The ancient Roman town of Bath, which depends on heritage tourism, has said it will scrap all funding for the arts in order to save £433,000 by 2020.
That will probably spell the end of the Bath Festival.
It’s quite alarming.
The ancient Roman town of Bath, which depends on heritage tourism, has said it will scrap all funding for the arts in order to save £433,000 by 2020.
That will probably spell the end of the Bath Festival.
It’s quite alarming.
So that’s how we’re spelling Honegger in 2017?
Er, do I really want this on my coffee table?
The composer is Vivaldi.
Staff at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe have called a ‘warning strike’ in pursuit of a six percent pay rise.
The company’s latest production is a Clinton-Lewinsky themed version of Handel’s Semele.
Louise Khan, 46, a Scottish piano teacher, has been arrested in Portugal, after remains of her partner Alyn Pennycook were found buried on their remote farm. He is believed to have died of cancer.
The Portuguese authorities are planning to out her on trial for illegal burial.
More here.
Danuta Szaflarska, possibly Poland’s most prolific film actor, has died at 102, a few months after completing her last role.
After risking her life as a courier for the Polish resistance under the German occupation, she was seldom off the stage or the film set for b75 years.
Her first husband was the pre-eminent Chopin scholar and pianist Jan Ekier.
The jazz guitarist Larry Coryell, known as the Godfather of Fusion, has died in his sleep in a New York hotel. He was 73.
Coryell worked across several genres and enjoyed interacting with classical musicians, many of whom are paying tribute on social media.
A sobering thought from the Economist:
Of 8.7 million different tacks that sold at least one copy (last year), 96 percent sold fewer than 100 copies and 40 percent – 3.5 million tracks – were purchased just once.
(This) does not include the many songs on offer that have never sold a single copy,
Spotify said in 2013 that of its 20-million song catalogue at the time, 80 percent had been played – in other words the remaining four million songs had generated no interest at all.
The head of the German Cultural Council, Olaf Zimmermann, has said that artists’ freedom of movement will be impaired by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.
He specified three key areas of damage. If EU artists will need a visa to live in London, that will inhibit cultural exchanges. Collaborations between museums, arts centres and theatres will suffer.
And once the UK is no longer part of the European Union, the withdrawal of EU funding programs will kill off many joint projects in the future.
If these predictions are fulfilled, London will return to pre-War provincialism.
Granada’s International Festival of Music and Dance has appointed Pablo Heras-Casado its next director, starting this September. It’s his home town.
Heras-Casado is Principal Conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York and Principal Guest Conductor of Teatro Real of Madrid.
From a tour promo interview with Classic FM, a reality check from the Estonian conductor.
‘The first thing any young musician should ask themselves is: do they want to be in this profession and are they aware of what they’re getting into?
‘The reason most musicians end up being musicians is because they love music, because they’re attached to their instrument. But “do you want to spend your life doing this?” is not very often asked. People don’t think about the realities of playing in an orchestra or, as a pianist, practising hours on end in a practice room. And it’s not necessarily something everyone is happy to do.
‘So I think the piece of advice is to make sure we want to do it, because it is a great, great art, but sometimes it can be quite complicated professionally.’
Decca has pulled together choristers from more than 50 cathedrals into the world’s first sacramental supergrouop.
Watch.