Various readers have asked to hear hazan (cantor) Ari Schwartz who sang the memorial prayer for the fallen of 9/11 before Pope Francis at Ground Zero. Here’s the video:
The cellist will reach his 60th birthday on October 7 and he’s telling jokes about ageing, après-ski and senior bus passes in an interview with Martin Steinberg for the forthcoming November issue of Strings magazine. But he’s also got major issues on his mind.
Where did our high school subjects come from? Our studies are from 1910, so [do] we need to reboot that? How does art fit into that, how does that fit into arts funding and science funding? What are we educating our children for? Is it a transactional thing? Do you pay that money in order to get better jobs or is there something about education that is different?
Read the full interview here.
Luka Okros, 24, a Georgian student of Norma Fisher at the Royal College of Music, has come top in the Iturbi International Piano Competition (2015), in Valencia.
He wins 18,000 Euros and a host of concert engagements.
Second was an Italian, Viviana Lasaracina.
Naomi Lewin will be making her last broadcast on WQXR tonight, Sunday, September 27th.
Naomi is the station’s weekend host and presenter of the weekly podcast Conducting Business. She had been recruited by WQXR from a high-profile position at WGUC, Cincinnati’s classical public radio station.
We don’t think she’s leaving willingly. Neither Naomi nor the station has made any public comment.
Whatever the case, WQXR will not easily replace her hard-won experience and lightly-worn knowledge.
Thierry Vagne has compiled an almost comprehensive directory of post-war staged operas here.
Can you think of any he has forgotten?
We have immediately spotted a Birtwistle omission: Yan Tan Tethera.
And Berthold Goldschmidt, Beatrice Cenci.
Feel free to add more.
Henry Granderson, 63, has been convicted in Jersey City of the aggravated sexual assault of a piano pupil over two years, starting when she was eight.
Granderson, known as Muhammad Bilal, ran the 676 School of Violin and Fine Arts from his home in the city.
He will be sentenced in December and faces another trial on a similar charge. Report here.
Christopher Jackson, founder of Montreal’s Early Music Studio, has died of lung cancer. An organist and chorus master, he was a tireless propagator of the music of Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, Tallis and Monteverdi.
He served as Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University from 1994 to 2005.
Our sympathies to his family.
Here’s a fascinating interview with Peter Carter, longterm leader of the Allegri Quartet, about what players should practise on their own and what they should do in a group.
Sample quote: ‘I have no doubt that an enormous amount of time is wasted by well-meaning quartet players practising in ways that don’t help the final product.’
Full interview here.
Enjoy your weekend.
The question is posed by James MacMillan in the new issue of Standpoint magazine. He provides a list to show the symphonic impulse is still alive and well, still the benchmark of creative ambition:
Hans Werner Henze wrote ten. Alfred Schnittke also wrote ten, and so far Peter Maxwell Davies has also written ten. Michael Tippett wrote four. It was obviously a viable form and concept for these titans of modern music. But there are many others who would never have given the question a second thought — Boulez, Birtwistle, Lachenmann. Is it just the more “conservative” composers of our time who are interested in the symphony? No doubt there will be strident voices from the avant-garde hard-line who would maintain just that. But what makes Maxwell Davies conservative? Perhaps this leads to the impossibility of defining the word and idea. Can anything be a symphony now? Galina Ustvolskaya’s Fifth Symphony is about ten minutes long, scored for only five players and involves an actor reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Russian. Her Fourth Symphony is for voice, piano, trumpet and tam-tam and lasts only six minutes. Concepts of musical conservatism and radicalism have a tendency to wax and wane in our own time, so who knows how the self-proclaimed radicals of our age will be viewed decades hence?
But is it? Read the full essay here.
He has all the necessary enthusiasm and the beginnings of a critical perspective.
This just in from Jean Saad, head of sponsorship and merchandising at Air Canada. It sounds fit for purpose.
Dear…
I am very happy to announce to you that Air Canada has introduced a new policy in favor of musicians traveling with instruments!
Effective today, customers may purchase a seat at a 50 per cent discount off any published fare, including the lowest Tango fares, to accommodate their musical instrument.
Also effective today, all customers travelling with instruments as carry-on on Air Canada, Air Canada Express and Air Canada rouge flights have the opportunity to pre-board ahead of general boarding to ensure their instruments may be conveniently and securely stowed close by.
I am also pleased to inform you that Air Canada has added Symphony Nova Scotia and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra to its roster of Canadian symphony orchestras it supports from coast to coast, making Air Canada the Official Airline of nine of the country’s leading symphony orchestras.
Today at 11ET, our VP-Marketing Craig Landry will be making those two announcements in his speech at Symphony Nova Scotia’s Symphony Week concert at Halifax’s Stanfield International Airport.
More details:
We are happy to introduce a few enhancements to our carry-on baggage policy that will be of great interest to you if you travel with a musical instrument.
In addition to our current policy that ensures items which meet our carry-on size requirements * can be brought on board and stored in the overhead bins or under the seat in front of you, we now offer a 50% discount off any fare, including the lowest available one, to customers who would like to purchase a seat to accommodate their musical instrument in the same cabin that they are booked in.
And if you’re traveling with a musical instrument as carry-on, you will now be invited to board the plane during pre-boarding in advance of general boarding so you’ll have a little more time to store your precious possession in an overhead bin close to your seat. If you need help with this, our flight attendants will be happy to assist.
We take every care when transporting all of our customers’ belongings. But please remember that, because of their fragile nature, musical instruments should always be properly packaged in a rigid and/or hard shell container . This is especially important in the event that your musical instrument needs to be checked at the gate if it is not possible to accommodate it on board because of passenger loads, aircraft limitations or insufficient storage space.
Read our complete policy on travelling with a musical instrument.
* String instruments (e.g. guitars, violins and violas) can be carried on board – even if their dimensions slightly exceed our carry-on size limits.