The complete Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier with the radiant Tara Erraught can now be watched worldwide on Arte. No fee. Click here.

Warning: simulated full nudity in opening scene.

 

tara erraught3

A disproportionate number of medical doctors are practising musicians in what little spare time they have.

Next month the World Doctors Orchestra with members from 40 countries will join the Buffalo Philharmonic in a fund-raiser concert with Jo-Ann Falletta.  The rehearsals should be pretty interesting.

jo-ann falletta

Peter Shukat, a Hollywood lawyer who handled some of the biggest music estates, has died aged 69. Apart from Lennon, his clients included Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis.

peter shukat

The Australian Cahmber Orchestra has dipped into its instrument fund to buy a violin made by Andrea Guarneri, founder of the dynasty and grandfather of its most celebrated maker. The violin, bought for $1.5 million, is worth about one-tenth of a prime Giuseppe Guarnerius del Jesu.

Full story here.

andrea guarneri

 

Alexander Pereira, the incoming sovrintendente, is telling the Austrian press that he has persuaded Cecilia Bartoli to make a Scala comeback.

Pereira badly needs a feather in his cap after having had his job tenure shortened to just 18 months by an angry Mayor of Milan. His coup, however, is less than it seems.

Bartoli boycotted La Scala for 19 years over its fickle audience and archaic work practices. She was brought back by Daniel Barenboim in December 2012 and said nothing at that time to suggest that she would never return. Pereira has merely confirmed a renewed relationship, negotiated by Barenboim, between Italy’s biggest-selling opera singer and the artform’s battered crucible.

 

Cecilia-Bartoli-Daniel-Barenboim-La-Scala-Milan

The new Auditorium del Parco in L’Aquila, Italy designed by Renzo Piano, was envisaged as a musical instrument that possessed the piano and forte qualities of the finest concert grand.

So who would get to play it first? The soloist on opening night was a rising young talent, Gloria Campaner, playing works by Rihm, Widmann, Illés and Schumann. Watch.

gloria campaner

It has been announced in Canada that Bernard Labadie, music director of Les Violons du Roy, will not conduct again this year. Labadie, 51, is undergoing treatment in Germany for an undisclosed condition. We wish him a full recovery.

Yesterday, Lorin Maazel’s slow recovery from an unknown illness ruled him out at least until mid-August.
bernard labadie

Talking to Andrew Patner, the maestro says Italy will always be his first home. Vienna, for the past 44 years, was the second. But now he feels so comfortable in Chicago that he considers it his second home. ‘I have almost the impression I have been born here,’ he says. ‘The people are very much like the people in the south of Italy. They can laugh, they can smile…’

Watch.
muti jail

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,

vanderveen netrebko

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.
austin wintory
 

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.

lancs sinf

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?

alban gerhardt bow