Axel Köhler has quit as intendant of Halle Opera after having 3 million Euros slashed from his purse and being ordered to cut 113 jobs. Here’s his letter.

Peter McGillivray is undergoing surgery today after a freak accident during a performance of Boheme at Manitoba Opera. Here’s his account:

For the benefit of those in more easterly time zones, a short note to let you know that I’m in hospital in Winnipeg this morning awaiting orthopaedic surgery to reattach my tendon to my kneecap. It was…an eventful performance of La Boheme last night.

Standing on top of a table after beating Giles near senseless with a baguette, I stepped down onto a rickety chair which promptly shattered and I fell with my full weight on my knee. Helped off the stage by our lovely ASM, Kathryn, my dazzling colleagues were still able to finish the show with poise & inspired improvisation.

Thanks to everyone at Manitoba Opera for taking care of me both before and after getting to hospital. Now I’m on standby for surgery, and am hoping to walk out of here later today if all goes well. Please send good thoughts, prayers & whisky (clear fluids, amiright?)

Arkadiusz Burski has died in Switzerland, where he taught for 20 years and founded the Polmusic agency. Before that, he performed widely in Poland and Italy. The death was announced on his facebook site.

There had been rumours around for a while that all was not well chez Kaufmann. Now he’s confirmed the split on his site:

Separation

In the past two days, more than 248,200 people from all over the world chose to read stories on Slipped Disc.

Over the past six months, the site has averaged over a million readers a month, and rising. We are amazed and grateful for your interest.

These statistics represent a community above and beyond anything achieved by any other cultural or classical music website. It would be timid and irresponsible on our part to keep this dedicated following to ourselves.

So, in the coming weeks, Slipped Disc will move to a custom-built site with a range of advertising and promotional opportunities. The aim is to build a bigger and better site, employ more people and appear in more languages.

We will keep you posted every step of the way. Today, we finalised our first partnership agreement.

If you’d like to know more about those promotional opportunities, please contact Robin at rcrowley@jemmgroup.com.

Rebecca Allen, head of Decca, is running in Sunday’s London Marathon. She has told us why before.

Here’s how, and it hurts. Make it worth Becky’s while by giving generously to MacMillan Cancer Support. Match Slipped Disc’s gift. Please.

The 2014 award, worth 6.9 million Swedish krona, has gone to a woman-averse orch the diva used to admire. Not the most sensitive of selections.

Sajid Javid, 44, is a former V-P at Chase Manhattan and MD at Deutsche Bank. He lists no cultural interests. Lot to learn.

He replaces Maria Miller, brought down by expenses confusion and bare-faced arrogance.

Mark O’Connor, the American cross-genre performer, saw his fiddle fall to the ground as he was getting ready to go on stage Monday night in Sioux Falls, SD. The instrument, made for him in 2002 by Portland luthier John Cooper, suffered two dreadful cracks.

Here’s Mark’s firsthand account of the disaster:

My back was turned, as I heard it hit the ground. I swung around hoping that the violin would survive the fall as I needed to go immediately to the stage and perform my improvised violin concerto with the orchestra. The first thing I saw was the bridge down. I hoped it was simply a dislodged bridge and I could tune it up… Please, please let me just tune it up. Please, I will simply have to spend the only couple of minutes I have before I take the stage to tune it…just baby it, fuss with it. Make sure it is ready to go. As I picked the violin up off the carpeted floor in the dressing room, I cradled it as I cried out no, no… I placed it in the open case on the counter again, turning away while I sat back down in the chair, covering my eyes with my hands in disbelief of what I had caused.

The presenter was waiting for me to take the stage at that very minute. In a measured voice I informed him that I would need to borrow a violin. They paused the orchestra concert on stage already in progress, taking their intermission early while the conductor gathered up a few volunteers including the concertmaster to see about a violin I could play. After I closed my case, not letting the orchestra musicians gasp and get too stressed about seeing my violin, I tried their violins out in the dressing room for about 15 seconds each. I chose the best one quickly. It belonged to the concertmaster.

Yes, I most likely could have done anything in my career with any good instrument in the final analysis – in theory. But you get better in life by allowing people and allowing things around you to help you. You have to feel psychologically prepared. It is all about what we feel towards people, towards things, towards the instruments we play. Not how valuable the instrument is to someone else.

It is everything about human connection that causes us to be more attached to our musical instruments. The time spent with an instrument, finding every quality about the instrument and knowing how to discover those qualities at least once in a while, because you played your sound and your very soul into the body of it, into the wood. Your constant and consistent best playing made the molecules in the violin wood adjust to your sound and have it actually hum and resonate to your own musical personality, finding pure beauty at times. Maybe not every note or even every 100 notes, but once in a while it gives you exactly what you had been looking for and what you invested of yourself into it – pure magic. One of my secrets was that I never let the violin hear the worst I could play – ever.

