The soprano Angel Blue has a busy international career and a promising future.

But she was almost stopped in her tracks by two rejection slips from Juilliard. What kept her going was the support of the music department at UCLA and the chance to sing for Placido Domingo, who chose her for Operalia.

‘I was thankful for the opportunity to sing for (Domingo),’ Blue tells her alumnus magazine. ‘It was a sign from God for me, as ‘This is what you’re supposed to be doing.’’

Angel_Blue_2_-_Credit_Sonya_Garza
photo: Sonya Garza

Read full interview here.

Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne sing “Mira, o Norma” from Bellini’s Norma in 1970 television performance.

Daniel Hass, 18, has been awarded the C$25,000 Michael Measures Prize, an annual award for rising talenthanded out by the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

Daniel migrated with his family to Toronto six years ago. He has been studying with Joel Krosnick at Juilliard for the past year.

 

DanielHaas

The company as tweeted that its computer systems are down “everywhere” and it has grounded flights that are due for takeoff. Planes in the air are unaffected.

 

delta (1)

UPDATE: Vastly unhelpful advice from Delta: Customers should check the status of their flight before heading to the airport while the issue is being addressed.

2nd UPDATE: Flights resumed shortly before noon, New York time.

Andre Watts has cancelled the Philadelphia Orchestra before, but this time he has a serious cause. He was diagnosed three weeks ago with prostate cancer.

‘It’s Andre’s wish that we be straight about that,’ said his manager Linda Marder.

Andre, 70, got his career break in 1963 when Leonard Bernstein asked him to step in at Carnegie Hall for a cancelling Glenn Gould. He went on to make numerous recordings for Gould’s label, CBS.

He has enjoyed a prolific concert career and is professor at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Andre Watts 2 - Courtesy of Indiana University

The Philadelphia Orchestra have called in Lukas Vondracek, winner of the Queen Elisabeth prize, to take over Rachmaninov’s third concerto.

Paul Robertson, founder of the distinguished Medici Quartet, died in a London hospital on July 26. Paul, a vivid and wonderfully articulate character, was 63. He had suffered from heart disease for several years.

medici quartet

 

Before he died, Paul wrote a memoir, Soundscapes: A Musician’s Journey Through Life and Death, in which he describes near-death experiences and the ‘proofs’ he received of life after death. It will be published next month by Faber & Faber. In the beyond, he writes, the angels smell of aftershave.

In a deathbed interview with the Times, he said: ‘All you can hope to do is to enrich that land that must be called death.’

Paul will be sorely missed.

 

paul robertson violinist

The big unions are backing the incumbent Labour Party leader, but not the minnows. Press release:

jeremy corbyn

 

 

The Musicians’ Union’s Executive Committee (EC) has today voted to endorse Owen Smith MP in the contest for leader of the Labour Party.

This was a majority decision based on what the EC believes would be best for its members, the music sector, and arts and culture more generally. It is an advisory recommendation only and individual Musicians’ Union (MU) members who are entitled to vote in the leadership election will be able to vote for whichever candidate they prefer.

John Smith, MU General Secretary, responds:

“I am pleased that the EC has voted to endorse a candidate who has been such a good friend to the Union over the past few years. Owen has met with us on a regular basis, and has supported the MU on issues such as protection of live music venues, copyright protection, fair pay for musicians and arts funding matters. He is also offering a second referendum based on approval of the terms of Brexit, which is undoubtedly an attractive option for many musicians concerned about what Brexit might mean. Jeremy Corbyn on the other hand called for article 50 to be invoked almost immediately after the Brexit vote was announced.”

Owen Smith MP, in a letter addressed to the MU, said the following:

“I understand the anger felt by many MU members following the EU referendum result. Open borders, European funding, protective copyrights and social dialogue on live performances are now all in jeopardy. Employment and health and safety rights derived from our membership of the EU are now threatened. I don’t trust the Tories to make Brexit work. That’s why, under my leadership, Labour will demand the final Brexit deal is signed off by the British people, either through a General Election or a second referendum.”

The Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award 2016, one of the best career springboards, was won today by Aziz Shokhakimov, 27, from Uzbekistan.

Aziz Shokhakimov

The losing finalists were Ciarán McAuley, 33, (Ireland) and Alexander Prior, 23, (UK).

Past winners are:

Lorenzo Viotti, Switzerland 2015
Maxime Pascal, France 2014
Ben Gernon, Great Britain, 2013
Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla, Lithuania, 2012
Ainars Rubikis, Latvia, 2011
David Afkham, Germany, 2010

From an interview with Jordi in Platea magazine:

I was part of a group of artists who decided to take risks. And thanks to that, today, a variety of music has been recognized and has become part of the classical repertoire. This may have been possible because, at one point, someone like Leohardt decided he had to play with a harpsichord and not a piano; or someone like Harnoncourt who decided he would direct certain repertoire in a particular way.  And I decided I would play the viola da gamba as I thought it should be played. I think I’ve been very consistent in my life and my way of making music. I started making music with Gustav Leonhardt when he created La Petite Bande, playing baroque repertoire with Anner Bylsma and Sigiswald Kuijken. I was in the creation of The English Concert, with Trevor Pinnock and Stephen Preston and I travelled every week from Basel to London to play with them. It was Nikolaus Harnoncourt who recommended me to substitute my teacher at the School Cantorum in Basel, in the subjects of chamber music and viola da gamba. It was a period in which each  of us, in our own way, contributed to learn that music is not only important for what it means within the story but also has a value for what it can provide today.

It had been widely reported that she had been cast as Elsa in Lohengrin in 2018.

Forget it, she tells Eleanore Büning in a wide-ranging FAZ interview.

Why not?

‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ says Anna. ‘My brain refuses to memorise German.’

She sang Elsa in Dresden this year (pictured) and didn’t feel comfortable.

Jetzt verrate ich Ihnen ein Geheimnis: Ich kann keinen deutschen Text memorieren. Mein Gehirn ist vielleicht doch zu Russisch organisiert, es ist dazu einfach nicht in der Lage. Französisch, italienisch, das kann ich alles singen, aber deutsche Texte sind zu schwer für mich. „Einsam in trüben Tagen“, okay, bis dahin. Silenzio, Schluss, wie es weitergeht, kann ich mir nicht merken. Ich bekam einen Teleprompter für die Elsa in Dresden. Christian Thielemann hatte es mir eingebleut, dass es auf die Worte ankommt. Er sagte, er wolle keine musikalischen Linien von mir hören, er wolle Tttexssssttt hören! Vokale! Konsonanten! Elsa war wirklich hart.

Continues here.

lohengrin-anna-netrebko-dresden-semperoper

So that’s that.

 

Maroine Dib is one of the livelier artists on display at the festival.

maroine dibDib-Jonas-kaufmann

More striking caricatures here.

And one more for luck:

yannick caricature

From a soft interview with ZealNYC:

Opera is an old art form, it is in foreign languages, and is typically longer than movies and plays. It is more challenging for an audience, particularly an audience that doesn’t already know about opera. With a lack of classical music education, it is very difficult to overcome those obstacles, those barriers.

On the other hand, it doesn’t stop us from trying everyday.

Realist or defeatist?

Read on here.

GelbTV