Scott O’Neil has decided to step down as resident conductor of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.
Nothing to do with the Classically Cannabis series which has earned the band world attention.
He just needs to get out and smell the fresh air. Story here.
photo: Todd Rosenberg
Katinka Kleijn, a cellist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, uses electroencephalography (EEG) to deliver a musical response to the sound of her own brainwaves.
Listen here.
To launch a new route from Zurich to Salzburg, they’s installed a piano on the platform. Watch.
Leonard Bernstein was in Berlin soon after the Wall fell. He conducted Beethoven’s 9th with one significant word alteration – Freiheit (freedom) in place on Freude (joy)
Immediate reactions tonight to the end of the Atlanta Symphony lockout are relief and amazement.
Relief that ten weeks of misery are over and play can resume on Monday.
Amazement that the Woodruff Arts Center, which tried to slash the orchestra to 76 players, made a major concession on Friday to 88, allowing the players to vote tonight on a financially-tight four-year deal but one that gives them a guarantee of peace with considerable honour.
Why the WAC yielded on player numbers we don’t yet know. They owned the local media and were under no political pressure – as Minnesota were – to cut a quick deal. Their manipulation of print media, however, was countered by the players’ successful social media campaign, a sustained burst of pressure that forced the board to get rip of an inept manager – Stanley Romanstein – and risk their own reputations in the fray.
Attacks by board members on the musicians and their conductors backfired like a faulty July 4 firecracker. The board started feeling the heat.
Who lost? The hardliners, that’s for sure. Who wins, remains to be seen… and head.
Having suffered the most hostile audience reaction in recent times to a new production at Mozart’s Idomeneo, the Royal Opera House is doing the English thing and asking us to discuss the matter over a virtual cup of tea.
Sweet, really.
Click here.
The only known footage of Adolf Hitler’s sister Paula has resurfaced on a couple of websites. She lived and died in Liverpool, dependent apparently (like so many migrants, we are told) on Britain’s generous benefits system. Watch.
Musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra have voted to accept a four-year deal.
Play resumes immediately.
Details here.
You read it here first.
Our deep throat in Georgia tells us that a tentative agreement has been being presented to the full orchestra.
It’s a 4-year deal, maintaining the orchestra strength at 88 and including small wage increases for the musicians.
Both side accepted the urgency of hiring a new CEO, and launching major fundraising and marketing initiatives.
It looks like the players scored most of the points at the final negotiating session.
If the vote is yes, play resumes this week with Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony.
UPDATE: The deal is
Weeks 42 (unchanged)
Compensation +6% over 4 years
Total players 88
Health care: Not much change
The outstanding South African opera stage designer Johan Engels has died in Bath of a heart attack, aged 62. He worked closely with David Pountney at Bregenz Festival and with Anthony Freud at Houston Grand Opera and Chicago Lyric, notably on Weinberg’s opera, The Passenger.
Anthony Freud, general director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, has issued the following statement:
‘We are shocked and deeply saddened at the tragic passing of Johan Engels. We mourn with the rest of the international performing arts community, which has lost one of its brightest lights, and send our sincerest sympathies to his family.
‘Johan was an incredible artist who made a tremendous impact at Lyric in just a few short seasons. His designs for last season’s Parsifal took our breath away. His complete commitment to Weinberg’s The Passenger, which will have its Chicago premiere in February, helped bring that work to vivid life. We will dedicate our upcoming performances of this work to his memory.
‘Johan recently completed the set designs for our upcoming Ring cycle. Despite this devastating loss, our plans to produce Wagner’s Ring cycle, starting in the 2016-17 season, remain in place.’
Sony stopped sponsoring the British radio awards last year.
They haven’t found a substitute and decided to cancel next year’s event.
Has radio lost its commercial appeal?
Nobody’s calling it cause and effect but after 10 weeks with a locked-out orchestra, Atlanta’s public radio station WABE is dropping daytime classical music for news and jabber. Atlanta will truly be a town without music. Read here.
