Christian Gerhaher has pulled out of tomorrow’s Wozzeck at London’s South Bank Centre, ‘due to illness’.
Michael Schade is out of Berlin’s Freischütz, opening tomorrow, with a scary diagnosis of lower-lobe pneumonia.
After a summer relatively free of casualties, the new season kicked in today.
Watch his lips: ‘You have my promise… I will be an arts president. I will continue to advocate strongly for robust funding for the arts in our cities, schools and public spaces. Arts is speech. Art is what life is about.’
What’s not to like?
Michael Stern, who has put in ten years as music director of the Kansas City Symphony, has signed on for five more.
The orchestra sold out many of its concerts last season, turned in a two percent surplus and plays a high-profile role in a city with a new arts centre and an attractive and seriously engaged arts scene.
With those assets to his credit, a maestro must feel over the rainbow.
Jeremiah and Keturah Grünblatt, a popular couple in the opera community, got married on Sunday and went on honeymoon to Long Island.
Yesterday, while out driving, their SUV swerved into oncoming traffic and hit a bus.
Jeremiah, 42, was killed. Keturah, 39, was rushed to hospital. Her injuries are said to be not life-threatening.
The opera profession is in shock. Keturah is a former director at Emerald City Opera. She spent the month before her wedding in Kentucky, directing Verdi’s Macbeth.
wedding photo by Lucas Krech
Pianist Beatrice Rana, second prizewinner at the Van Cliburn, is the stand-out name in the BBC’s latest crop of NGAs, announced today.
The others are:
Annelien Van Wauwe Clarinet (Belgium)
Ilker Arcayürek Tenor (Turkey)
Kathryn Rudge Mezzo-soprano (UK)
Laura Jurd Jazz Trumpet (UK)
Peter Moore Trombone (UK)
Van Kuijk Quartet (France)
Leia Zhu, eight years old from Gateshead, came first in the Russian Rotary Children’s Music Competition, performing excerpts from the Mendelssohn concerto.
It’s her second competition win this year, after a Bulgarian contest in March. She gets time off school and commutes once a week to London to study with Itzhak Rashkovsky at the RCM.
Leia plays a half-sized violin by Carlo Giuseppe Testore loaned to her by Florian Leonhard.
Weeks after the shocking and sudden death of John Scott, Organist and Director of Music at St Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, we mourn his Washington colleague, Ben Hutto, director of music at St. John’s Lafayette Square and director of performing arts at the St. Albans School for Boys and the National Cathedral School for Girls.
Ben was 67 and had been diagnosed with a rare cancer of the gallbladder. His death was announced by the Association of Anglican Musicians.
Originally from Charleston, Ben received the call to Washington in 1999.
The murder of Mary Whitaker in August last year horrified hundreds of friends and colleagues across New York state and beyond. Mary, 61, played in professional orchestras and ensembles in Manhattan, where she lived. She was a close family friend of the conductor, Marin Alsop, passionate about contemporary music and a very private person.
The shooting, at her Chautauqua County summer home, appeared to be a house robbery that went wrong. Two men were quickly arrested, but the case stalled as police tried to build a case against both perpetrators, who were found with Mary’s credit cards and other possessions. Nothing has happened for more than a year.
Today, the good news is that one of the men has agreed to testify against the other in an agreed plea deal. The state’s witness will serve 15 years and his accomplice will get life in the event of a conviction. Mary’s family were consulted before the deal was sealed.
May Mary’s soul rest in perfect peace.
The popular baritone, who is undergoing treatment for brain cancer, has promised to sing at the opening gala of the Helikon Opera on November 2, its director says.
Last night, the Staatsoper audience was exposed for the first time to the new safety curtain.
No-one booed.
This is the 18th change of safety curtain. The new drape is by a French artist, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
Beyond the curtain, James Conlon made his belated conducting debut in the house, in Khovantschina.
The Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (OSCyL) in Valladolid has named Andrew Gourlay as its music director.
Andrew, 32, has served two seasons in Valladolid as principal guest conductor. He won the 2010 Cadaques International Conducting Competition, after playing as a trombonist in UK orchestras.
Who’d have thought?
The competition takes place in Mannheim every three years.
It was won yesterday by an American, Benedikt Bryden, a graduate of the Richard Strauss Academy in Munich. Hs winning entry was entitled Schillers Nachtflug, neatly combining German classicism with modern aviation.
Or so it’s reported.
We can’t find any reference online to a composer called Bryden. It may be Benedikt Brydern, who writes like this:
