Dina Gilbert has been chosen as music director of the Kamloops Symphony in British Columbia.

She was assistant conductor to Kent Nagano at the Montreal Symphony from 2013-16 and is represented by the Tokyo agency, Kajimoto.


Photo: Nadia Zheng

Work by ‘historic women composers’ are to be performed by four London orchestras in the coming seasons, thanks to a new booster fund. See press release below:

The Association of British Orchestras has announced the first recipients from a new fund, ‘Sirens’, with four awards made to UK orchestras for projects to raise the awareness of historic women composers.

Diana Ambache, whose generosity has made the scheme possible, said:

“The ABO Sirens programme aims to push towards fairness and a richer picture of our musical heritage. Good music is good music, and there’s plenty to enjoy, discover and rediscover with this scheme featuring fascinating and beautiful works by women from our history. This will change our musical appreciation to a much fuller experience.”

The Philharmonia Orchestra will include Maria Antonia Walpurgis’s Sinfonia to Talestri, Queen of the Amazon in their flagship Key Stage 2 concert and engagement project Orchestra Unwrapped. The funding will enable further exploration in schools of the extraordinary achievements of this German aristocrat-musician.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra will celebrate the work of Dame Ethel Smyth during its 2019/20 season.  The virtuosic Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra will introduce the work of this composer, political activist and suffragette, to a new generation.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will perform works by Germaine Tailleferre and Cécile Chaminade in three performances in Liverpool and Preston in 2018, conducted by Jessica Cottis. The project will also include adult learning workshops, work with the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company, including a conducting workshop with Cottis and composition workshops with female composers.

Southbank Sinfonia and conductor Rebecca Miller will celebrate Dorothy Howell, whose exhilarating music Henry Wood championed at the Proms, but was then lost to obscurity.  Selected pieces will be heard again in an open workshop in Autumn 2018 and consequent Spring 2019 concert, facilitated by access to a new family archive.

SIRENS The ABO Trust received a generous gift from Diana Ambache in 2016 to run a new fund, Sirens, which aims to raise awareness and appreciation of the music written by historical women from around the world. Annual grants will be allocated according to the range and value of each project. Each year over 10 years up to £19,000 will be shared between 4 to 5 projects for concerts, tours, recordings and education work deemed to be doing most to advance and promote the understanding of music by women.

 

The Italian Ferruccio Furlanetto has decided that Boris Ismailov in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is not for him. The Salzburg festival has called in a Bolshoi bass, Dmitry Ulyanov .

And the Russian tenor Maxim Aksenov has been replaced as Sergei in the Shostakovih opera by the American Brandon Jovanovich.

Nina Stemme sings the title role. Mariss Jansons conducts.

The first newspaper review this morning of Kaufmann’s role debut says it ranks with the finest.

Barry Millington writes in the Standard freesheet:

​For perfectly sound reasons, the Otello in Verdi’s opera falls prey to jealousy even more precipitately than his Shakespearian counterpart. Rarely has that gnawing suspicion seemed as convincing or moving as in the keenly awaited portrayal by Jonas Kaufmann, making his debut in the role, as directed by Keith Warner. Kaufmann may occasionally resort to stock gestures but he modulates effortlessly between the amorous and the unhinged, grippingly charting the character’s psychological decline.

Warner’s thought-provoking production, with stylishly abstract, Moorish-inflected sets by Boris Kudlicka and elegantly timeless costumes by Kaspar Glarner, constantly deepens the perspective…

No other reviews in yet.

Were you there?

UPDATE: NY Times gets in first

press release:

Washington National Opera (WNO) and its Executive Director Michael L. Mael today announce that Music Director Philippe Auguin will become Music Director Emeritus of the WNO Orchestra at the beginning of the 2018–2019 season. Auguin’s position as Music Director will not be extended after the conclusion of the company’s 2017–2018 season. He will then have completed eight seasons as WNO’s Music Director, having conducted 17 productions—including WNO’s first-ever complete cycles of Wagner’s epic The Ring of the Nibelung—and having filled 10 positions in the orchestra, including three principals, an assistant concertmaster, and an assistant principal.

The German-based Capella Trinitatis has posted a notice of the death today of their harpsichordist and conductor, Ludger Rémy. He was 68.

A student of Kenneth Gilbert, Rémy has been professor of early music at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden since 1998.

He recorded several concertos by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Against the backdrop of contemptible articles in the Times and Metro newspapers, depicting operagoers as a champagne-swilling mob oblivious to the poor, general director Michael Volpe sets out the facts today about the company’s accessibility policy.

Sample:

Our first accessible ticket scheme at OHP, introduced over ten years ago, was free tickets for those aged seven to 18, including an accompanying parent for those under 16. This was joined soon after by an equivalent scheme for patrons aged 60 and over, aimed at mobile, active retirees who are not flush with cash.

In total 1,000 free tickets are given to young and older audiences per season, and both schemes are fully subscribed every year. Many parents have told us that introducing their children to opera for free has ensured their family enjoys opera before they invest in more expensive tickets.

Read the full article here.

The image makers reveal the tricks of their trade (12 cameras, 120 frames per second).

Not for the pure of heart. Not even sure it does much for the brand.

An 1855 George Gemunder violin, left by its rushed owner at a train station on Saturday, has been recovered by police together with its $6,000 bow after a stranger walked away with it.

The instrument belongs to Amy Sims, a freelance violinist. ‘I use that violin every day, and I don’t have a backup instrument,’ she said.

Here’s the picture of a suspect who was originally sought by police but has now been cleared.

Alexei Malobrodsky, former head of the Gogol Centre theatre, has been arrested for alleged fraud in an investigation that previously swept up the theatre’s present artistic director, Kirill Serebrennikov.

Serebrennikov has been released, reportedly on Putin’s orders.

Report here.

Te National Lottery is not as popular as it was and the arts wll suffer in cnsequence.

Last year, Arts Council England (ACE) received £266m in Lottery money, down £38m on the year before.

Details here.

Anton Wendler joined the Vienna State Opera in 1972 as a stage assistant, hoping for a singing break.

He went on to perform 41 roles in 36 works on 561 nights.

Dr Wendler died on June 15, aged 82.