The board of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, based in Scranton, has cancelled the 2017-18 season.
The Philharmonic ended the 2016-2017 season with a $235,000 deficit and cannot find the $1.1 million it costs to stage another.
We hear that Petra Lang lost her voice and had to be covered from the wings by Ricarda Merbeth.
Petra made all the moves, Ricarda sang all the notes.
Both were richly applauded.
Thielemann conducted.
Eleanor Stubley, 57, associate dean of Graduate Studies at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, Montreal, has not been seen since Monday.
A sufferer from multiple sclerosis, she uses a wheelchair and drives a 2004 blue Dodge Grand Caravan, license plate number 238 RQL.
Stubley needs medication, which she did not take with her when she disappeared. She has brown hair and brown eyes, weights 90 pounds (41 kg), and speaks English and French. Anyone with information, please call Info-Crime Montreal at 514 393-1133.
From her current McGill’s page:
Her current research initiative, Reaching Beyond the Given (sites.music.mcgill.ca/es/), will culminate in a book/film project tentatively entitled Moving Words, Moving Hands. The work takes as its starting point the schism that has traditionally existed between the ways in which we describe and explain music in words and its experience in and through the body in performance. Building on the doubleness of her own hands as the hands of a scholar and a performer, she explores the relationships, resonances, and dissonances between the movements of her hands and those of a sculptor, dancer, and visual artist, among others as she builds musical worlds in performance. This work will, in turn, be used to expand traditional musical discourses to include musical performance and the embodied cognition that lies at the heart of the nature of music. Her phenomenological approach has been the subject of an extensive analysis in Wayne Bowman’s, Philosophical Perspectives of Music (Oxford University Press) and has been applauded for the way in which it uses film as a medium for integrating her artistry as conductor with the scholarly interests of her hand as a writer and for the ways in which research-creation projects use the exploration of movement in a variety of different artistic media to explore the infinite possibilities of the hand and music in all of its variety.
UPDATE: Ends sadly.
General Director Charles Mackay, 67, has decided to retire after 11 years in the job:
Dear Friends,
Earlier this afternoon during our quarterly meeting, I advised the Santa Fe Opera Board of Directors that I will conclude my tenure as General Director at the end of next September, after our 2018 season. I wanted to let you know immediately of this decision, which I’ve made after a great deal of thought about the timing for such a transition.
Next season marks fifty years for my career in opera, including two decades with The Santa Fe Opera and ten years as General Director here. As I hope you know, this company has been dear to me since my first Youth Night performance of Die Fledermaus at the age of nine. After that unforgettable evening I was hooked, and thus began a lifelong love affair with The Santa Fe Opera, where I started as a 13-year-old parking lot attendant and went on to positions with the orchestra, backstage, and in the business office. Returning home to lead this company was an incredible honor, and I am deeply grateful as I reflect on my years here.
Thanks to your wonderful generosity and friendship, this company is stronger in every way than ever before. So much has been accomplished thanks to so many, and I am excited to watch — from here in Santa Fe! — as The Santa Fe Opera moves forward under new leadership.
As I look ahead, tickets for our exciting 2018 season are on sale and we will soon celebrate the very successful completion of our $45 million Setting the Stage campaign. Beyond this, I am pleased to report that the 2019 season is planned, with the 2020 season nearly set, too. I firmly believe that The Santa Fe Opera is well positioned to build on its tradition of excellence and will work with the Board to ensure a smooth transition.
For now, it is back to work. I look forward to seeing many of you during the remaining weeks of this season — one that I hope you have enjoyed as much as I have.
Gratefully,
General Director
Bruce Zemsky, senior partner in the New York agency Zemsky Green, died on August 6.
The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome.
The agency has a terrific list of singers, whom Bruce served to the best of his ability.
They included Jonas Kaufmann, Pretty Yende, Anja Harteros, Ermonela Jaho, Nino Machaidze, Eva Maria Westbroek, Gwyneth Jones, Charles Castronovo, Brandon Jovanovich and Erwin Schrott (pictured with him).
He tended to sign his artists for recordings with Sony Classical.
An opera fanatic he lived for the art, having no close family.
He had a private funeral on Thursday at Riverside Chapel in New York.
UPDATE: Kaufmann pays tribute.
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Now here’s a surprise. A new release from the Opera Rara label usually consists of some bel canto work that has languished forgotten in a vault since its premiere 160 years ago, and usually for good reason (as becomes apparent when you’re halfway through the unreviewable second disc). This package, though, is different: a pair of debut releases by two fast-rising singers, soprano and tenor, mingling well-known arias with the fairly obscure.
Read on here.
And here.
And here.
Sample:
Interview here.
