The demonstrators, fewer than 1,000, are chanting ‘shame on the Met’ and similar slogans. They announced their intention to picket the opera every night of the run.
UPDATE: The crowd has swelled to more than 1,000, augmented by students in school buses.
photos (c) Shawn Milnes/Slipped Disc
Almost every word in this press release is an approximation of the truth. The ASO has locked out its musicians.
September 22, 2014
Contacts: Holly Hanchey
(404) 733-4998, holly.hanchey@woodruffcenter.org
Sean Ward
(404) 733-4842, sean.ward@woodruffcenter.org
ATLANTA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
TO CANCEL ORCHESTRAL CONCERTS
THROUGH NOVEMBER 8, 2014
Concerts Cancelled Due To Ongoing Labor Negotiations
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) today announced the cancellation of its orchestral concerts
through November 8, 2014, including the opening performance of the 2014-15 season on September
25, due to negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.
If an agreement is reached between ASO management and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Players’ Association (ASOPA) before November 8, the classical season will be re-launched as soon
as possible. The complete list of cancelled concerts can be found online at
http://atlantasymphony.org/1415postponed.
The contract between ASO management and ASOPA expired on September 6, 2014 without
agreement on terms of a new contract.
Ticketholders for affected concerts are encouraged to hold tickets until a new agreement is reached.
Details on ticket exchanges and refund policies are available at here.
“We’ve made this decision with a great deal of reluctance,” said Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
President & CEO Stanley E. Romanstein, Ph.D. “Cancelling concerts is the last thing any of us wants
to do, but out of respect for our patrons and the many people who play a role in producing the
concerts we all enjoy, we feel we have no other choice.”
The ASO has suffered annual operating deficits for 12 consecutive years, including a $2 million
deficit in the recently completed 2014 fiscal year. The most recent collective bargaining agreement
proposal from the musicians would add another $2 – $2.5 million to these deficits.
“These are the unfortunate economic realities we face. If we are to have a strong future, we must
take care of our business now to make sure we stay in business,” said Dr. Romanstein. “At the end of
the day, we all want the same thing: an artistically vibrant and financially stable ASO that serves this
community for years to come. I’m confident that we’ll get there, and I’m immensely grateful for the
continued support of the community.”
Current details and updates about the negotiations can be found on the ASO website:
atlantasymphony.org/2014musiciantalks.
Alexis Hauser, artistic director of the symphony orchestra at McGill University, fired off an open letter to the Quebec government today, urging it to reconsider reported plans to shut Montreal’s Conservatoire of Music.
‘Created in the image of its mother institution in France,’ Hauser argues, the Conservatoire feeds ‘local talents… into the world-class OSM.’ That, Hauser adds, should be ‘a cause of enormous pride.’
The institution has accumulated debts of $14 million. Has the appeal come too late?
An unpleasant story from the Roman – now tourist – city of Bath, where buskers perform morning to night in front of the ancient cathedral. Their amplified activities have disrupted Evensong for quite a while. The Cathedral asked them politely to tone it down. Then they asked the council to intervene. Neither approach worked. So Evensong is now cancelled in Bath until further notice.
(You wonder why they didn’t just shut the cathedral doors. Or blast an amplified service out onto the square.)
Two days after the New York Times declared that the Metropolitan Opera was right to go ahead with The Death of Klinghoffer, the father of another Jewish American held hostage and murdered by Islamic militants has added his voice to the chorus of protests at a rally today.
Professor Judea Pearl’s letter reads:
In joining you today to protest the New York Metropolitan Opera production of this opera, I echo the silenced voice of my son, Daniel Pearl, and the silenced voices of other victims of terror, including James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and including thousands of men, women and children who were murdered, maimed or left heartbroken by the new menace of our generation, a menace that the Met has decided to accept and orchestrate as just another activity of normative civilized society, just another phenomenon worthy of artistic expression. They tell us that the composer tried to “understand the hijackers, their motivations, and their grievances.
I submit to you that there has never been a crime in human history lacking grievance and motivation. The 9/11 lunatics had profound motivations, and the murderers of my son, Daniel Pearl, had very compelling “grievances.” In the past few weeks we have seen with our own eyes that Hamas and ISIS have grievances, too and, they, too, are lining up for operatic productions with the Met.
