bassoon at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, now professor at Northwestern U.
It so happened that David was home – just home, in fact. He had been playing the Mozart bassoon concerto with Riccardo Muti and his Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini in Italy.
As we write this, David is repacking his bags.
Then he will work on his reeds, ‘raising my pitch up to about A-444. Not easy for a 440 American player!’
And off to the airport.
David adds: ‘I have often said that I would do this only for two people in the world, Muti and Barenboim. And they both requested me this summer!’
They need to replace Frank Huang (pic), who went to the NY Phil.
Mr. Domingo, who moved to Mexico as a child and maintains strong ties there, said that he was drawn partly by the chance to appear with Mr. García Bernal, a Mexican actor whose career he has followed since the film “Y Tu Mamá También” more than a decade ago, and partly because he was intrigued by a new series that shines a light on the field.
So Mr. Domingo, who remains one of the hardest workers in opera, recorded his vocals for the duet, “Là ci darem la mano,” this month at a midnight session at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, right after finishing a performance there in the title role of Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra.” (The soprano part, which Ms. Bellucci, who is playing a fiery diva known as La Fiamma, lip-synced to, was recorded in San Francisco by the rising star Ana María Martínez.)
Could be the series is running out of steam.
press release:
Men who marry intelligent women are less likely to develop dementia later in life, according to mental health experts.
Professor of mental health in the College of Medicine and Life Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, Lawrence Whalley, discussed this groundbreaking discovery at the Oxford Literary Festival Thursday in a talk titled “Dementia: How Can We Protect Ourselves?”
“The thing a boy is never told he needs to do if he wants to live a longer life – but what he should do – is marry an intelligent woman,” Whalley said, according to TV3. “There is no better buffer than intelligence.”
We understand that Stefana Atlas, one of a batch of IMG bosses who left the company in a 2014 bloodletting, is getting ready to move her desk and her artists into arch-rival CAMI.
Stefana, who worked as Kurt Masur’s assistant for many years, knows the business inside out.
She represents a small group of mostly young artists, led by the fast-rising Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, new music director at Birmingham’s CBSO.
The deal is that she gets to pool resources with the veteran Doug Sheldon, senior Vice President & Managing Director at CAMI and one of the last people in that edifice with frontline artist credibility.
This is a very good fit for Stefana and for Doug, who is Anne-Sophie Mutter’s main agent.
It leaves IMG looking dumb (but they’re maybe used to that).
UPDATE: Press release issued later in the day:
Stefana Atlas will join Columbia Artists Management LLC on August 1, 2016 as Artist Manager and Senior Vice President.
Doug Sheldon, Managing Director and Senior Vice President of CAMI LLC, said “Ms. Atlas brings to us experience, professionalism and an international profile and will be a major partner in expanding our representation of conductors and soloists and special projects.”
The Sheldon Office, known for representing several of the world’s leading international artists and for being a pre-eminent tour representative of the world’s major symphony Orchestras, will be known as the Sheldon/Atlas Office and will include conductors Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Ankush Kumar Bahl, Andris Poga and Markus Poschner as well as instrumentalists, Iveta Apkalna, Nicolas Dautricourt, Xiayin Wang and Xavier de Maistre currently managed by Ms. Atlas
Stefana Atlas’ experience includes working with Kurt Masur at the New York Philharmonic and Masur Music International and as consultant to Orchestre National de France. She has also served as consultant to the American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation, Senior Vice President of IMG Artists and founder and director of Bolero Artists Management.
