The Musicians of the Chicago Symphony will present a benefit concert for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, GCFD, on Monday, June 13th at 8:00PM at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Our musicians have always been involved in the community through chamber, educational, and community concerts. This concert, undertaken as an orchestra and conducted by our Music Director Riccardo Muti, will be the first time such a collective effort has been made. Collaborating with the Food Depository, our musicians can offer support in direct ways, by raising funds. This concert will bring attention to two of the most difficult problems our society faces: hunger and malnutrition. The concert is entirely produced by the musicians. All of the proceeds will be donated to the GCFD.
Chicago Symphony Musicians Express Gratitude to Maestro Muti:
The Chicago Symphony Musicians have the highest regard for Riccardo Muti. He has also been recognized as an international humanitarian. We are most grateful to him for agreeing to lead us in our first independently produced concert that benefits the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
About the Greater Chicago Food Depository:
The Greater Chicago Food Depository, Chicago’s food bank, is a nonprofit food distribution and training center providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in our community. The Food Depository, founded in 1979, makes a daily impact across Cook County with a network of 650 pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, mobile programs, children’s programs, older adult programs and innovative responses that address the root causes of hunger. Last year, the Food Depository distributed 68 million pounds of shelf-stable food, fresh produce, dairy products and meat, the equivalent of 155,000 meals every day. For more information, visit chicagosfoodbank.org or call 773-247-FOOD.
Muti visits food bank (photo: Todd Rosenberg)
The orchestra has named the two winners of its Huberman Scholarship, who will join its academy.
The two are both Israeli violinists – Ori Wissner-Levy, 25 (pictured), and Ohad Cohen, 25.
photo: Foppe Schut
press release:
Orchester-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker vergibt Huberman-Stipendium
Das Huberman-Stipendium der Orchester-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker wurde 2008 unter der Schirmherrschaft von Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel in Erinnerung an den polnisch-jüdischen Violinisten Bronislaw Huberman ins Leben berufen. Im Sinn seines Namensgebers unterstützt es die deutsch-israelische Begegnung auf künstlerischer und menschlicher Ebene. Das Huberman-Stipendium richtet sich an junge israelische Musiker/innen bis 27 Jahre, die bereits eine Hochschulausbildung für ein Orchesterinstrument absolviert haben und die israelische Staatsbürgerschaft besitzen. Diese bewerben sich auf eine der offenen Stellen der Orchester-Akademie um das Huberman-Stipendium.
Unter der Leitung des philharmonischen Geigers Alessandro Cappone sowie des Stimmführers der zweiten Geigen Christophe Horak fand am 19. April in Jerusalem ein Probespiel mit Anwärtern für ein Huberman-Stipendium der Orchester-Akademie statt. Zwei junge Geiger gingen als Gewinner hieraus hervor, Ori Wissner-Levy (25 Jahre) und Ohad Cohen (25 Jahre).
Orchestra Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker Awards Huberman Scholarship
The Huberman Scholarship of the Orchestra Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker was established in 2008 under the patronage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in memory of the Polish-Jewish violinist Bronisław Huberman. The aim of the scholarship is to promote German-Israeli understanding on an artistic and personal level in the spirit of its namesake.
The Huberman Scholarship is open to young Israeli musicians under the age of 27 who have completed a degree from a university or conservatory in an orchestral instrument and hold Israeli citizenship. They are eligible to apply for the Huberman Scholarship for one of the vacancies in the Orchestra Academy.
Auditions for applicants for a Huberman Scholarship from the Orchestra Academy were held in Jerusalem on 18 April, conducted by members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, first violinist Alessandro Cappone and principal second violinist Christophe Horak. Two young violinists were chosen as winners: Ori Wissner-Levy and Ohad Cohen, both age 25.
Before the curtain rose last night at English National Opera, some members of the audience shouted and demanded their money back after it was announced that the star of Sunset Boulevard, Glenn Close, was unable to appear.
People had paid a lot of money and come a long way to see the Hollywood legend. No refunds were offered. Glenn Close is 69 and was described by ENO as ‘indisposed’. Her future appearances have yet to be confirmed.
At the final curtain, however, the audience cheered her stand-in, Ria Jones, for fully five minutes.
Good show.
The latest Nuit Debout – Up All Night – protest in Paris involved a performance by 300 musicians of Dvorak’s New World Symphony on Wednesday night in the Place de la Republique. Most of the players were amateur. The performance is rather good.
Slower even than one-horse EMI, Deutsche Grammophon was the last label of consequence to adopt stereo recording in the late 1950s. Its circumspection is, in retrospect, comprehensible. In austerity-minded Germany, a second living-room speaker would have been deemed an anti-social luxury and DG’s mono quality was, by any criterion, world-class. Under the leadership of camp-survivor Elsa Schiller, DG had buried its Nazi past beneath a blaze of new talent and high performance. The DG represented in this massive box of rarities is a label under post-War reconstruction, fascinating in its rigour and frugality.
For 37 years, Guy Woolfenden was director of music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, composing 150 scores of intermezzi and incidental music. His music was indispensable to Peter Hall’s series, The Wars of the Roses.
Guy has died, aged 79.
As a boy, he sang at the Queen’s wedding to Prince Philip. He played horn in the Sadlers Wells orchestra and conducted here and there, including three productions at Scottish Opera, one of which was the UK premiere of Nielsen’s Saul and David.
In 1995, he founded the English Music Festival.
We have been notified of the death of Stewart J Warkow, executive director of Carnegie Hall from 1978 to 1982.
Stewart, who was 81, started out in the accounts department of NBC, became Leopold Stokowski’s assistant at the Symphony of the Air and helped for the American Symphony Orchestra, acting as its first artistic director. He became house manager at Carnegie in 1968, rising to the top job ten years later.
For the remainder of his career he headed the conductors’ division of the ICM agency, looking after such artists as Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Zdenek Macal, Peter Maag, Gary Bertini, Charles Mackerras, and Bobby McFerrin—as well Andres Segovia, Ruth Laredo, and Eliot Fisk.
He was old-school, unflappable, respectful of artists and art, a perfect gentleman.
It’s anarchy at the Bucharest National Opera.
George Călin, reinstated yesterday as head of the opera company, was removed again today.
Falstaff has been cancelled and the opera is apparently on strike.
We hear that Sebastian Weigle will replace James Levine in next season’s Der Rosenkavalier.
More here than meets the eye?
Weigle, 56, has been a diligent music director at Frankfurt Opera since 2008, and before that at the Liceu in Barcelona. He knows the opera house inside out and he has conducted at the Met before.
Given that the Met’s first-choice music director won’t be available before the end of the decade, might Weigle be a stop-gap?
press release:
New York, NY (April 21, 2016) – The League of American Orchestras has selected five exemplary orchestra musicians to receive The Ford Musician Awards for Excellence in Community Service. A new program made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund, the awards celebrate orchestra musicians and the essential work they do in their communities.
The award recipients and their orchestras are:
Penny Anderson Brill, viola – Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Music and Wellness Program
