Danny Cohen, Director of BBC Television, has made some startling comments at a conference in Jerusalem.
Cohen, British born and raised, said:
‘I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as I’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually. Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before actually… And you’ve seen the number of attacks rise. You’ve seen murders in France. You’ve seen murders in Belgium. It’s been pretty grim actually. And having lived all my life in the UK, I’ve never felt as I do now about anti-Semitism in Europe.’
Cohen, 40, is one of the most influential figures in UK media and culture, earmarked as the BBC’s next director-general. Unlike past (and some present) BBC panjandrums who just happened to be Jewish, Cohen is rooted in his heritage and married in an Orthodox synagogue. His warning needs to be taken seriously.
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.
The first two are no surprise – the Benedicties of Mary and Andrea Bocelli.
The third is a bombshell.
The Guarnerius-playing Anne-Akiko Meyers, with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and American Masters, outsold every genuine classical artist in America in the year 2014.
Local media report the abrupt dismissal of Enrique Carreón-Robledo after three years as music director of Opera in the Heights. Apparently, the board want a change of direction and … shorter operas.
On Tuesday evening, vice-chairman of the OH! board of directors Josh Abrams phoned Carreon-Robledo and told him … he was fired as artistic director. “My tenure with the company from April, 2011, lasted three years, nine months and six days,” he tells us. “During that tenure, I put my very best effort to do the highest quality job that I could possibly do. I invested my heart and soul, all of my abilities to the company and it is devastating to have come to this conclusion.”