Yet civilized society, from the time of our caveman ancestors, has learned to protect itself by codifying right from wrong, separating the holy from the profane, distinguishing that which deserves the sound of orchestras from that which deserves our unconditional revulsion. The Met has smeared this distinction and thus betrayed their contract with society. I submit to you that choreographing an operatic drama around criminal pathology is not an artistic prerogative, but a blatant betrayal of public trust.
We do not stage operas for rapists and child molesters, and we do not compose symphonies for penetrating the minds of ISIS executioners. What we are seeing here in New York today is not an artistic expression that challenges the limits of morality, but a moral deformity that challenges the limits of the art. This opera is not about the mentality of deranged terrorists, but about the judgment of our arts directors. The New York Met has squandered humanity’s greatest treasure — our moral compass, our sense of right and wrong, and, most sadly, our reverence for music as a noble expression of the human spirit. We might be able some day to forgive the Met for de-criminalizing brutal minds, but we will never forgive them for poisoning our music — for turning our best violins and our iconic concert halls into mega-phones for excusing evil.
Slipped Disc supports the Met’s right to stage this production. The opera exists and has been staged in other countries. To perform it will provoke public debate on important issues. To suppress it would amount to a suppression of free speech.
The Yiddish singer Myriam Fuks is a unique voice on the Brussels music scene, an authentic interpreter of a vanishing legacy in a voice that begins at her boots and gets lower.
Myriam has made recordings before, mostly on the Avanticlassic label, with her former protégé, the violinist Roby Lakatos.
But for this landmark album she has assembled a dazzling array of classical headliners – Kissin, Maisky, Margulis and more.
And on the final track: Martha Argerich. As you’ve never heard her before. Martha, in a Yiddish song.
Check out my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com.
We hear that the winner of the cello section, Eun Sun Hong was a student of the president of the jury, Lluis Claret.
The South Korean defeated two Americans, Sarah Rommel and Tony Rymmer, in the final round.
She may be good, but this collusion must stop. Competitions have got to come clean.
UPDATE: Claret has just messaged his student on Facebook: That was great playing!! So proud of you!!
Further details are emerging of the tragic death of Mary Whitaker, a popular violinist with orchestras across New York state.
Police are describing it as a bungled robbery, discounting lurid reports in tabloid newspapers of a sadistic attack. One of the suspects who is being held without bail served nine years in jail for a similar killing in 1991.
Knowing what happened won’t bring Mary back, but it helps to have verified facts in the public domain, erasing the false Daily Mail reports and political agendas that have swirled around this tragedy.
Read a responsible piece of local reporting here.
Here we go again.
The results are in from St Petersburg.
1st Prize -Lubov Stekolschikova.
2nd- Olga Artugina jointly with Olga Yakushina. 3 Price -Ayako Tanabe.
The first prize winner is a pupil of Mikhail Gantvarg, Rector of the St Petersburg State Consrvatoire, head of its Violin and viola department and chair of the Auer jury.
The second and third are pupils of professors Kravchenko and Ivanov, jury members from Moscow.
pictured: Leopold Auer, incorruptible, with student
Финалисты I Международного конкурса скрипачей имени Ауэра ПОБЕДИТЕЛИ I МЕЖДУНАРОДНОГО КОНКУРСА СКРИПАЧЕЙ ИМЕНИ ЛЕОПОЛЬДА АУЭРА 1 ПРЕМИЯ Любовь Стекольщикова (Россия, Санкт-Петербург) 2 ПРЕМИЯ Ольга Артюгина (Россия, Санкт-Петербург) 2 ПРЕМИЯ Ольга Якушина (Россия, Москва) 3 ПРЕМИЯ Аяко Танабэ (Япония, Сайтама) ДИПЛОМ Семен Климашевский (Россия, Санкт-Петербург) Читать далее Состоялось открытие конкурса скрипачей им. Леопольда Ауэра
In the wake of the Indianapolis fiasco, the St Petersburg result confirms the totally compromised status of most major competitions.
