Two of the singers selected* by Houston Grand Opera for their studio program were among six winners last night of the Met national auditions, considered the most prestigious career boost in US opera.
Sally Cavender, Director of Performance Music at Faber Music, a passionate champion for contemporary music who has overseen more than 950 commissions over the past three decades, has been awarded the prestigious RPS Leslie Boosey Award for her outstanding contribution to the furthering of contemporary music in Britain.
The award, a magnificent bronze eagle by sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink, … recognises the major and beneficial effect she has had on the musical life of the UK over several decades, her dedication to composers and the performance of their music, and her passionate advocacy for the value of new music in today’s world.
The Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in Florida is retiring nine players who have notched up three and a half centuries of playing time between them.
They are: Philip Pan, concertmaster since 1984; violinists Lois Elfenbein Gosa, Jeanne Majors, Glynda Newton and Lela LaBarbera; flute and piccolo player Deborah Heller; oboe and English horn player Claudia Minch; principal viola Merryn Ledbetter Corsat; and principal clarinet Peter Wright.
Jacksonville, whose music director Courtney Lewis is in his second season, is an orchestra in a hurry.
New York’s Le Poisson Rouge is putting on an evening for the centenary of the birth of the city’s most powerful violin teachers, the formidable Dorothy Delay.
Among those signed up to take part so far as Philippe Quint, Chee-Yun, Kurt Nikkanen, Paul Huang and Randall Goosby.
The programme: Mozart’s Haffnersymphony, Tchaikovky’s Pathétique and John Adams The Wound-Dresser.
The entire audience and performing cast were ordered to leave the building of Sofia Opera and Ballet last night due to a powerful smell that many described as ‘suffocating’.
In all, 650 people left the building a short way into the performance of Borodin’s Prince Igor.
No cause has been confirmed. The general suspicion is that the smell came from toxic cleaning fluids.
We present, by popular request, a revised Slipped Disc power list:
1 Anna Netrebko and Yusuf Eyvazov
2 Minnesota music director Osmo Vänskä and concertmaster Erin Keefe
3 Powerhouse Daniel Barenboim, pianist and festival director Elena Bashkirova
4 LSO chief Sir Simon Rattle, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena
5 Boston chief Andris Nelsons, hyper soprano Kristine Opolais
6 Trumpeter Alison Balsom and new husband, director Sam Mendes
Take a look at the roster for the current two seasons here. Not one woman (apart from one candidate in the conducting masterclass).
Are we in the 21st century? Is the music director tone deaf to the spirit of the times?
Answer that phone now, before it drives you mad.
Six months ago, the Komische Oper named the Canadian Jordan de Souza as Kapellmeister for next season.
Now it has added the German conductor Ivo Hentschel since it will be without a General Music Director for the foreseeable future. Hentschel is presently Kapellmeister at Cottbus.
Should make for an interesting competition.
The timing is, as you’d expect, exquisite.
And there’s a cameo from Novak Djokovic.
press release:
After an international search, Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen four new singers and two new pianist/coaches for the 2017–18 HGO Studio. The artists are Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, countertenor (pictured), the first-place prize winner at Concert of Arias 2017; Thomas Glass, baritone, third-place prize winner at Concert of Arias 2017; Jonathan Gmeinder, pianist/coach; Blair Salter, pianist/coach; Anthony Robin Schneider, bass; and Richard Smagur, tenor.
Cohen and Smagur are also competing today in the Met national opera auditions.
