Three months before the launch of her first Vancouver Opera Festival, Kim Gaynor fell off her horse and suffered a serious leg fracture.
She’s back at her desk just before the festival begins, but it has been quite a saga.
With no WiFi in the hospital, friends wheeled her over to the closest Starbucks so she could get some work done. Further complicating matters, she was robbed twice during her ordeal – her phone and e-reader stolen from her hospital bedside while she was in a drug-induced sleep…
The British collection agency today reports a ten percent rise in revenues.
It has paid out £527.6 million to songwriters, composers and music publishers.
What was your share?
Dick Contino held the alltime record of appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show – 48 times.
He was jailed for draft dodging, served in in the Korea War and eventually received a presidential pardon, events that are reacts in a James Ellroy novella, Dick Contino’s Blues.
Contino’s signature song was ‘Lady of Spain’.
He made his debut in December 1947 and died on April 19, 2017, after almost 70 years on stage.
The former music director of the Orchestre de Paris, and briefly of the Opéra de Paris, has been speaking about this weekend’s French election.
Daniel Barenboim said he could understand the rise of nationalism in France as a protest against the tide of globalisation, but the French should be aware that the present tendency is not to be confused with patriotism.
Patriotism, said Barenboim, is inclusive. Nationalism shuts out the world.
What do do with the ENO orchestra when the Coliseum is rented out for six months of the year? A solution has just been revealed.
Press statement:
English National Opera (ENO) and Grange Park Opera (GPO) have today announced the formation of a three-year partnership, beginning in June 2018. Each year ENO’s award-winning Orchestra will play for productions presented by Grange Park Opera at West Horsley Place. West Horsley Place, the first opera house to be built in the UK in the 21st century, is the new home of Grange Park Opera and will open on 8 June 2017.
ENO’s Music Director, Martyn Brabbins, commented on the partnership:
’The orchestra of English National Opera is widely renowned for its musically dramatic contribution to countless successful opera productions at our home, the London Coliseum. Grange Park Opera, in its spectacular new theatre-in-the- woods, has extended an invitation for our Orchestra to perform with them, and I’m delighted by this fantastic opportunity for both ENO, and GPO to enhance their already-excellent artistic profiles.’
Wasfi Kani, Founder and CEO of Grange Park Opera, said:
‘The curtain has raised on a new act for Grange Park Opera, West Horsley Place is an exceptional location: its beauty and historical glamour, its atmosphere and location, all add up to a magical setting for a fairytale that has come true. Part of that fairytale is this collaboration with the ENO Orchestra whom I’ve admired for 40 years. I am thrilled.’
The point of a masterclass is personal contact. No Longer, perhaps…
Press release: On April 26, Dr. Edisher Sivitski will conduct a live piano master class with University of Alabama students assembled in Tuscaloosa—from New York City, more than 1,000 miles away.
As Dr. Savitski performs on a Yamaha DCFX Disklavier PRO concert grand piano in New York City, a similarly equipped instrument on stage at the school’s Moody Concert Hall will recreate, in real time, his exact performance – the piano’s keys and pedals moving up and down to capture the subtlest nuance. At the same time, students will be able to watch Dr. Savitski’s live performance on a big screen TV, with the video perfectly in sync with the piano on stage.
Not one of the Big Five, unfortunately, but kudos to Kalamazoo.
Kalamazoo, MI – April 20, 2017 The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce a new education initiative serving children of refugee families recently resettled in Kalamazoo. Orchestra Rouh offers regular, ongoing music instruction to children of Syrian and other refugee families. Rouh means both “hope” and “spirit” in Arabic, and the program is designed to nurture the emotional wellbeing of children through music instruction, led by teachers who are bilingual in English and Arabic, and including music from Arabic traditions.
Orchestra Rouh is offered under the umbrella of KSO Education Programs in partnership with the Suzuki Academy of Kalamazoo. The program was founded and is led by violinist Ahmed Tofiq, cellist Bashdar Sdiq, and Arabic instructor Hend Ezzat Hegab, who have been involved with refugee relief work in Kalamazoo for the past year and recognized the immediate need for positive social and learning activities to help reduce isolation for families and speed up children’s English language acquisition. Both music instructors, who are from Iraqi Kurdistan, recently completed master’s degrees in music at Western Michigan University, and have previously taught and toured with the Youth Orchestra of Iraq.
It is reported in St Petersburg that Valery Gergiev is building a 100-150 seat concert hall in the garden of his house in Repino, the suburb where Shostakovich used to live.
The hall will cost 150 million rubles – around $2 million – and Gergiev is paying for it himself.
The house, formerly a trade union rest home, was given to him by the Governor of St Petersburg in 2005.
Gergiev intends to give his first house concerts during the White Nights festival in June.
We’ve had a quick flip through the season and come up with these unmissables:
The BBC’s first ever Relaxed Prom is suitable for children and adults with autism, sensory and communication impairments and learning disabilities as well as individuals who are Deaf, hard of hearing, blind and partially sighted.
America’s most talked about young composer receives her first showcase in London on September 5.
Details of the BBC Proms have just been released here.
Other highlights includes two Vienna Phil concerts, with Daniel Harding and Michael Tilson Thomas, a brace from the Concertgebouworkest and their new music director Daniele Gatti, a pop-in from Pittsburgh with Anne-Sophie Mutter and from the Stockholm Phil with Renee Fleming… and debuts from the Cincinnati Symph and the orchestra of La Scala, Milan.
Well-known composers are, as a rule, either old or unfit.
Mark, who is 56, is renowned for the operas Greek and Anna Nicole. Help his cause if you can.
Turnage by Betty Freeman/LebrechtMusic&Arts
The violinist Nona Liddell died two days ago. She was 89
As founder and leader of the London Sinfonietta from 1970 to 1994, Nona was a champion of living composers, the more obtuse and unplayable the better. She was a pillar of musical life on the South Bank, a frequent soloist and a strong character, hidden behind an extremely private persona.
Before joining the Sinfonietta, she was leader of the English String Quartet for 16 years. She also taught at the Royal Academy of Music.
Her husband, the Philharmonia violinist Ivor McMahon, died in 1972. They are survived by a daughter.