I have to edit and pick out takes all week and mix my new album…deadline is this weekend. It is an amazing process, choosing takes. You grade yourself you know – self producing. But when you find in some of the takes, those “magic dust notes” that you only had dreamed of – you know the instrument had something to do with it. And it is pretty simple. There are about a millions notes left on the cutting room floor that only amounted to mediocre on your score card. The mediocre notes were you. The magic notes were a team effort – you and the instrument responding to you. It has been interesting to listen to the violin all day and all night long mixing the album this week immediately after I accidentally silenced it 3 days ago. Hours upon hours this week of reminding me how good it was, how good it all was.

It is not just the music though that connects you to the violin, it is everything else too that makes the instrument seem so close to you – cleaning it up and caring for it, taking it into every restaurant because nothing can happen to it, every grocery store, putting it just right in the back seat of a car or straddling it in the front seat because there is no room in back. All of the questions, thousands – “I bet you take that everywhere?” Responding yes, I don’t know what I would do without it. It is also about sleepless nights over it because the violin frustrated you because it didn’t like the new strings, or the re-hair or that you took her to dry winter weather. The countless hotel rooms where I put it in the bathroom during winter months and navigating around it in the middle of the night so I would not have to have forced air blowing on the case with it shielded inside, and maybe drying it out – just in case.

Or there are nights when you can sleep 10 hours in comfort because you did something great together – when you come off the stage and you are pacing in your dressing room because you were amp-ed up from climbing the mountain together again. When you feel those things with your violin…well it changes from an inanimate object to something you believe in, and somehow believes in you. An entity that helped you become better somehow.

The photo here is after the concert Friday night. They all said I did really well at that concert – it was a blur. Completely emotionally drained from the orchestra concerto performance, I tried to go to my highest mountain top on a violin that I didn’t know for the Improvised Violin Concerto. It seemed that a lot was on the line. The piece was hard enough before, but without all of my pedals, without the tones that I knew I could get out of it acoustically, was it possible for me to give up on my best that night? I couldn’t let that happen. After I was back in my room alone, I took the violin out of the case to look at it more completely.

Michael Nyman has written a symphony for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra containing the 96 names of innocent football fans who died in the Hillsborough disaster 25 years ago. The composer hopes it will make ‘a small but significant contribution to the healing process for the families.

The premiere is in Liverpool on July 5.

Maggie in her heyday narrated Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait with orchestra for EMI.

Now David Cameron has gone into studio for Decca to recite a Rupert Brooke poem for charity.

Details here.

This just in from City Hall, believe it or not:

Mayor urges young musicians to sign up for Gigs busking competition and launches #BackBuskingcampaign to support capital’s street musicians

Reams of red tape and a myriad of confusing rules could force talented buskers off London’s streets, the Mayor Boris Johnson has warned as he launched a new campaign to nurture the capital’s street musicians.

As this year’s Gigs busking competition gets underway, the Mayor is calling on musicians and music lovers to sign up to #Backbuskingand is setting up a taskforce involving the music industry and key agencies, with the aim of developing a pan-London approach to make London the most busker friendly city in the world.

In public spaces like Covent Garden and on the Tube, buskers have become a much loved feature of London life, but a myriad of confusing rules mean musicians are often unsure about where they can perform. Some parts of the capital now operate mandatory licensing charges and can impose potentially large fines, making it financially prohibitive for many musicians.

Busking is an opportunity for new and emerging artists to hone their skills and gain experience, but the Mayor is concerned talented musicians could be put off, even giving up on London altogether. Such an exodus would threaten the capital’s status as one of the world’s greatest cities for music.

The Mayor wants the new busking taskforce to consider a Five Point Plan, looking at the following:

1.         One busking plan for London: Can we create a one stop shop so it’s really clear and easy for musicians to busk in London?

2.         Red tape: can we simplify the rules and regulations across London to make it easier for buskers?

3.         Legitimise busking: can we all agree busking is a good thing and make sure genuine buskers outside designated schemes don’t get moved on?

4.         A London code for busking: can we create an accepted code that local authorities, private landowners, police, and musicians agree?

5.         Celebrate our great busking talent. Busking is too often seen as a form of panhandling or begging and musical talent is overlooked, how can we turn this around?

One idea being considered is the development of a website and an app, creating a ‘digital shop front’ for musicians to exchange news and obtain a range of information, including available busking pitches around the capital and whether popular locations require booking.

The Mayor is determined that London maintains its international reputation as the home of live music. London 2012 showed there is an appetite for outdoor arts and live performance and the Mayor’s Gigs busking competition has become London’s biggest free music festival. Music tourists contribute almost £600m to London’s economy each year and evidence shows live music and performance not only enhance the experience of public spaces for shoppers, visitors and commuters, they help to increase footfall and the amount of time people will stay in an area.

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: ‘There is no doubt that live music on our streets adds to the city’s vibrancy, but I fear some parts of the capital could become no-go areas for buskers. Rather than shackling our musicians with unnecessary bureaucracy, we should treasure the spontaneity they bring to our high streets and town centres. I want to work with the boroughs, businesses, the music industry and other organisations to cut through red tape and support the talented musicians that are part of the magic of our city. Come on, let’s form a band and make this work – BackBusking now!’