One of the following will get to hang out with Kaija Saariaho for the next 12 months. Final decision pending. The mentoring scheme is paid for by an expensive watchmaker and covers all major art forms. Press blurb follows.
- Felipe Lara, 34, Brazil/United States
- Vasco Mendonça, 36, Portugal
- Anna Thorvaldsdottir, 36, Iceland
Geneva, Switzerland, 17 February 2014 – Following a worldwide search, Rolex today announced the 25 finalists being considered for a year of creative exchange in architecture, dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts, as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. One young artist in each discipline will be selected as a protégé for 12 months of one-to-one collaboration with leading artists Olafur Eliasson, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Michael Ondaatje, Alexei Ratmansky, Kaija Saariaho, Jennifer Tipton and Peter Zumthor.
The finalists, who range from 22 to 38 years of age, were selected from 154 nominees. They come from 21 countries, with all regions of the world represented: Asia (four finalists), Europe (six), North America (three), South America (five), Africa (five) and Middle East (two).
It is so fitting that the last recording by Alexander Ivashkin, who died two weeks ago of a rapid cancer, should contain a world premiere. Few solo artists since his teacher Mstislav Rostropovich did more to encourage composers to write for the cello, or recorded so much new music.
Even more fitting, then, that the premiere Sasha plays on what turned out to be his last recording is by Benjamin Britten, his teacher’s close friend. It’s only a schoolboy sonata, but it’s really worth hearing. It’s my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. Click here.
Cleaners and porters at the Royal Opera House, who last month won the right to a London Living Wage, are now calling for strike action over unpaid wages. Some are owed back-pay since October. Press release below.
Independent Workers Union (IWGB) Cleaners And Facilities Branch
PRESS RELEASE
The Independent Workers Union (IWGB) is stepping up its campaign for justice for outsourced workers at the Royal Opera House employed by contractors MITIE and the Company of Cooks Ltd.
Porters and cleaners are set to ballot again for strike action, they are furious that having ended a dispute with MITIE on 3rd February 2014 which won them the London Living Wage, they have found themselves going for months paid-short in their wages. One shift alone being owed over four thousand pounds in pay since October 2013!
Already on poverty pay, one cleaner was left so penniless that they could not pay for their child’s school dinner, others struggling to get to work. The situation is exacerbated by the refusal of the employer to recognise the IWGB, which has a membership of almost all of the cleaners and porters at the Royal Opera House.
MITIE are fully aware of the high IWGB membership yet have chosen to deny a democratic voice to the workforce. IWGB had repeatedly offered to have its membership checked by ACAS. The demand for recognition has been echoed in Parliament in Early Day Motion 1066 tabled by socialist John McDonnell MP, and supported by 25 MP including a Tory Sir Peter Bottomley MP – calling for the “the chosen union of the workers to be recognised and that the workforce to be treated with respect and dignity.” IWGB is due to serve formal notice of a strike ballot and having seen a 100% yes vote in a previous ballot is confident of the result.
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‘Zero Hour’ Contract Nightmare at ROH The curtain has been raised on a second poverty scandal at the Royal Opera House, this time of the workers employed by the Company of Cooks Ltd. The catering company took over the running the restaurants and bars at the Royal Opera House in April 2010 in a deal worth £52 million. But the workers who include kitchen porters, bar attendants, waiters and customer assistants have been left in on ‘variable hours’ contracts and poverty wages.
Some earn a mere £6.50 per-hour far beneath the London Living Wage of £8.80 per-hour, all other workers at the Royal Opera House earn as a minimum. The IWGB has submitted a formal claim to Mike Lucy Chief Executive of Company of Cooks Ltd demanding its workers be are paid the London Living Wage of £8.80 per-hour set by the Greater London Authority as the minimum wage needed to meet basic living expenses in London. IWGB has further complained that despite the fact workers are obliged to work set hours they remain insecure and uncertain of their long-term employment position due to being on what are in fact zero hour contracts. The IWGB has demanded all workers be issued with permanent contracts of employment, with recognised full continuity of employment. Our members have given many years of service to the Royal Opera House, through your company and its predecessor yet they have remained trapped in conditions of in-work poverty and uncertainty, which we considers requires urgent remedy.
