We hear dark rumblings at Opus 3 Artists, a mid-sized agency with headquarters in New York and a branch in Berlin.

It appears that Opus 3 Vice President Jeffrey Vanderveen, who was Anna Netrebko’s manager before he was fired by Universal Music,

has been hatching a plan that will abandon his present artists at Opus 3 and launch him into a new business, known as Music Media Enterprises (MME).

Vanderveen was in Phoenix, Arizona, last Thursday to cement the deal.

We have seen a letter of agreement with his investors in which Vanderveen pledges ‘our ‘all-in’ commitment to devote 100% of our time (including the termination of Jeffrey’s current employment contract on or before September 1, 2014) to this partnership’.

The other signatory to this letter is Vanderveen’s colleague, ‘Jessica’…. apparently independent agent Jessica Lustig.

Just another case of agents behaving badly?

Austin Wintory, a Grammy-nominated games composer, is speaking out against his union. Here’s his case. No response yet from AFM.

 

I, Austin Wintory, am facing a $50,000 fine from my own union for – The American Federation of Musicians – and have decided to speak up against my union’s blockage of ALL new video game recordings

Several years ago Ray Hair, the President of the American Federation of Musicians put together a Videogame Agreement working committee to develop a new game agreement.
The new Videogame Agreement was approved by the AFM’s International Executive Board and went into effect December 2012. This new contract was done without allowing any composers, musicians or any of the 90,000 members of the union given an opportunity to vote on it.

“The new administration, was deeply committed to fixing the videogame mess,” explained committee member and Recording Musicians Association (RMA) President Marc Sazer at the time. He also predicted, incorrectly, that “the new agreement should induce employers to sit down and negotiate with the AFM.”

Nothing could be further from the reality of what happened.

The end result was an agreement that was universally rejected by every single video game developer and publisher, and has gone completely unused since the day it was created.

For almost two years now, under this contract, no union member has been allowed to work on a new video game soundtrack as a result.

“Unfortunately employers have not signed the current agreement,” admits AFM Local 47 Vice President John Acosta who represent the recording musicians of Los Angeles, “and the limited work we were doing before has all but vanished into non-union land.”

This contract created an untenable situation. Composers and musicians have continued to need to earn a living in this industry. Those musicians and composers therefore we’ve been forced to work without union sanction because the union has failed to signed any video game companies to work with them in almost two years.

After having successfully recorded the iOS game HORN with AFM musicians, I attempted to do the same with THE BANNER SAGA. The unusable contract forced me elsewhere, and I soon found the remarkable Dallas Wind Symphony. This collaboration happened as a direct result of the AFM’s unusable contract, and I am now being punished for simply doing my job under those circumstances.

In an article telling entitled “Education and Discipline in the Videogame Industry,” AFM President Ray Hair declares, “The time has come for education and discipline,” “within our ranks” as well as within the Video Game industry.

“I don’t think anybody give you anything because they like you,” said AFM President Hair recently, “In the union business they give you things because they are afraid of what you are going to do to them.”

Simply put, this current leadership does NOT represent me, and I believe does not represent the best interests of AFM musicians.

If you feel inclined to, please show your support by sharing this video and commenting on it below.

I can be reached at info(at)austinwintory(dot)com

The Lancashire Sinfonietta has given up the unequal fight for survival. Local authority support had been whittled down to nothing and Arts Council England were not prepared to help. More here.

Jennifer Loux has posted a really helpful guide to what every string player needs to know and do before flying with an instrument.

The guide is very clear, very long and, ultimately, very depressing that we need to go through these time-consuming contortions and bureaucratic manoeuvres before we can consider carrying a violin, viola or cello bow into or out of the USA.

And even that may not be enough. Last week, players in the Budapest Festival Orchestra did everything right and seven of them still got their bows seized by US Customs and held for three days.

How the hell has it come to this?

This is the Seattle Symphony letting its hair down at the weekend with conductor Ludovic Morlot and rapper, Sir Mix-A-Lot.

More than half a million people have viewed this video in two days. No other orchestra has anything half as viral.

