The artistic director of London’s sinking South Bank Centre has gone overboard.
press release:
Jude Kelly CBE (pic, left) has announced that, after 12 years at the artistic helm of the UK’s largest arts centre, she will leave Southbank Centre in May following the reopening of the Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room. Jude will be moving on to focus on the worldwide development of the influential festival she founded in 2010, WOW – Women of the World.
We hear that the musical Bat Out of Hell which was meant to be playing at the Coliseum throughout this summer has been cancelled.
English National Opera is keen to stress that it won’t be out of pocket as these things get covered usually by insurance.
But it throws the schedule into chaos, and probably the budgets as well.
The company just cannot climb out of crisis.
We also hear that the musical Chess, which is due to start rehearsing at ENO next month, has yet to find a cast.
It’s getting tense out there.
I have written an essay for The Spectator this week on the role that sex plays in the life and work of the international conductor. It is not unconnected to recent events.
It starts like this:
I once knew a great conductor who never boarded a plane to a new orchestra without a tube of lube in his pocket. Just in case he got lucky (which he often did)….
Read on here.
The orchestra has taken the first step out of decline by appointing a brilliant young music director with top credentials and international connections.
But this is just the beginning.
Now they need to find a manager of the same generation who will reinvent the orchestra’s role both at home and abroad. Outside the Jewish diaspora, where the IPO performs promotional tours, the orchestra has no international brand. It needs to make waves in East Asia and to project a totally different image in Europe.
There are dozens of young Israelis working in music in Berlin, Paris and London. One of them needs to be picked.
Second, the orchestra must diversify. There have been a couple of foreign players in the orchestra but no Israeli Arab has been admitted either to the playing staff or (so far as I am aware) to the administration. That much change.
Third, the programming has to be completely reconfigured. For years, the IPO has played to the granny audience – the loyal subscribers who go to concerts just as they once did in Germany and Russia. The IPO has signally failed to embed its purpose in second and third-generation Israelis. That will be the biggest challenge for Lahav Shani.
I think he’s up to it.
The new INO had lift-off this week in Dublin.
Its artistic director Fergus Sheil said that the company ‘wants to give pride of place to Irish singers and celebrate their work at home in Ireland the way it is celebrated in leading opera houses around the world. We want to bring our creative talent to venues large and small, to communities around the country, and create thrilling experiences that will attract new audiences to our uniquely multi-faceted artform.’
Tours are planned to Cork, Dún Laoghaire, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, London, Navan, Sligo, Tralee and Wexford.
Now cross the Channel.
The Royal Opera House, which receives £25 million a year from the UK taxpayer, never leaves London.
And its policy for many years has been to train, advance and promote singers who are not British.
The best young British singers have to find training places abroad, mostly in the EU.
Those places may be closed to them after Brexit.
Your thoughts, please.
The conductor Jonathan Govias has been informed that the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra is about to be disbanded. The TCYO is the second flagship orchestra of El Sistema, after the Simon Bolivar.
Some of its players will be merged into the Caracas youth orchestra.
It appears to be another sign that Sistema has fallen into disfavour with the Marxist regime. The Bolivar orchestra has been withdrawn from its summer tour of Europe. The conductor Gustavo Dudamel is now persona non grata.
Read on here.
The highly promising Alexander Ullman, 26, has won an agency contract with Cami Music, offshoot of the New York giant, Cami.
They are playing up his Britishness with a publicity photo featuring a classic London cab.
The orchestra tonight announced Lahav Shani as the next music director, succeeding the veteran Zubin Mehta, who retires in 2019.
It’s a bold choice and a commendable one.
Shani, who will be 29 when he takes over in September, is also music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
He has grown up with members of the Israel Phil, knows and the pluses and minuses, and is gifted enough to put right the many things that have ossified during decades when – as in the peace process – no progress has been made.
The players are to be congratulated on their choice.
Slipped Disc tipped Lahav as one of two front runners for the post.
The orchestra announced today that Christopher Rex (pictured) will retire next month and Reid Harris in June.
Both were appointed in 1979.
Music Director Robert Spano said: ‘I will personally miss them very much, for they have been magnificent musical partners, and often wise counsel.’
It is rare for an orchestra to change two string principals at once. Atlanta’s choices will be interesting.
Marlene VerPlanck, one of the most versatile performers of American art, jazz and pop songs, has been silenced by pancreatic cancer. She died on Sunday, January 14. Tribute page here.
After an eight-year retirement, Tommy is back in studio.
That ought to put a smile on everyone’s face.
Press release just in from Sony:
New York / Berlin, January 17, 2018
When bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff announced his retirement from public performance as a Lieder singer in 2012, he left a hole in both the jazz and the classical worlds, which until today has not been filled. But the three-time Grammy Award-winning artist was sure that the time was right because he had no other choice. “It is no secret that extreme feelings make you speechless. After the death of my brother, my voice literally left me and I felt that I could no longer fulfill the expectations I had of myself and my artistry. That’s why I gave up my career as a classical singer. Luckily, my voice came slowly back to me, and today I stand here as a very happy person and I dedicate this new album to my brother Michael.”
Sony Classical is proud to be able to join Thomas Quasthoff on his return to the recording studio. The first album, due for release in May 2018, will be a diverse programme of jazz classics with the celebrated NDR Bigband – The Hamburg Radio Jazz Orchestra and his trio partners Frank Chastenier, Dieter Ilg and Wolfgang Haffner.
From Hungary’s Daily News:
The first premier at the Hungarian State Opera might go down in opera history as a world sensation. András Almási-Tóth is to put The Gershwins®’ Porgy and Bess® on stage with Hungarian singers at the Erkel Theatre thus breaking the restriction of almost forty years that only allowed all-black casts to perform the piece….
Read on here.
Almost too shocking for words.
And this: This restriction is broken by the Hungarian State Opera in January 2018 following a two-year negotiation with the copyright holders. Having got the permission, the Opera produces the Gershwins®’ masterpiece with excellent Hungarian singers.
