This weekend’s long read is by Daniel A. Gross in Nautilus:
… Recent looks at the evolution and neurology of music suggest we are not waltzing by ourselves. Musical experiences are inherently social, scientists tell us, even when they happen in private. When we listen alone, we feel together.
Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, Ph.D., a research neuroscientist at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, has explored how music “creates the sense of social belonging,” as he writes in a 2015 paper, “Please Don’t Stop the Music.”
“When you’re home alone in your house, it feels empty,” he says. “And then you put on music and all of a sudden you feel better because you’re not alone. It’s not that literally you’re not alone. But you feel like you have company.”
Read on here.
Research in Australia suggests that certain kinds of music can help dementia sufferers to delay memory loss.
Read more and listen here.
This was the Metropolitan Opera last night.
It was the start of a new run of the usually-popular L’Elisit d’Amore with Vittorio Grigolo as Nemorino and Aleksandra Kurzak as Adina. ‘First time this season,’ proclaims the program sheet.
As you can see from the picture, posted by a Slipped Disc reader, most of the best seats went unsold.
Other observers have remarked before on poor ticket sales.
Peter Gelb cannot turn a blind eye much longer to these half-empty houses.
UPDATE: The picture taker informs us: Picture was taken at 7.30 sharp (they started 5 minutes late) and dress circle and first tier were just as empty. In fact there were numbers of completely empty boxes.
The fast rising Jakub Hrusa has told the St Louis Symphony he can’t make a week of concerts next month because he needs to be around for the birth of his second child.
That’s what we like to hear from a thoroughly modern maestro.
But Jakub might be cutting it fine. The following week he’s due to conduct the Los Angeles Phil and he intends to make those dates. Let’s hope the baby comes in time.
Jakub with his first child, August 2013
Ian Maclay has been saying for years he’s ready to leave the challenging task of finding work for London’s fifth-ranked orchestra.
The RPO have now, finally, named his successor – a bloke from the Philharmonia.
That’s exciting.
Read here
And it leaves the Philharmonia still searching for some other bloke to succeed David Whelton, who is retiring in two months’ time.
El Universal reports: The body of Larry Salinas, director of the orchestra for special children in Ciudad Guayana, was found at dawn at kilometre 17. It had three gunshot wounds. His vehicle was missing.
According to a local report, the body was found by children as they walked to school.
Larry had spent 20 years teaching children, providing them with music opportunities.
He was 48 years old.
Lawlessness rules in Venezuela.
An Oxford study on ‘The psychological benefits of singing in a choir’ finds the following:
1 Choral singers report ‘significantly higher levels of well-being than solo singers.’
2 Choral singers ‘experience a greater sense of being part of a meaningful, or ‘real’ group, than team sports players.’
Discuss.
Just when you thought orchestras had run out of gimmicks, along comes a new gang with a recycled meal deal.
The Philharmonia Orchestra of New York, known as PONY, ‘has commissioned five of the area’s top chefs to create dishes inspired by symphonies being performed in a pair of concerts on March 29 and 30 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.’
That’s what it says in the press release.
Among the dishes: Spanish Gamba Resurrected with New York’s First Taste of Spring
I’m going vegan.
Vesa Siren, critic of the Hensingin Sanomat, has just published rehearsal video of the Helsinki Philharmonic with young Klaus Mäkelä, who looks like the real deal.
Vesa writes:
Great expectations this evening at Helsinki Music Centre. Klaus decided to become a conductor when he was seven years old, rehearsing in children’s choir of Carmen at Finnish National Opera with Hannu Lintu. Already one of the best cellists in Finland of his generation, at 12 he started studying conducting, with Jorma Panula. 8 years later he has already conducted many Finnish orchestras. Next: debuts in Denmark, Tokyo. Panula says: “He is one of the best students I have ever had. He has ears, is quick-witted and of course with great musicality.”
Watch rehearsal video here.
We learn today that Violin Memory, the computer-data storage company, has sacked a quarter of its staff after poor results.
Opera, the popular browser, has developed an effective ad-blocking system online.
Symphony is a high-performance software system.
Orchestra develops could-based software solutions.
Maestro is a NASA program.
Conductor specialises in web presence management.
These people tell us classical music is obsolete.
As they steal our clothes.
The incoming conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic is having great difficulty fitting the orchestra into his busy schedule in the years ahead. Kirill Petrenko is music director at Bavarian State Opera and takes his responsibilities there very seriously.
He has no concerts scheduled yet, so far as we can see, on the Berlin Phil website.
However, he has managed to squeeze in one concert with the Berliners on Easter Saturday, April 8, 2017, at Baden-Baden, the festival has just announced.
It’s a start.
We have a soft spot for the Brussels opera house. It has a fantastic record for talent, innovation and counter-intuitive presentation over the past quarter-century and it’s always pushing out the envelope.
So when intendant Peter de Caluwe launches his season with seven new productions couched in quotations from the gloomiest philosopher since the Biblical Jeremiah, well…. maybe he’s onto something.
Read Peter’s thoughtful speech here.
