The festival has just posted a short video, explaining the reasons behind its contentious costume decisions in an opera where a blameless young singer, Tara Erraught, was derided for her size.
Octavian in a frumpy dressing-gown is not a pretty sight. That does not excuse the fat-fest, but clearly the outfit did not help.
London’s South Bank Centre has come up with a new £24 million scheme to ‘maintain’ the grotty parts of the site, after Mayor Boris Johnson shot down its £120 million Festival Wing.
Two-thirds of the new money is coming from the Arts Council – without public debate, as usual. This is a patchwork solution, more money down the drain and no clear strategy while a failing management pushes paper rounds its desks.
The South Bank needs new leadership. Also a new constitution. Press release follows.
SOUTHBANK CENTRE ANNOUNCES CONSERVATION PROJECT FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL AND HAYWARD GALLERY FOLLOWING ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND GRANT
Arts Council England is to fund the repair and maintenance of Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery with a £16.7m grant. Starting in late 2015, the building conservation project will address a £24m backlog of repairs. The Arts Council grant will meet 70% of the budget, with the remainder to be raised from trusts, philanthropists and audiences.
Southbank Centre is still working to resolve the funding of a wider scheme for the Festival Wing, which will deliver new space for art and culture, alongside major public realm and service improvements. It expects to make recommendations on this scheme in late 2014.
Rick Haythornthwaite, Chairman of Southbank Centre, said: “We are very grateful to Arts Council England for so generously supporting the urgent repair and maintenance of these iconic 60s buildings. This is an important step for Southbank Centre following the delay to our Festival Wing scheme in February.
“We still aim to create new space for our artistic and cultural programmes, once we have found a way through the substantial remaining funding challenge. This will enable us to meet the huge demand for our work following the refurbishment of Royal Festival Hall.”
Alan Davey, Chief Executive of Arts Council England said: “The Arts Council is pleased to be able to safeguard the future of this vital part of London’s artistic and tourist infrastructure through this capital grant. This grant will enable the Southbank to carry out essential work to enhance its existing space, giving them the right buildings to deliver their fantastic artistic and cultural programme and to bring multiple benefits to the millions of visitors the centre attracts each year.”
Simon Hickman, Inspector of Historic Buildings and Areas at English Heritage, said: “These uncompromising brutalist buildings reflect radical changes in British society and culture during the era of their design and creation. Their conservation could not be further delayed and we are delighted that Southbank Centre and Arts Council England are prepared to invest in them. This will enable the public to appreciate the buildings and their significance. English Heritage looks forward to working with Southbank Centre and sharing our expertise in the detailed development of the proposal.”
The new building conservation project will improve essential services, environmental performance, infrastructure such as workshops and backstage areas, and disabled access for audiences and artists. It will restore the buildings’ interiors to their original appearance and repair exterior terraces to maintain a key part of the site’s outdoor landscape. It will also replicate the iconic Hayward Gallery Pyramid Roof to allow controlled natural light into the galleries as originally conceived.
The project will include an extensive, permanent programme of learning and participation. This will allow people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with the history of these important buildings, helping to change attitudes to 20th century architecture.
Southbank Centre continues to work on its Festival Wing plans with neighbours including the BFI and National Theatre, the GLA and Lambeth Council. It will be making every effort with skateboard groups to resolve their future in the Queen Elizabeth Hall undercroft, which is the subject of ongoing legal challenge.
Patrizia, Simon und Helen, aged 11 and 12, take on Leonard Cohen’s torch song in a German talent contest.
Impeccable close harmony, unflappable with tricky lyrics.
Simply irresistible.
Always an orch with an eye to the future, the LondonSymphony Orchestra has just named Peter Moore, 18, as co-principal trombone. He is a former winner of BBC Musician of the Year. He’ll have plenty of wise heads around to chaperone him.
(UPDATE: But is he the youngest player in any major orch? Click here for answers.)
LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA APPOINTS ITS YOUNGEST EVER MEMBER, 18-YEAR-OLD PETER MOORE, AS CO-PRINCIPAL TROMBONE
The London Symphony Orchestra has appointed 18-year-old Peter Moore as Co-Principal Trombone, the Orchestra’s youngest ever member. Peter was a graduate of the 2012 LSO Brass Academy. Each year the LSO Academy provides up to 30 promising young instrumentalists aged 14–24 with a unique opportunity to work with the great orchestral musicians of their time in a week of orchestral-focused workshops and masterclasses at LSO St Luke’s. Peter Moore’s appointment makes him one of nine members of the LSO who have come through the LSO Academy and other artist development schemes run by the Orchestra.
