Chicago, IL – A Cook County court Friday ruled that Katharine Dayner’s case against the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), stemming from an incident in which her valuable viola was crushed by a CTA articulated bus, should proceed to trial. The court, denying the CTA’s attempt to obtain summary judgment, rejected the CTA’s effort to evade legal responsibility for Ms. Dayner’s loss.
On April 29, 2012, Ms. Dayner, an accomplished professional musician, was riding the #6 CTA bus from Hyde Park to downtown. She was carrying her viola, which had been crafted by the noted instrument maker William Whedbee and was worth $15,000 at the time. She was seated in the middle, “turntable” section of the articulated bus.
As the bus approached downtown, Ms. Dayner moved her viola case to her side to let another passenger pass. At that moment, the bus turned a corner; the turntable floor rotated; and Ms. Dayner’s viola case, with her arm around it, became pinned between the side of the bus and the metal arm rail of her seat. Although she was (just) able to free her arm, the viola case remained pinned. As the bus continued its turn, the case was crushed, and the viola heavily damaged.
“I was devastated,” said Ms. Dayner. “To a professional string player, an instrument is far more than a tool – it is an extension of who we are. My Whedbee viola was like a family member to me. When I opened the case and saw that the top had been split in half, I couldn’t stop crying.”
Although an entirely new top had to be made, Ms. Dayner continued, “it’s just not the same. It feels and sounds totally different. The viola I knew and loved is gone.”
Between repair costs, the diminished value of the viola, and other expenses, Ms. Dayner’s loss quickly approached $10,000. Yet despite submitting a wealth of documentation to the CTA’s claims department – including two written statements from witnesses, photographs of the damage, receipts, and opinions from fine instrument experts – the CTA offered only a fraction of that amount.
“This has been incredibly frustrating,” said Ms. Dayner. “I did everything I was supposed to do, and the CTA kept coming up with excuses to avoid paying anything. At one point, they even claimed it was my fault!”
Forced to engage an attorney, she hired Kevin Case, of firm Case Arts Law LLC, to file suit in Cook County court. … “I’m gratified that the court saw through the CTA’s attempts to evade liability,” said Case. “Obviously, the CTA is responsible for what happened to Ms. Dayner on one of its own buses. We’re confident that a jury will see it the same way.”
Robert De Cormier is retiring from the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus, which he founded 20 years ago. What to do for his farewell?
Everyone agreed on Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. But De Cormier’s second proposal – Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time – was shouted down by the singers. They’ve insisted on Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem. Report here.
The Swiss violinist Etienne Abelin, a member of Abbado’s ensemble in Lucerne and Bologna, has been pondering why it was that musicians dropped everything in order to play in his handpicked orchestras. Here’s his offbeat assessment:
Some years ago, in Bologna, my friend the Belgian Jazz saxophonist and composer Fabrizio Cassol listened to a concert of the Orchestra Mozart with Abbado and was blown away. He told me afterwards: “You know, what you guys are doing is Jazz!”
It took me a while to understand what he meant. Now I agree: I think Claudio, in his Indian summer, was essentially a jazz artist. It was Claudio “The Risktaker” Abbado. He had the courage to want nothing, to be completely open to how things developed in making music with the orchestra. And then gently guide this process and let the many musical flowers evolving become a garden. Of course only after having internalized the score for so long and so profoundly that its flows, textures and emotional narratives became second nature. Then, in playing, a suggestion of a direction or expression could come from him, but very often also from groups or individuals in the orchestra. As a string group principal in Bologna, I could initiate going into a direction, with a certain expression. Open as he was, he would listen, understand, carry it on and then you could just let yourself be carried for a while, guided in what was essentially your own mini-story in the first place. So exhilharating. And on and on, throughout the piece. A constant give and take.
Ever wondered why all these great soloists and chamber musicians came to Lucerne and Bologna time and again to play so-called orchestra? Because actually we gathered for guided collective improvisations. Everybody’s creative and expressive capacities were in full demand, all the time. Not far in spirit from Dixieland, or Ornette Coleman. The world of Jazz lost one of its masters last Monday.
Rickard (Rick) Soderberg, a well-known rainbow activist, was pelted with stones and eggs on Friday night after a rehearsal at Malmö Opera. Rick says it was in the same area as he was first attacked four years ago and it follows a rising tide of incoming hate mail on his social media. Report here (in Swedish).
Sony have quietly slipped out this vid of the Chinese pianist reworking Prok 3 with a drum set, followed by a stretch of Bartok. See what you think. Some may find the title a tad misleading. Mark Guiliana is on drums.
The composer Tigran Mansurian will be 75 on Monday. Patricia Kopatchinskaja will give first performances of his violin concerto “Four serious songs” and also of the “Romance” for violin and orchestra which Mansurian dedicated to her: In February with the Orchestra della Toscana in Florence, Italy. In March with Camerata Bern, in Bern Switzerland and in Trento, Italy, and also with Britten Sinfonietta in Cambridge, Norwich and London, UK. And in November with St.Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota, USA.
His marvellous Requiem (below) mourns the victims of the Turkish genocide, almost 100 years ago.
This is Chris Thile’s group, taken informally this week.
l. to r. Chris Thile (mandolin), Gabe Witcher (fiddle/violin), Noam Pikelny(banjo), Chris Eldridge (guitar), and Paul Kowert (bass).
A new short midnight film for Channel Four by Tigerlily Films:
The question is put – not for the first time – by my friend and colleague Martin Anderson, publisher, record producer and critic. Martin, in his new blogsite, takes issue with the relentless repetitiveness of classical recording. Sample:
Two or three months ago I was sent for review a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, with Christian Lindberg conducting the Nordic Symphony Orchestra (recently founded in Tromsø, at the very northern tip of Norway) on BIS. It’s a perfectly acceptable performance: Christian is a terrific musician, the playing is more than up to the mark, and any BIS recording will be a sonic wonder. But according to www.arkivmusic.com, which is where I usually go to check these things, it is the 158th recording of Tchaik 5 on the market. What is the point of that? Yes, I know a new orchestra has to earn its spurs, but their first release, of music by local Romantic composer Ole Olsen, was immensely more important than yet another of something already hugely over-represented in the catalogues. And there’s oodles of excellent Norwegian orchestral music waiting to be recorded: why didn’t they go for a CD of Catharinus Elling or Egil Hovland or Ludvig Irgens-Jensen or Ragnar Söderlind or one of dozens more?
It was frustration with this constant recycling of repertoire that led me to launch Toccata Classics in the first place, in 2005, and there have been 158 releases to date, every one of them bringing something new, and I’ll keep going until God decides to bring this atheist up short.
