Christie’s Kensington are putting on sale a handwritten letter from Macca, dated August 12, 1960, asking an unknown drummer to join this group of his called the Beatles that’s about to go off and play some gigs in Hamburg.
It seems drums was always the trickiest position to fill, until Brian Epstein came up with Ringo.
Nov 11 – Drummer_advert_ROCK+POP.rel
I was chatting last night at DCMM-2011 to Karim Wasfi, conductor, director general and cello soloist of the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra. He regenerated the orchestra under government auspices in 2004 and played on through car bombs and other horrors, telling the players that they were the nation’s hope of normality.
Musicians often came late, held up at barricades or scenes of outrage, but rehearsals started on time and proceeded regardless. The worst, said Karim, was when the power wnent down for three days and the morgue across the road wafted across sickening smells of decomposing bodies.
And the music played on.
Today, the INSO has 140 musicians and gives two classical concerts a month.
Another happy encounter was with Maria Arnaout, general director of the Damascus Opera House. She produces two operas a year and a stage musical. The last was Oliver! with real-life orphans from a state institution. Fagin was sung by a member of a heavy metal band.
picture: Damascus Opera House
Syrian Actors Elias Ailaneh (Right), And Elie Halabi Performing Respectively In The Roles Of Oliver Twist And The Artful Dodger In The Musical ‘Oliver’ At The Opera House In Damascus. (AFP)
Not many outside the French-speaking world will notice but Georges Brassens would have been 90 on October 22 – had he not died 30 years ago on October 29.
Brassens was the roughest, rudest, funniest of the French chansonniers. His song about the gorilla who breaks out of the zoo and rapes a vicious judge is a counter-cultural classic. His attacks on the bourgeoisie are sharper than Marx.
Sadly, he has hardly been translated. So here are a pair of youtubes to commemorate his time of year.
Mariss Jansons conducted a performance in Munich, where Mahler premiered the work in September 2010. Here‘s a review.
Somehow, the original looks more exciting.
photo: Lebrecht Music & Arts
‘What a great country and experience !’ writes Domingo of his new best friends in Oman. Would he sing the same tune if they were African and poor?
Here‘s a report of his day in Arabic.
Among the tawdry stars lining up in Grozny to entertain the bloodstained president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, on his 35th birthday ten days ago was the fallen angel of classical crossover, Vanessa-Mae.
Kadyrov has told the Moscow Times that the lavish celebrations were funded by personal friends and supporters. Previously, he called it a gift from Allah.
Whatever. The Hollywood actress Hilary Swank has apologised to her fans for attending and donated her fee to charity. The British rock musician Seal says he knows nothing about politics and has no regrets.
And Vanessa-Mae? No sense in asking her to give the blood money she took to a good cause. She is punished enough by the world getting to know that she now has to scrape away for a living before the Chechen slaughterer.
Colombia is streaming its first-ever performance of Mahler’s eighth symphony. Here’s more from Dianne Winsor:
Mahler 8 will be performed for the first time in Colombia Oct. 15/16! Maestro Enrique Diemecke of Mexico will lead the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá in this premiere performance. In Latin America, Mahler 8 has previously been performed only in Venezuela, Argentina & Mexico.
The Colombians have planned well, it appears, for the space required to present this enormous symphony. Here’s a link with a blueprint of the stage modifications they’ve implemented for their performances:
http://www.filarmonicabogota.gov.co/web2011/mahler/transmision.html
The Colombian premiere will be streamed live, broadcast on radio & television & presented on giant screens in parks throughout the country, in the cities of Bogotá, Medellín, Cali & Pereira. Here’s more info in English:
Just as I had written a piece observing how well La Scala was doing without a music director, the announcement comes through tonight that Daniel Barenboim is to be the new boss.
The story is broken in El Pais by Jesus Luiz Mantilla.
I guess Barenboim missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize and settled for Milan as second best.
La Monnaie, crowned last week as Opera House of the Year, is streaming all of this year’s productions free online, reports InterMezzo.
Among them is Cherubini’s Medée, staged by Krzystof Warlikowski, with the German soprano Nadja Michael as the heroine dressed up to scare the living daylights out of you in an Amy outfit, hairstyle and tattoos.
Here she is in some other challenging roles:
and is that Mahler’s head she’s holding?
Sombre news has reached me from South Korea that the nation’s biggest pop idol is being called up into the army.
His real name is Jung Ji-Hoon and he is best known as Rain. Someone dubbed him Asia’s Justin Timberlake. That may take some living down.
Why they’ve called him up now I can’t work out. He’s 29, too old to be doing square-bashing. Maybe the draft board sang to him Doncha’ Think It’s Time
In a farewell to his fans, Rain said: ‘Thank you for the ten years of love.’
Ah, sweet.
Want to know why Placido Domingo is conducting, not singing, at tonight’s opening of the Royal Opera House in Muscat?
It was all set up by Michael Kaiser in Washington, apparently. Read the AP story.
There’s Renee on honeymoon and Yo Yo still to come.
And Domingo will sing a gala recital on October 18 ‘with Sopranos Angel Blue and Micaela Oeste & Spanish & Classical Dancer Núria Pomares
Accompanied by Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Eugene Kohn’.