The LSO’s Artist Development programme identifies and nurtures the next generation of young performers, composers and conductors from a diverse range of backgrounds, and offers them opportunities to develop their careers. Over the past three years, over one thousand performers aged 14 to 35 have worked directly with LSO players as part of the programme; for many, this has offered a pathway into the professional music world. Alongside Peter Moore, Angela Barnes (Horn), Antoine Bedewi (Co-Principal Timpani), Philip Cobb (Principal Trumpet), Naoko Keatley (Second Violin), Maxine Kwok-Adams (First Violin), Joseph Melvin (Double Bass), William Melvin (Second Violin) and Sarah Quinn (Sub-Principal Second Violin) have all graduated from either the LSO Academy, or taken part in the LSO String Experience, and progressed to become members of the LSO.
As part of the collaboration between the LSO and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, a new postgraduate specialism in Orchestral Artistry was launched in September 2013.
***
In 2008, at the age of 12, Peter Moore became the youngest ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. He studied with Philip Goodwin at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, and with Ian Bousfield (previously Principal Trombone of the LSO and now Principal Trombone of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra).
Following his Wigmore Hall debut in 2008 Peter has given recitals at venues and festivals throughout the UK including The Bridgewater Hall, St George’s Bristol, Conway Hall, Eaton Square, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Leeds College of Music, and the Newbury, Chester and Manchester Festivals. As a concerto soloist he has appeared with the Polish Chamber Orchestra (both in Poland and at the Rheingau and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals), the Northern Chamber Orchestra, Brighton Philharmonic and BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
In 2009 Peter featured as soloist at the European trombone festival The Slide Factory in Rotterdam and undertook a five-week tour of Australia. He has since returned twice to Australia and New Zealand for extensive trips performing as soloist with orchestras, bands and in recital.
Peter’s debut CD recording of Edward Gregson’s Trombone Concerto with the BBC Concert Orchestra was released in 2010 to critical acclaim, and a recording with the Australian Brass Group Brass FX will be released shortly.
In January 2013 Peter won the Wind section of the Royal Over-Seas League Competition and in October featured as soloist in the opening concert of the brass event performing Mark-Anthony Turnage’s trombone concerto Yet Another Set To with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
The death of David Nadien, a revered performer and sometime concertmaster of the New York Philharmronic, has revived old rumours that his career, along with several others, was ruined by the machinations of America’s master-violinist Isaac Stern.
Other supposed victims include Oscar Shumsky, Aaron Rosand, Eugene Fodor, Michael Rabin…. anyone, in short, who failed to match Stern’s supreme American fame.
Now Isaac was influential, no question about that. He single-handedly drove the campaign to save Carnegie Hall from the wrecker’s ball and he advanced any number of string talents through ICM Artists, which was run by his former secretary, Lee Lamont. He had first reports on new talent at Juilliard from his friend Dorothy DeLay, the strings queen. He was close to Leonard Bernstein. He was in a position to help others, but that does not mean he could also harm.
I looked into all of this when researching my book, When the Music Stops (published in the US as Who Killed Classical Music?), and found no trace of any kind of godfather mania on Isaac’s part. He wielded influence, and gave money, on behalf of those he believed in. That’s about it.
There was no way he could have killed a career. ICM represented a lot of instrumentalists but it was a boutique on the US concert scene beside the supermarket that was Ronald Wilford’s CAMI. Neither had absolute power to make or break. Promoters and orchestras unhappy with one agency could always turn to the other. America was, and remains, an open market.
Yet the gossip persists that Isaac Stern fixed a few careers. A well-connected observer told me today it’s what ‘everyone says’.
I believe it is untrue. In the absence of any objective evidence, it’s time to lay the slurs against Isaac Stern to rest.
The week’s US sales are in on Nielsen Soundscan and all of Sony’s marketing men could not push Dutch child-star Amira Willighagen to number one.
Amira’s release sold all of 410 copies, beaten to the top spot by a live recording of West Side Story from the San Francisco Symphony.
