The Russian Defense Ministry has announced the disappearance of Tu-154 aircraft with 92 people on board.

The aircraft vanished over the Black Sea. A search effort has begun.

The state news agency Tass reports that the passengers included the Russian army choir, the celebrated Alexandrov Ensemble, as well as orchestral musicians and nine Russian media representatives. The musicians were heading to Syria to perform for Russian air crew at the Hmeymim airbase.

The Alexandrov Ensemble, founded in 1939, was formerly known as the Red Army Choir.

UPDATE: It is reported that 62 of the missing are members of the ensemble.

Our thoughts are with the families.

2nd UPDATE: This is a musical catastrophe without parallel. A tremendous ensemble has been destroyed in an instant. 

3rd UPDATE: Putin sent the ensemble to play in Aleppo

The Ensemble featured on the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009.

4th UPDATE: A Moscow music school mourns its sons

Houston Grand Opera are bringing back John Adams’s Nixon in China, which they premiered in 1987.

It seemed to mark a breakthrough, both political and creative. A style of news-headline opera was launched.

But the genre has enjoyed few comparable successes, and US relations with China are frosting over.

From the Houston Grand Opera press release:

 

A dramatization of President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China that ended decades of isolation from the West, John Adams’s first opera, with a libretto by Alice Goodman and staging by Peter Sellars, broke new ground with its visceral portrayal of relatively recent world events and its bold departures in musical style and instrumentation. The Houston production was televised on PBS’s Great Performances and recorded the same year; the broadcast won an Emmy Award and the recording won a Grammy in 1988. Since then, Nixon in China has been produced worldwide and has become one of the most performed among operas of our time.

 

Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt died today in a hospital in Marbella, Spain, of an infection.

 

A route to self-help.

joan sutherland norma

The lady at the end of the row has a problem with Kodaly’s g Dances of Galanta, conducted by Ivan Fischer.

Freeze-frame by Christoper Russell from a streamed performance.

At the national auditorium in Madrid, Wednesday’s performance of Handel’s Messiah was interrupted by a mobile phone going off in a side-row close to the stage during the aria, He was despised.

‘Out!’ yelled Christie at the phone owner. ‘You have just ruined one of the most beautiful passages of one of the most beautiful works ever written.

Full report here (in Spanish).

More mail coming our way on the contentious redesign of the NY Times arts section:
For Dean Baquet
Executive Editor

Dear Mr. Baquet.

While we have never met, I spent the last few decades at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, institutions that have also periodically redesigned themselves — and not always happily.

That said, your new arts section (actually boxed reviews were tried out during Paul Goldberger’s tenure) is particularly dimwitted in its old-fashioned notion that subscribers like me read papers for their pictures. Just now, I have stared at two stupid pictures of an idiotic game show. Wouldn’t one do? And why do I need two pictures of dancers in tights and little skirts — outfits worn by a lot of dancers actually. The gigantic illustration of the Coward playlet is wider than the stage at 59E59.

I’m not finished. What a day. Please study your mildly interesting story about preening academics tussling over a Beethoven manuscript. Now why did this need three illustrations?

Instead you might have squeezed in a review of an area of inquiry you almost completely ignore though it is the most important of topics in a time when so many of us walk around gob-smacked by the latest flabbergasting odes to money and power. Architecture.

Your arts section should reflect the city illuminating your name.

Please try again.


Manuela Hoelterhoff
Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and critic.
cc. Liz Spayd

This is Katherine Needleman,  principal oboe of the Baltimore Symphony.

On recorders.

So what’s your party trick?

The following email has been sent to the Arts section editors of The New York Times:

As President of the Wagner Society of New York, I, plus many thousands of readers of The New York Times, have noticed over many months, and most recently in the last two weeks, that the coverage of culture in the Arts pages has greatly decreased.  I’m also writing on behalf of my husband Harry L. Wagner (editor of our publications); we have relied on the Times for decades as a source of information and reviews.

Announcements of the redesigned Arts sections have appeared in recent days, beginning on Dec. 11. The editors stated that they are “excited about design changes and new features.” We are exercised, not excited, about these changes. You are giving much less space to the events listings, and also much less space to reviews of music events, as has been the case for some time. This is a very bad trend, seen nationally, but one had hoped that the Times would not succumb to this weakening and dilution of arts coverage. The arts, particularly music, are the reason many of us live in the New York area, and the Times needs to cover this essential aspect of life, including for its national readers..

On Dec. 13, we were informed in an boxed item entitled “A New Look for These Pages” that there is an expanded “Arts, Briefly” column and we note the new feature “Ready, Set, Go — Your Daily Arts Fix” which selects three items that we should look for. But we need listings, not editorial opinions in an over-designed format. Huge and excessive photos in the Arts sections mean they don’t have to do as much work in compiling the listings that are far more valuable to their readers. Photos have been getting bigger and bigger; information and listings, fewer and fewer, and highly selective.

One editorial response to a reader and friend stated: “You can find all of our classical music reviews online at https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/classical-music-reviews.”  This link is not adequate. The editors don’t seem to realize that many who read the paper (and not just online)  are very literate, support the arts, and want better coverage, not only for themselves as listeners/viewers, but also for the benefit of artists/performers. We will buy tickets for a myriad of music events, and we have the best and most diverse in the world in New York, deserving of advance listings and reviews.

We note the following message from the editors, which has appeared briefly in Arts sections: “Tell us what you think at culture.feedback@nytimes.com”  Thus, we are giving you our feedback and are also sharing this message with our members.  We want to let you know our views as soon as possible, before you erroneously assume that these changes are acceptable. Thank you for your help with this issue that affects us all.

Nathalie D. Wagner
President
Wagner Society of New York