I am bereft by reports of the death of Sue Steward, a formidable writer on world music and a fantastic photographer.
Sue was among the first people I hired at the former Evening Standard and her reports and reviews always brought a smile to the page. She was warm, witty, charmingly naive and incredibly humane.
As a young woman she hung out with the punk revolution and wrote perceptively about its aims. Later, she travelled the world, delving into indigenous musics. She was an infallible authority on Cuba. She also had an acute eye for a picture.
Sue suffered a stroke earlier this week. Her death has been reported on her Facebook page. Sue was 70.
Anyone who has spent time with Gustavo Dudamel is left in no doubt that he is a true believer He believes in the power of music to relieve social injustice. He believes in the ideals of the Sistema programme from which he emerged, in the genius of its founder Jose Antonio Abreu and in the egalitarian side of Venezuela’s revolutionary leader, Hugo Chavez.
He adored Chavez and wept openly at his funeral.
Chavez, as revolutionary leaders go, was not the worst. He observed most of the trappings of democracy and held reasonably fair elections. He also maintained close relations with pariah regimes – Iran, North Korea and the like – and enjoyed baiting the USA. Only towards the end of his life did the nastier side start of Chavism to emerge as the middle-classes were terrorised by armed thugs and hounded out of the country.
Dudamel turned a blind eye to these violations and focussed on the music.
He embraced Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, a man with no regard for democracy or human rights and no concern for anything except power. Dudamel kept his silence as civilians were murdered by Maduro’s thugs and the population starved into near-submission. He lives in Los Angeles, away from the melee.
So what prompted Dudamel to switch sides? He was apparently impressed by the persistence of mass demonstrations against the regime, and outraged by the murder of a Sistema musician. He has not, in any way, broken with Venezuela and his only intervention so far has been to call for peace and dialogue.
But that, for Maduro, makes him an enemy of the people.
There is no turning back. Dudamel is no dissident, but he has been prompted by conscience to speak out. Those of us who admire Dudamel as a musician and a man will be heartened by his stance. It will not have been easy for him to abandon the role of regime poster-boy and accept its abuse. He does not know whether it its safe for him to return to Venezuela.
But he has stood, once again, for his beliefs in human rights and justice, and he will now be aware that, like every true artist, he is fundamentally an outsider.
Never heard of it?
Mozart called it the Spattisches Klavier, after a maker of his time.
The Italians knew it as the cembalo angelico.
Now, the Russian pianist Alexei Lyubimov has recorded a set of solo works by C P E Bach who is believed to have written specifically for a Spath piano.
It’s not the first such recording on a profile label – there was one last year on BIS – but sometimes it’s the second swallow that heralds the coming of spring.
The death is reported of the US guitarist and composer John Abercrombie, an understated niche legend who made two dozen albums for the boutique Munich label, ECM. He was 72.
His debut album Timeless is an epic of progressive jazz.
Details of the Hall’s opening gala:
We are excited to inform you that legendary jazz artist Chick Corea will join Lang Lang as featured soloists in a two-piano arrangement of Gershwin’sRhapsody in Bluewith The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as part of the Opening Night Gala concert on Wednesday, October 4.
Also performing at the keyboard with Lang Lang during the piece will be 14-year-old pianist Maxim Lando, an alumnus of the Lang Lang Foundation’s Young Scholars Program. Lando will partner with Lang Lang, as he continues to recover from an inflammation of his left arm.
Why is Yannick playing along with this charade?
The RPO have chosen Nicolas Fleury as their new principal horn. He starts next week.
The swing-band vocalist Bea Wain, who put words to Debussy’s Reverie to the horror of the composer’s estate, has died at a great age.
President Maduro has claimed that Dudamel owes everything to El Sistema, which his government owns, and will be punished for his dissent.
There has been no response to the Dudamel sanctions from the Sistema founder, Jose Antonio Abreu.
Or from Sistema graduates with international careers in Europe and the US.
Or, shamefully, from Sistema’s adulators and partners in other countries.
Not a word from Julian Lloyd Webber, for instance, the organisation’s chief promoter in the UK.
Or from Sir Simon Rattle and Daniel Barenboim, Dudamel’s good friends. (Let alone Jeremy Corbyn, the Maduro regime’s biggest supporter).
Or from Sistema’s apologists in the US, Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth.
This is not a time for silence.
Musicians who believe in justice and human rights need to make their voices heard.
Now.
The opera and musicals singer Gregory Cross has been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He has been given eight months to live.
His only hope is an experimental form of cancer surgery called IRE (Irreversible Electroporation/NanoKnife), which uses electrical impulses to shrink tumours and is being developed in the UK and Germany.
Ace, which is slightly counter-cultural, wants us to know that all of its hotels in eight US cities and a ninth in London will be playing nothing but John Cage on September 5, the composer’s 105th birthday.
‘We will be broadcasting a wide selection of works from across Cage’s career, curated by the label Mode Records. Selections will be playing in a random order at each property for 24 hours, starting at midnight local time,’ say Ace. ‘We invite guests to immerse themselves in a day-long sonic experience.’
From Lyor Cohen, Youtube’s global head of music:
It’s not enough for YouTube to say that it’s paid over $1 billion to the industry from ads. We (the labels, publishers and YouTube) must shine a light on artist royalties, show them how much they make from ads compared to subscriptions by geography and see how high their revenue is in the U.S. and compared to other services.
For instance, critics complain YouTube isn’t paying enough money for ad-supported streams compared to Spotify or Pandora. I was one of them! Then I got here and looked at the numbers myself.
At over $3 per thousand streams in the U.S., YouTube is paying out more than other ad supported services.
Are you getting $3 per 1,000 clicks?
Heather Main, a former opera singer, now trains horses to win races.
She believes that teaching Mozart to her four-legged friends helped her to win 440-1 treble at Chepstow.