Wherever Valentina Lisitsa goes, a video camera can’t be far behind. Her pursuit today of a concert grand at the Eindhoven Muziekgebouw in Holland involved contortions more painful and extreme than any you will see at the Olympics. Watch, especially after 2:00.
That’s what Clean Bandit, the current UK #1 group, did. They tell the Guardian how:
Jack Patterson: The band actually began as Grace’s string quartet, and I started adding sampling and beats.
Grace Chatto: He mixed some Shostakovich with a beat he’d written, and then he did some Dvorák but in a reggae style.
I can’t lie, that sounds terrible.
Grace: It was really cool, actually! But whenever we try and describe our music to people we always get that reaction you just made, but for some reason the way Jack mixes stuff seems to come off.
How has the classical world reacted to your music?
Grace: In general, they’ve been positive. We were invited to collaborate with the OAE (1) who are topnotch string players. We’ve also been asked to perform at the Lewes Chamber Music festival – they want us to form a quartet and gradually bring drums in to make it a dance thing.
Jack: I did meet a guy at a party who was really angry with us for usingShostakovich’s String Quartet No 8. He said: “What you’re doing is wrong!” I think he thought it was demeaning the artistic message. But he had no idea what he was talking about. He couldn’t even hum the tune!
Here’s what he’s telling Chinese state media:
“I want to introduce more Chinese musical elements into the pop music to attract young people.”
“As an ‘envoy of Spring Festival’ , I shoulder the responsibility of inheritance and promotion of Chinese culture.”
“I hope my music has been closely linked with the young generations, as well as the world’s fashion,” he said.
No athlete has obtained so much Olympic coverage for so poor a result since the British ski-jumper who in 1988, came last in everything. The former crossover violinist came last today at Sochi in a field of 74. On the peak of a publicity mountain, she has remade her reputation as a loser. But credit to her for the physical effort, and credit to the publicists for the push. What next, the Schoenberg concerto?
The Israeli-made Tonara ‘listens to you as you play, shows where you are in the score and turns the pages automatically,’ says the blurb.
Using iPad’s built-in microphone to listen as you play, it shows where you are at any given time (and where you should be, when playing in enselble). It turns the page only when you are ready and allows you to annotate as you go along.
There’s a free download here.
BDS supporters should look elsewhere.
The Harlem String Quartet had a scare yesterday when a plane they caught was hijacked in mid-air and flown to Geneva. The hijacker was the Ethiopian co-pilot and he gave himself up on landing. The quartet – violinists Ilmar Gavilan and Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador and cellist Matthew Zalkind – are safe and well.
UPDATE: Actually, it now appears, they never boarded the hijacked flight. What happened is that this: the quartet had taken a photo of themselves with an Ethiopian plane and posted it on their wall the day before the hijacking. When family members and friends saw the photo and started asking if they were OK, Melissa responded they were fine… from there, the word went viral that they’d been in a drama.
Apologies for the confusion.
Joan Matabosch has presented plans for his opening season at the Teatro Real and they are eye-catching.
Woody Allen will direct Puccini’s Gianni Schicci with Placido Domingo in the title role. The opera will be paired with the little-seen Goyescas by Granados.
The veteran Spanish actress Carmen Maura (pictured) will play opposite Natalie Dessay in Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment and various Spanish designers will parade their wares on stage.
More here.
UPDATE: Anne Midgette points out below that Woody Allen directed Gianni Schicchi back in 2008 as his operatic debut in Los Angeles. This may be a revival.
A senior Iranian official, responding to reports that the Pittsburgh Orchestra is planning an ice-break visit in September, has just said they will be unwanted.
‘While the Americans pursue an onslaught against the Islamic Republic’s values, it is natural that Iranians look at these cultural diplomacy movements by the US … with utmost distrust and pessimism,’ said Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces for Basij and Defense Culture Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri.
Cao Peng is one of the best-known conductors in China. At 90, he has organised a new orchestra to make music for deprived people, in hospitals, prisons and mental institutions.
Just watch his energy in this extraordinary video. Match that, Maestro Maazel.
