Greg Reuter recently joined the faculty of Michigan State University as a Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre. He died suddenly, it is reported from ‘medical complications’.
Among many roles Greg performed in New York and LA were: Chicago (Billy Flynn), Fosse (principal dancer), Aida (Radames), The Producers Leo Bloom and Carmen Ghia), Monty Python’s Spamalot and Shrek The Musical (Original Broadway Cast).
10 Turnaround Kaiser is terminated in D.C.
9 Worst-ever Culture sec gets fired
8 She verbally cuffed a coughing child
7 He had a mother and child removed
6 He called a lockout and was himself locked out
5 More bits fell off his business
4 This maestro was jailed for sex offences
3 He was reduced to writing novels
2 He talked tough, but folded at the table
1 She gave a cheque to a man she’d never met
Better luck next year!
Click here for musical winners of 2014.
Christina Smith, principal flute of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and stand-in for the Chicago SO in its personnel predicament, believes she plays one of the oldest and heaviest flutes heard in any orchestra. It’s a 1938 platinum by Verne Q. Powell, apparently the first he made, and it was used by her Atlanta predecessor for more than half a century before she bought it.
Most principals these days, says Christina, play silver or gold. But platinum, she finds, ‘has more body to it.’
Read a fascinating interview here.
Pianist, singer and songwriter Udo Jürgens died today while taking a stroll in Switzerland. He was 80 and promoting a new album titled Mid-Life – Mitten im Leben.
Jürgens won Eurovision in 1966 and remained a popular entertainer for the rest of his life, his songs covered by international artists and coveted by football teams.
The BBC has reported the death, age 99, of th polymath John Freeman who, in 1961, conducted an immortal television interview with the indomitable Otto Klemperer. If you’ve never watched it before, prepare to be amazed.
Afro-American media say the New York Times has got rid of non-white personnel from its much-depleted culture department.
Departing are Metro reporter Kia Gregory, who is being laid off after arriving at the paper in 2012 from Philadelphia; longtime reporter Felicia R. Lee, the only black reporter in the Culture section, also being laid off; and Fletcher Roberts, the pop music editor, who is taking a buyout. All are African Americans.
In addition, Maria Newman, a senior editor in the food section, who is Latina, is taking a buyout.
The departure of the journalists of color from the Culture section — along with three members of the section’s support staff — comes three months after the Times was embarrassed by an uproar over an Arts & Leisure story by Alessandra Stanley that referred to TV producer Shonda Rhimes in connection with the stereotype of the “Angry Black Woman.”
Read more here.
The Argentine violinist Tomas Cotik makes a claim on his new recording that much of Schubert’s dance music exists only in autograph at the city library of Vienna, unpublished and unrecorded. Can this really be?
Here’s Cotik’s assertion:
In view of the vast number of recordings of works by Franz Schubert, it may come as a surprise that there are still works that have not been documented on recordings. Schubert composed numerous dance pieces. Some of Schubert’s dance sets were published in engraved editions during his life or shortly after his death; however, most of his dance music existed only in autograph.
While these Ländler are written for “violino” (violin) on the autograph, it is arguable that in some cases these autographs could be considered as not definitive or not complete. On the other hand, drawings dating from the 19th century where one violinist alone plays music for a dance make evident that this practice was customary and suggest that most, if not all, of these Ländler were conceived as solo violin pieces and that the autograph shows them in definitive form. During his doctoral research and recording of Schubert’s complete works for violin and piano, Tomas Cotik discovered these largely unknown and unrecorded pieces, whose autographs are at the Stadtbibliothek, Wien.
h/t Wigmore Hall
Last night’s opening of Pierre Audi’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto was marred by the illness of Simon Keenlyside. The baritone had been unwell at the general rehearsal but agreed to brave the opening. Unwisely, as it turned out.
He sounded challenged in the first act. In the middle of the second act he was forced to leave the stage. He returned, struggling to stay on stage until the next curtain. Some idiot in the audience began to boo*.
Before the finale, State Opera director came out to announced that Simon Keenlyside was unwell. An ensemble veteran, Paolo Rumetz (pictured below), sang the opera to its close.
We wish Simon a swift recovery.
*UPDATE: A production member adds: Minutes before the boo, the audience gave Simon the most rapturous applause after an amazingly intense cortigiani. When Meyer paid tribute to him in front of the curtain the audience erupted in a prolonged, intense applause.
