Professor D. Thomas Toner resigned this weekend as chair of the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Vermont after a dozen classes were cut to save budget.

The college is struggling with a potential $4 million deficit. The saving on music classes is $50,000.

Read here.

 

 

 

From Emily Ross:

I have this horrible situation with Brussels Airlines and could use some advice. They lost my suitcase three months ago which had, amongst other things, all my reed-making equipment and cane in. The total value lost is over 2,500€. After months of phone calls, emails and waiting, they’ve now come back to me saying that due to me not being able to provide receipts, they’re going to give me 600€ as a gesture of goodwill.

Obviously this doesn’t even cover half of what was lost which also included many clothes, concert dresses + shoes and toiletries/makeup etc. I simply do not have the funds to replace all of this and need a better solution from them. I’ve called and emailed to complain and say how unacceptable this is. I don’t know what my rights are when it comes to these things, and I fear I’m about to be massively fucked over by a greedy company, whose fault it is in the first place!

Any help/advice would be massively appreciated!

We have been notified of the death on November 17 of Conrad Wilson, music critic for many years of The Scotsman and later of the Herald.

Conrad had just turned 85.

As well as reviewing music in the Scotsman, he also had a food and wine column.

He published a biography of the conductor Alexander Gibson and histories of the national orchestra and the national opera. I commissioned him 25 years ago to write a biography of Puccini for Phaidon’s 20th century composer series. The result sparkled with merriment and appreciation. He was a lovely colleague, a joy to work with.

 

 

 

The doubly-headless Dallas Symphony has named Kim Noltemy, COO of the Boston Symphony, as its new president. She starts work in January.

Noltemy has been in charge of Boston’s sigital marketing, among other strategic areas.

Her first priority in Dallas will be to land a music director to replace the departing Jaap Van Zweden.

 

That leaves just five top US orchestras desperately seeking a chief exec.

Kerem Hasan, 25,  has just been awarded the Aspen Conductor Prize 2018.

Winner of the 2017 Salzburg Nestle conducting award, Kerem is the fastest moving young UK baton of the year.

The London Contemporary Music Festival has unearthed a feminist porn film scored by Pauline Oliveros, the eminent experimentalist composer who died last year.

The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop was directed by Annie Sprinkle and Maria Beatty, and premiered at The Kitchen in 1992. Festival sources describe the score as ‘ravishing’.

Those of delicate disposition can watch the film with their eyes closed.

The showing is on 8 December at Ambika P3 on Marylebone Road. Tickets can be obtained here.

The director Ramin Gray, a contemporary opera pioneer, is being investigated by the Young Vic company after several women came forward with allegations of sexual misbehaviour.

The Young Vic said: ‘As soon as we were made aware of allegations, all of which related to historic events, the Young Vic and in consultation with Equity, Actors Touring Company have initiated an independent investigation.’

Gray, 54,  directed Gerald Barry’s opera The Importance of Being Earnest at Covent Garden in 2013. He has also staged the world premiere of  Beat Furrer’s La bianca notte and the European premiere of Brett Dean’s Bliss.

photo © ROH / Stephen Cummiskey

Reports coming from the Russian FSB allege that Yulia Kulakova, director general of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Philharmonic, has admitted to embezzling orchestra funds by leasing out equipment for a cancelled Dmitri Hvorostovksy concert and pocketing the income.

Read more here.  

Criminal charges in Putin’s Russia are sometimes used to break political dissidents.

 

 

 

Tom Morris has decided to retire from the Ojai Music Festival in 2019, two years before his contract expires.

The former chief exec of the Cleveland and Boston Symphony Orchestras has transformed the California festival by the original policy of having a new artistic director every year.

He will be 75 when he steps down.

 

 

The LSO has a little list.

Far too short, we think.

What about Borodin the chemist, John Cage the mycologist, Gieseking the lepidopterist, Paderewski the prime minister, Hershel and Saint-Saens the astronomers, Xenakis the architect, Gershwin and Schoenberg the painters?

Any more?

 

 

Theodore Wiprud has announced he is leaving as head of education at the NY Phil after 13 years.

‘I’m going to wrap it up in early February, with our Young People’s Concerts for Schools about the Harlem Renaissance,’ he says.

Safe to assume that Debora Borda has soemthing in mind more akin to the Los Angeles YOLA program.

 

Firebird, this week, in Redding, California.

Conductor, Scott Seaton.