However – you knew there was a however coming – this performance is a about men’s commodification of women’s bodies. It is lewd, rude, sexist and demeaning. If you don’t think so on first hearing, imagine he is singing about you or one of your loved ones.

None of the players in the orchestra smiles at the DJ’s lines or even looks up when he mentions them. UPDATE: Though we gather that the concert was attended by conference members of the League of American Orchestra, some of whom danced on stage (do shout if you recognise any of them).

This is not, in our view, something a symphony orchestra ought to be doing. Let Sir Mix peddle his rap somewhere else. Let Seattle promote itself on art rather than sell its orchestra to a sexist rant.

A quasi-musical memento of the comedian, who has died, aged 56.

Rik was the embodiment of English self-mockery and class-based self-deprecation.

May he rest in smiles.

Just in from our crime correspondent: Stagehands at Chicago’s Lyric Opera were taking a breather outdoors one day when they caught sight of a man being pummelled by another twice his size. Without pausing to discuss risk and rights, four scene shifters leaped into the fray, saved the victim and pursued the attacker until he was nabbed by police.

Next time the Lyric puts on a fight scene, it should look backstage for verismo coaching.

Full story here.

Rudolph Tang reports from Beijing:

A Buddhist temple has formed the first music academy in China teaching western musical instruments and western classical music.

The inauguration of Mount Tiantai Buddhism Music Academy took place on May 6th in Mount Tiantai, a sacred place in Zhejiang province with strong Buddhism tradition that can be traced back 1,400 years ago. Also inaugurated was the 3rd Tiantai Zen-ism Music Festival where an ensemble of string players made its debut on stage. All members of the ensemble are monks and nuns of the Mount Tiantai Temple.

Among those attending were the vice president of Central Conservatory of Music, famed vocalists, violinists and composers, and string professors who helped with the training. All together about 40 monks and nuns played the music of Mozart and Bach overlooked by the giant statue of Buddhas.

It all started when Rev Wuyue, the Buddhist abbot of the Temple and a former violinist graduating from the Wuhan Conservatory of Music before taking the tonsure, visited a cathedral and had his first experience to church music when a priest began to lead the chorister. Wuyue was enormously touched. He was convinced that music should also be the device that carries the teachings of Buddha.

Back in China, he became the first to teach Buddhism by means of music. Now in his 70s, Wuyue believed in music bringing serenity. So he decided to form a first ever Zen band and introduced western musical instruments to Buddhist music. After all, Buddhism was introduced to China from India.

So a band was formed as early as 2008. They took the name of Guangxian Ensemble two years later. Most of its members were born in the 1980s and 1990s and received no musical training. In April 2013, Liang Da’nan, leader of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra and a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music, visited the Temple and began to train the monks and nuns in Beethoven, Bach and Tchaikovsky. They love him and call him Papa Liang.

One of the members is Xiaotong. She was born in 1989. After graduation from high school, she visited the Temple for pleasure but stayed there for good. She began to study violin in 2010, barely able to read a score. Now she is one of the best nun violinists, desired by other temples eager to have their own string ensemble. According to Rev Mr Wuyue, it is his dream to have a Temple orchestra.

A grafitti artist has got to work on the Mason & Hamlin concert grand that was washed up some days ago near the Brooklyn Bridge.

At this rate, it might yet end up in a museum… even at the Met

h/t: Brian Wise

No disrespect to the world army of pluckers, but this is the science of sound. And it tells us that violins are less playable than guitars.

Fact. Read here.

h/t: Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi

Does the name Rebecca Clarke pluck a string?

Thought not.

She was an English viola player who struggled, against family and social prejudice, to be a composer.

In 1919 she wrote a sonata for her instrument.

It’s good. So good, so thoughtful, so engaging, that on a new recording it overwhelms a concurrent work by Paul Hindemith, at the time Germany’s fastest rising composer. Clarke went on to share a competition prize with Ernest Bloch, only to be disqualified for her sex.

The Clarke sonata is my album of the week on sinfinimusic.com. Click here to read.

The conductor, 84, has been out of action with an unnamed illness for over two months. Today he cancelled the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo at the end of July, ‘on the strong advice of doctors’. John Nelson and Yutaka Sado will stand in.

We wish Lorin a full and fast recovery.