The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra survived the overnight departure of its president a few months back. It wasn’t taking any risks on the music director.
Manfred Honeck was given a contract renewal to 2020, and told to sign. He has been there four years, so far, and has turned insitutional uncertainty into sure-footed confidence.
Jodie Christian, who played all the way through from bebop to post-modern, has died aged 80. He was founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, long may it advance without him.
He worked with Lester Young, Johnny Griffin, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Eddie Harris, Sonny Rollins, Don Byas, Milt Jackson, Benny Carter, Frank Foster, Red Holloway, Teddy Edwards, Leo Parker, Ira Sullivan and so many more.
Here he is, four years ago, at Montreux.
Many have wondered how Whitney Houston brought off the national anthem so effortlessly at the 1991 Superbowl, and some malign souls have accused her of all sorts of deceits – lip-synching, post-dubbing, whatever.
Now the truth is out. Her career-long music director, Rickey Minor, talked about her on The Tonight Show with Jan Leno, where he is bandleader.
‘That was one take,’ he swore. Read on here. Listen to the anthem here.
No fuss, just the decent thing to do.
They were clearing out a council building in Loughborough, Leics, when someone caught sight of a musical score. Luckily, they did not throw it on a skip. It turns out to be the original Carillon Chimes, a memorial for Great War dead, written in July 1923.
Next stop: the auction house. More here and here.
It’s a top-drawer Daily Mail story: pseudo-science meets pseudo-celebrity with a dash of genocide and bodily waste. The headline:
Beethoven’s last movement: Composer creates song based on DNA from hair clippings that survived Auschwitz hidden inside prisoner’s body
Just yuk. Read on, if you must.
Edita Gruberova told her fans that she will sing for the last time at the Bavarian State Opera on July 27, 2014. It sounds pretty close to the outbreak of a world war centenary.
‘I have the impression the State Opera has no further interest in working together,’ she said. There was no comment from the State Opera. Not even a confirmatory tweet.
The Bratislava-born soprano, 65, has been vastly popular with Vienna and Munich audiences since her debut in 1969.
After cancelling three concerts in Cleveland, Pierre Boulez has informed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that his opthalmologist will not permit him to conduct next week. Here’s what subscribers were told:
Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Pierre Boulez has withdrawn from
his upcoming CSO appearances on the advice of his ophthalmologist.
Performances that are affected include the Beyond the Score series
presentations on February 24 and 26 and the CSO subscription concerts
on February 25, 28 and March 1, 2 and 3. There are no changes to the
performance programs, cast, or theatrical staging.
Replacing Maestro Boulez and each making their CSO conducting debut
are U.S.-based Romanian conductor Cristian Macelaru (February 24, 25,
26 and 28) and British conductor Jonathan Nott (March 1-3).
I’ve been told that Boulez, 87 next month, is receiving further treatment in Cleveland before flying home to France. We wish him well.
Angry music teachers have drawn our attention to a line in the statement by Peter Benjamin, the videographer with a sex crime in his past whose discovery prompted the dismissal of YPO conductor Benjamin Zander.
Issued through Peter Benjamin’s lawyer, it says that Zander was not the only member of staff to employ him:
‘Recently, he videotaped Tony Woodcock, the current president of NEC, teaching an adult master class. At no time has there ever been a complaint or cause for concern occasioned by his videotaping these live events. Contrary to the reporting occasioned thus far, the bulk of the videography he was commissioned to do, involved college or graduate level performances.’
Benjamin could not have videotaped the president without his permission – indeed, at his express commission. If Zander was fired for employing the videographer, the same penalty must apply to the college president.
This horrible saga will not go away without thorough, independent investigation. Meantime, NEC is said to be in total disarray.
My sources at Universal/DG say that, despite winning a Grammy, there are no plans to release Gustavo Dudamel’s Brahms 4th on CD.
It will remain exclusively an iTunes product – the first Grammy winner, perhaps, to be totally virtual.
Ever since Simon Taylor left in the summer to run Dublin’s National Concert Hall, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has been without a chief executive.
Not for want of searching. They’ve tried headhunters. They even reached the point of offering the job to someone from outside the classical music world, only for the candidate to say thanks, but no thanks.
Seven months without a leader is a very big gap, especially when the orchestra tells its local newspaper that it is facing ‘death of 1,000 cuts’.
So what’s the problem? Partly the cuts. Things are getting tough on the South Coast, and when the going gets tough the tough-talkers get going … in the opposite direction.
Is there a solution? Eyes lit up when news broke of Simon Crookall’s precipitate departure from Indianapolis. Crookall used to run Scotland’s national orchestra. Just the man for the joy, they thought.
Er, no. It has now become clear that Crookall was eased out of Indy by his music director, Krzysztof Urbanski. It seems that Urbanski shares a manager with Kirill Karabits, Bournemouth’s excellent music director. Information travels fast by Skype. Crookall will need to look elsewhere.
As for another unsettled US manager – Tony Woodcock at NEC – well, he’s already done the Bournemouth job. They know all they need to know.
It’s not looking good.
Streaming services deliver no bread.
That’s the finding of a cutting-edge survey published yesterday in San Francisco.
It may explain why Macca is leading a long retreat from Spotify and Resonance.
Depressing, isn’t it, when iTunes sound is just so poor.