Meanwhile, Jackie Evancho was making tears flow on Memorial Day. She’s feeling no pressure.
Gabi Holzwarth, 24, dropped out of a dull job and went busking on the streets of Palo Alto, California.
Today, she’s playing solo gigs for the moguls of hi-tech. She has played for BitTorrent, NetApp, Samsung, LinkedIn and Google, once even forming a duet with Snoop Dogg. She now has a mogul boyfriend.
Word is, she could be the next Lindsay Stirling. How did that happen?
Gabi’s story: When I first began busking, I performed a list of classical pieces with my violin alone. This became repetitive, so I had the idea to begin playing along to different genres of popular music. I went to Guitar Center, told them my idea, and asked them “What equipment do I need to make this happen?” An hour later I departed the store with an amplifier and a pickup, and I was ready to go. The next day, I brought this to the streets. People loved it, and managers asked me to plug in front of their stores in order to draw people in. People stared at me with a look of both surprise and joy, often letting me know “I have never seen anything like this! But why are you on the streets?!” “You’ve gotta start somewhere!” was always my response.
I ran into one interesting situation at Trader Joe’s, in which a “No Soliciting” sign was put right in front of me urging people to “ignore the solicitor”. But the masses always win – I continued to play and my loyal fans petitioned the manager to move the sign. Things took off from here, and soon I was asked to perform for private events all over the bay area. In just 6 months, my schedule is now packed as I perform at both private and public events throughout the bay area in homes, restaurants, clubs, museums such as the deYoung, and even tech companies like Google, NetApp, Synopsys, LinkedIn, BitTorrent, GigaOm, and Uber! It has been a whirlwind 6 month start to my career and I am so excited to see how far I can take this!
The Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khouri and American tenor Michael Fabbiano have issued an urgent appeal on behalf of Jonathan Sataloff, 22 years old, who needs a bone-marrow transplant in Philadelphia. Please watch and help if you can. You can register, apparently, anywhere in the world.
Ericf Silberger, a Tchaikovsky competition prizewinner and protégé of Lorin Maazel, always wanted to play his violin inside a volcano. Why? Because no-one had ever done it before and come out to tell the tale.
So he flew to Iceland and got national television to track him into the maw of a monster. ‘It’s a really natural acoustic,’ he says. Watch.
David Nadien, who led the orchestra under Leonard Bernstein 1966-70 and can be heard on many recordings, has passed away at the age of 88. Brooklyn born, the son of a bantamweight boxer, Nadien appeared as a soloist with the NY Phil in 1940, aged 14. He was respected by Menuhin and Oistrakh, who came to him for tips on technique, and detested by Isaac Stern, who resented his relationship with Bernstein.
May they all rest in peace.
Zoe Keating, the most followed cellist on Twitter, withdrew from performance two weeks ago to look after her husband, who has fallen seriously ill.
Things are not going well. Here’s what Zoe has posted in the last hour:
On May 13 an MRI found 20 tumors in my husbands brain. On May 15 he could barely breathe and was in a lot of pain. A CT scan that day revealed he had a softball-sized tumor in his lung, tumors in his other lung, his liver and possibly his bones. On our way home from the imaging center our primary care doc called and told us to turn around and get to the hospital right away. My husband was admitted and they promptly removed more than a pint of fluid from his lungs, which helped him breathe better. We were there for 6 days while they performed a bratheotomy, did more scans, gave him drugs to stop his brain from swelling and administered emergency chemo.
Today I got a letter from Anthem Blue Cross regarding his hospital stay:
“Coverage for the requested service is denied because the service does not meet the criteria for “medical necessity” under your description of benefits. To assist our Medical Director in making this decision, we have put a process in place to send all information about the service to a clinical reviewer with appropriate credentials. Based on their opinion, we have determined that covered for the requested service is denied. Our Medical Reviewer Layma Jarjour MD has determined we cannot approve your hospital stay for cancer. We do not have enough facts to show that it was medically necessary. ”
Anthem is owned by WellPoint. Did you know CEO Joseph Swedish earned almost $17 million during his first year on the job. Now you know how they can afford to pay him.
If you have advice for Zoe in this dire predicament, please post them on her Facebook page.
UPDATE: Media coverage has just started to roll here.
… an orchestra?
Think about it.
