Sympathy, please, for Hannah Lash, teacher at Yale and composer in residence at the Alabama Symphony, whose entire output vanished into thin air when a thief broke into her car three years ago and stole her computer.
No back-up? Maybe she didn’t need one.
Hannah has written a new piece out of the disaster. It’s called Violations: The Loading Dock Project, for eight singers and instrumentalists.
Read more here.
Trials and tribulations of a travelling pianist of our distant acquaintance: the Steinway song.
A spat has erupted on Slipped Disc over one of our contributors who went to the Metropolitan Opera bearing the first of the seasonal catarrhs. It was no excuse, readers felt, that the opera he attended was called The Nose. If you’ve got a cold, keep it to yourself is the accepted etiquette.
But do we? Which of us has cancelled a flight after coughing all night? The confined space of an aircraft is a worse spreader of germs than the vastness of the Met.
Which of us has been blamed for not turning up to work because we had a cold?
And don’t we applaud singers on being told that they are going ahead with their performance despite having a touch of flu?
There seems to be widespread confusion about what to do with a cold when you’ve got tickets for the opera. Slipped Discers, what’s your best advice?
A student from one of the Baltic states is distraught at the loss of her instrument, a ‘Pietro Grulli’ full sized violin and two bows (‘Stephan Kuhnla’ and a ‘Voirin’ copy). They were left last night on a train in Cologne, Germany. If you have any information, please contact 015120178073.
Despite a heavy cold, the great mezzo goes on with the show.
Apparently, the Chopin tartan is the look of the season
… unless you prefer a more 1930s look. See Vogue.
Two Portuguese speakers played a recital at the Wigmore Hall in the dog days of last January when the world and its auntie are struggling back to consciousness from the annual binge.
We missed the recital. So did you.
DG didn’t. It was a five-star cracker. But it has taken the label almost two years to bring it out on record…. and with the dreariest bit of wrapping.
Read my review on Sinfinimusic.
More sad news. Lawrence Leighton Smith, emeritus music director in Colorado Springs, is in the care of a hospice team, the orchestra has announced. A Facebook page has been created at his wife’s request for friends and colleagues to send good wishes.
A winner of the Mitropoulos Competition, he served as music director at the Oregon Symphony1973-1980 and the San Antonio Symphony 1980-1985.
Larry suffered a massive heart attack on October 10, 2013. He was discharged from Penrose Hospital on Friday night and is under the care of Pikes Peak Hospice in his home.
We regret to report the death of Anne Collis, managing and artistic director of the National Symphony Orchestra.
A percussion player, Anne took charge of a pick-up orchestra that played both symphony concerts and accompaniment to popular singers – among them Hayley Westenra, Nicky Spence, Blake, Russell Watson, Goldfrapp, Gardar Cortes, Lesley Garrett, Kiri te Kanawa and Alfie Boe.
‘Anne runs the National Symphony Orchestra as a cross between a benevolent dictatorship and a club for top musicians,’ she used to say.
She helped many musicians in a tight spot and could turn her hand to anything musical, composing included.
Her daughter, Sally, tells us:
My mother passed away yesterday at 14:18. She was listening to “My love is like a red, red rose” performed exquisitely by Nicky Spence . It was one of her favourite songs. At the end of the song a Lynx helicopter happened to be passing our village and she obviously felt that her exit had been staged perfectly so she chose that moment to leave us, quietly, peacefully and with grace.
I miss her more than words can say. There will always be a piece missing.
Read Anne’s biography here. UPDATE: Sally has published the funeral arrangements:
My Mother’s funeral will be held on Monday 28 October at St Mary’s Church, Henley on Thames. All are welcome and full details can be found on the NSO website –www.nso.co.uk
Our New York operavores, Elizabeth Frayer and Shawn E Milnes, went to the Shostakovich opera on a special offer (there seem to be plenty of those about this season). Whaddaya know? They loved every dripping minute, especially the medicinal cough sweets.
Read them here.
(Reminder to Slipped Disc readers: Elizabeth Frayer and Shawn E Milnes are not professional critics. They are a young couple with a recent and fast-growing opera habit. We publish their fresh impressions as a counterweight to some of the wearier reviews that appear in print media.)
Christopher Seaman, author of the conductor’s vade mecum, reckons he’s been lucky with his agent and urges other to stick it out through thick and thin.
But he does quote another agent who complains of a conductor: ‘And to cap it all, he takes 80 percent of my money.’
Ralph Jones, principal double-bass of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, as died, aged 68. His wife, Gloria, is associate double-bass. Tributes here.