The contemporary music label Kairos has posted the following notice:
Peter Oswald, founder of our label KAIROS, died on 3 August 2017. His love for new music, his enthusiasm for young composers and his belief in the power of the arts will be an ongoing inspiration for our future work for KAIROS.
Ostwald died during the night. He founded KAIROS in 1999 with Barbara Fränzen, his wife. The produced recordings by living, modernist composers, among them Furrer, Scelsi, Lachenmann, Saariaho, Olga Neuwirth and Rebecca Saunders.
The pianist announced in April that he was taking three months off with an arm injury.
It appears his recovery is taking longer than expected.
We hear he has cancelled US dates in the second week of September, starting with the Charlotte Symphony.
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in London is known as the national musicians’ church.
It has a side-chapel with windows dedicated to various British musicians, the church holds Henry Wood’s ashes and it has a memorial book for musicians who die. It also has a terrific acoustic and is hired for concerts by many amateur and professional groups
That’s nice. What follows is not so nice.
The church has recently written to all the choirs and orchestras who hire it to say they are no longer welcome.
‘This has not been an easy decision,’ writes the Reverend David Ingall, not saying why. Apparently, there is an evangelical group which is prepared to pay more for hirings than musicians can afford.
‘Our ministry as the National Musicians Church continues to be a core part of our Church’s identity and vision,’ continues the Reverend. However: ‘I am aware that you do already have bookings in the calendar for 2018 and we would be very grateful if you were able to find an alternative venue.’
Basically, the musicians have been given the bum’s rush by St Sepulchre’s.
It should be known in future as the National Musicians Church-without-musicians.
UPDATE: There’s a petition going round to reverse the decision. Sign here.
There have been some drop-offs from the 2014 list – and some important add-ons.
Here’s our selection of the nicest, kindest, smartest, quickest press offices of 2017.
1 La Scala, Milan
All warm and cuddly since Chailly became music director
2 Chicago Symphony
A sleek, swift Muti machine
3 Salzburg Festival
The coffee’s on the counter before you’ve opened your mouth.
4 Berlin Philharmonic
Efficient as you’d expect, now with added Kirill smiles
5 Vienna State Opera
Fast, frank and fantastically professional
6 Boston Symphony
Busily proactive, literate and unfusty
7 Bavarian State Opera
Anything Vienna can do, we can…
8 Los Angeles Philharmonic
Still on the ball but less to do now Borda’s gone and Gustavo’s protecting his Caracas.
9 Garsington Festival
Model press operation, alert and good at follow-through
10 Dallas Opera
Feisty, fast and fearless
And the worst? Click here.
Smart move:
Hamburg, 11 August 2017: To mark the end of the Hamburg summer holidays, for one week only the Elbphilharmonie is screening live broadcasts from the Grand Hall on its forecourt on the banks of the River Elbe, offering free public screenings of five concerts. From Sunday to Thursday, 27–31 August, live performances by four international orchestras will be broadcast, bringing the three-week »Elbphilharmonie Summer« series to a close. The concerts feature the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yu Long and with star violinist Maxim Vengerov, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic under Kristjan Järvi, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester under Ingo Metzmacher and the Ensemble Anima Eterna Brugge. On 1 September, the »Opening Night« with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, its chief conductor Thomas Hengelbrock and the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer also takes place in the open air.
It has been a while since we last published a list of the least helpful music and opera press offices and, with some satisfaction we can report improvements in four major institutions. The Vienna State Opera has become a model of cooperation (that may change under the incoming management) and the Kennedy Center has received staff upgrades from Chicago. The Boston Symphony now knows a news story from a hole in the ground and the Berlin Phil are totally on the ball. These four have lost their coveted places in the 2017 list of worst press offices.
On the debit side, the New York Philharmonic press office draws the 2017 wooden spoon for offering a Trumpist half-lie to our straightforward question, Bayreuth remains magnificently obstructive and the Met’s press operation still runs via the back passage of the New York Times.
So, here’s the 2017 Slipped Disc list of the worst press offices:
1 New York Philharmonic
Gold standard bad
2 Bayreuth Festival
Rhinegold bad
3 Metropolitan Opera
Plain bad
4 Opéra de Paris
Quoi? Vous voulez quoi, Monsieur?
5 Van Cliburn Competition
Slow, dumb and sometimes downright rude
6 Aix-en-Provence Festival
Please leave a message
7 La Monnaie, Brussels
Great website, no media initiative
8 Dutch National Opera
We’re very busy. We’ll contact you once the production is over
9 Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Geneva
We have absolutely no comment about anything.
10 Teatro Real, Madrid
Siesta.
Now check out the 2017 list of the best press offices.