It’s Gil Bernal, famed for Duane Eddy’s Rebel Rouser and much else. He was 80.

The whole generation are on the way out. Earlier, we lost Frank Foster.

Here’s the LA Times obit for Bernal.

There’s a memorial service on August 28 at First United Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado, Pasadena.

 

Peter Dobrin, a determined reporter who’s following the unwinding of the Philadelphia Orchestra, has come up with a shocking stat.

The board has spent – wait for it – $2.4 million so far – on outside consultants who are taking it through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

The chief aim of the bankruptcy is to evade pension obligations to players and staff.

The entire exercise stinks to high heaven, and there’s no assurance that the orchestra will survive when it’s over. Deborah Borda, in the Lebrecht Interview this week, made the very strong point that Philly and its board have been stacking up problems for years. “The Board of Directors – these numbers were not a secret – people knew about them – they didn’t take more decisive action years ago.  The management agreed to pension packages that no other orchestra in the country could afford,” she said.  The problems won’t be solved overnight, or by means of oleaginous legal and financial consultants.

Here‘s Peter’s report. Prepare for a sinking heart.

Not to him

Nor to him

The news is that the Festival wants to pay homage to Leo Kirch, who went bust in the past decade and died to weeks ago, aged 88. In his pomp, he created a classical video company called Unitel with Herbert von Karajan in 1964. They fell out, fell in again, fell out, but the work was high quality and Kirch was a fan. he secured rights to the Boulez-Chereau centennial Ring at Bayreuth and worked closely with Leonard Bernstein. A lot of money flowed from his bank account to premier orchestras and conductors.

The Vienna Philharmonic and Pierre Boulez will pay tribute.

Frank Foster, the saxophonist who did arrangements for Sinatra and doubled with flautist Frank Wess in a number called Two Franks, is gone at 82.

His best-known number was Shiny Stockings. Hear it here. Obit here. More than anyone, he shaped the Count Basie sound.

 

Players in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra have defied senior management to sound out their support for jeopardised Dutch arts. We’re all in this together, they day. The Catalan orchestra has taken a 30% cut and cannot afford to replace sick or absent musicians.

Here’s a moving letter from the principal bassoon, Silvia Coricelli:

I am happy to send you our contribution to the “Soldier of Orange”
project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X_HrEbe4Gw

I learnt about this campaign through your blog (and Facebook) about a
month ago and proposed it to my orchestra. Pablo González, our Music
Director, and the Orchestra Manager were very enthusiastic, but the
higher ranks said no. The orchestra committee kept insisting and last
Friday the General Director agreed to let us do it.

Monday we were doing a recording and was our last day of work of this
season, so we had to get it all organized over the weekend. Maestro
González wasn’t in town, we asked the conductor doing the recording,
Antoni Ros Marbà, he agreed and so did the recording engineer.

Several of our Spanish musicians have studied in Holland hence this
project was very close to their hearts. The harp player wanted to
participate, she studied in Den Haag and is married to a Dutch, so she
made her own part.

Monday was very hectic, I was running around making the short videos,
we had to ask a retired musician to bring his video cameras (the one
that the Auditori offered didn’t work), and finally on the last
minutes of the session we recorded “Soldier”. I spent a couple of days
editing it and here it is.

We are suffering the consequences of the crisis as well, our budget
has been cut 30%. If a tutti string player gets sick they are not
replaced; auditions for several positions are on hold; no tours; for
next season they have programmed repertoire that doesn’t pay rights or
require extra players. But nothing compares to what’s happening in
Holland.

This project reminds me of what is happening here in Spain with the
movement called “15M” or “Spanish revolution”. I see this as a
reaction of the orchestras of the world against greedy and ignorant
politicians. We need each other and this is a good start!

Best wishes,

Silvia Coricelli
Principal bassoon
Barcelona Symphony Ochestra
www.fagotera.com

Canadian audiences are biting their fingernails about the Black Creek Festival, which has cancelled several events.

Among the dates in jeopardy are three concerts of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Between one Friday rehearsal in Toronto and Saturday performance, Mr Maazel will also conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Tanglewood. How does he do that? Here’s the festival’s version of his schedule:

He will rehearse the LSO in Toronto on Friday, August 26, fly by private jet to Boston that night and  conduct the BSO rehearsal Saturday afternoon and then head immediately to Toronto for that evening’s performance.  We’ve known about his other commitments from the beginning and have scheduled his BlackCreek dates accordingly.

Mr Maazel is 81 years old. What’s he trying to prove? I’ve asked him the question several times and never got a satisfactory answer. Maybe this is it:

The conductor Fabio Luisi, music director at Zurich Opera and principal guest at the Met, has issued a personal endorsement of Gidon Kremer’s attack on the machinations of the classical music industry and its manufacture of fake stars.

I present Fabio’s letter without commentary. His views on the British classical industry in particular will be widely supported. Here’s Fabio:

 

Dear Norman,

It is all about balancing business, audience reception and art – an old issue, if we think of “Wunderkinder” in the past. But now it is not so much about “Wunderkinder”, more about the managers’ (and audience’s) loss of capacity of discerning between talent, appearance and real musical maturity.
Take singers, for example. Could Jessye Norman have become Jessye Norman without her time spent in Düsseldorf as member of the Ensemble, allowing her to deepen the repertoire and to learn new roles away from the “big” (and dangerous) stages, and even making a pause for learning, refusing to sing opera for five years?
Or conductors: Karajan without having been in Aachen, Kleiber in Stuttgart, Thielemann as coach in Berlin and Bayreuth (and then in Nürnberg as conductor), emerging on the “big” podiums of important orchestras and opera houses relatively late.
We are now experiencing an attitude of  “the younger, the better”, insinuating the following message: if they conduct (or sing, or play) with such orchestras, in such opera houses, in TV, on DVD, they must really be geniuses. They are presented as such and the media swallow these PR-strategies, slavishly repeating pre-cooked sentences.
This means profit for PR-agencies, for artist management companies (sorry to say this, Norman – British companies have a lot of responsibility in this) and eventually for promoters and presenters as well.
I don’t blame institutions for being a part (the paying one, actually) in this circus: I probably would act alike, since my priority would be to sell tickets and to have artists in my season whom the public recognise. I blame those who sell as “art” something which is mainly “business”, and those who are not willing to tell (or maybe to see? even worse!) that “the emperor has no clothes”.
We see many young, gifted musicians who reach the most important music places in the world, pushed by managers and sought after by presenters who must constantly offer “fresh meat” to the audience: the next Netrebko, the next Pavarotti, the next Bernstein, the next Rubinstein, the next Oistrakh. They are “the nextes” and they don’t have time to be themselves, to develop to be themselves – many of them will disappear soon (we already have seen how many have disappeared after a couple of CDs, after concerts in Salzburg, Verbier, after productions in Milano, New York or London) although they might have talent and skills for a serious career.
This is the reason I appreciate this wonderful Gidon Kremer letter, because it is fresh, ironical, true and it comes from a real artist which constantly worked on himself trying to improve himself, refusing to be pushed by whomever.
Yours
Fabio
photo: Barbara Luisi