We’ve been so touched by the outpouring of love and support from everyone — the countless prayers, the social media sharing, the hundreds of volunteers at the rescue site, food donated by local vendors — the unselfish sacrifice of so many on behalf of Jon and his family. People are good. So good. As tragic as these events are, they prove that despite how the media and politics paint our world, the color of love and the human heart shine through everlastingly more vivid. No one should be a stranger when in dire need. We are all family.
We wish we had better news. We were not able to find Annie. The search is being discontinued at this time in consideration of the health and well-being of everyone involved.
But all is not lost. Annie’s Mother, Michelle, wrote a beautiful post that we’d like to share. It summarizes all our feelings as we leave the search site.
‘I desire for everyone to know, who has exercised their faith in behalf of our family, your faith has not gone unanswered. We have been literally carried and sustained through day after day. We have felt a calm and a peace beyond ourselves that have enabled us to get up each morning and function and do what needs to be done that day to continue our efforts to find our daughter. We know that this is a result of your prayers. Thank you (times a million).
We have been unable to find our sweet daughter’s body at this time. But these things we know. We know that Heavenly Father has heard the countless prayers and combined faith exercised by people literally all over the world. We know He has heard us, and if He choses to not show us where to find her, then we trust that there is a purpose in this. We know we are in His hands. We know He loves us and everyone who has reached out in such kindness and support. We can feel peace in putting our lives in His hands and pray that His purposes will be fulfilled in this whole experience.’
Delta, not the most musician-friendly of fliers, has donated a handsome $2.5m to help musicians in the Atlanta Symphony restore 11 permanent seats in the orchestra.
The gift takes the musicians’ appeal over the $25 million mark and will re-establish the ASO as a go-ahead ensemble.
Press release below.
ATLANTA, October 28, 2016 – The Delta Air Lines Foundation has pledged to make a $2.5 million contribution to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Musicians’ Endowment Fund, helping the Orchestra reach an ambitious $25 million goal to permanently endow 11 musician positions in the Orchestra.
The Delta Air Lines Foundation gift completes the Musicians’ Endowment Campaign nearly two years ahead of schedule. The Orchestra committed to increase endowment funding to restore 11 positions to the Orchestra by 2018. To date, more than $25 million in funds have been committed to the Musicians’ Endowment Fund and nine musicians have joined the Orchestra over the past year. The two newest members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra are Samuel Schlosser, Principal Trombone, and Gina Hughes, Piccolo and Flute. Auditions are ongoing and additional positions will be announced as they are filled.
To recognize the generous gift from The Delta Air Lines Foundation, the Principal Tuba Chair, held by Michael Moore, will be endowed and named The Delta Air Lines Chair. The named chair is a fitting tribute to Moore, who is celebrating his 49thseason with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
In my new essay for Standpoint magazine, I assess the present strategies of Valery Gergiev and Gustavo Dudamel in the context of the past lives of Willem Mengelberg and Wilhelm Furtwängler.
Sample:
The Venezuelan government subjects its citizens to starvation and mob rule. It is represented on the world stage by a conductor, Gustavo Dudamel. The Russian state, headed by Vladimir Putin, has invaded Ukraine and commits war crimes in Syria. It can call on the conductor Valery Gergiev to justify its actions by affirming cultural superiority. There are obvious parallels to past collaborationists.
Gerry O’Brien, general manager of The Churchill Arms in Kensington, handed over six grand plus commission for a William Robinson violin made from Winston Churchill’s cigar boxes and once played by Yehudi Menuhin.
The price was six times the top estimate. Maybe Gerry had a quick snifter before he bid.
Other top prices at the Ingles&Hayday auction:
· GB. Grancino II (violin) – Lot 190, £144,000
· Ferdinand Gagliano (violin) – Lot 24, £180,000
· Luigi Vistoli (violin) – Lot 189, £8,700
· Piero Parravicini (violin) – Lot 187, £15,000
· Carlo de March (violin) – Lot 176, £12,000
· William Robinson (violin) – Lot 139, £6,600
· Giovanni Dollenz (violin) – Lot 98, £28,800
· Domenico Pasta (violin) – Lot 91, £78,000
· Hendrick Willems (viola) – Lot 63, £28,800
· William Tarr (viola) – Lot 60, £5,040
· J.B. LeFebvre (viola) – Lot 57, £15,600
Isaac Mizrahi is promoting opera across the USA as chair of Opera Week.
Press release:
OPERA America is delighted to announce that famous designer and beloved television personality ISAAC MIZRAHI is serving as the Honorary Chairman of National Opera Week 2016, encouraging audiences to explore opera.
‘The more you know about opera, the more you know about life,’ stated Mizrahi. ‘Opera is as important to me as sports are to other people — an opera season is like Wimbledon or the World Series. The power of great singing is more than any other physical effort and ten times as gratifying.’
From an article by Alex Beard yesterday in a widely unread freesheet:
We must establish the right to remain for EU nationals currently working in the UK, including the multilingual, highly skilled individuals who contribute to the success of the UK’s creative industries, whether on stage or back- and front-of-house. We owe our past and present success to them and it is only fair that we recognise and repay their dedication and trust.
We have to have a quick and efficient work permit system that promotes a diverse and multilingual workforce and enables creative and cultural organisations to access highly specialist skills. The quality of work on the Royal Opera House stages, for example, is immeasurably enhanced by the ability to draw immediately on a Europe-wide talent pool in the event of sickness.
Sey Cheon, deputy principal viola at Finnish National Opera, tells us:
Lufthansa took away my viola at the gate in Helsinki. The viola will be coming out on the baggage belt (on arrival). This is not okay. Cold temperature shrinks peg, unravelling strings, causing low tension. I don’t know if my sound post stayed in same place.
Just another day in the life of a high-flying art form.
We have received the following article from James Davis Jr., Director of Music Ministries & Fine Arts at The Abyssinian Baptist Church. The contents are self-explanatory. We publish the letter in the hope that Ms Battle will reconsider the rights of her backing singers.
On November 13, 2016, Kathleen Battle will make her highly anticipated return to the Metropolitan Opera Stage after a 22-year hiatus. She has titled the program Underground Railroad: A Spiritual Journey. She will sing a full concert of Negro spirituals (a first for the Metropolitan Opera), accompanied by a 30-voice choir of Black singers she is unwilling to fairly compensate, even though the Metropolitan Opera Chorus is being paid union scale and they are not singing the concert at all. If this program happens, the Metropolitan Opera stage will be transformed into a proverbial plantation with Kathleen Battle as overseer. This concert is already sold out and has been for several months now. And this huge financial success for the Metropolitan Opera, Columbia Artists Management Inc. (the agency that represents her) and Kathleen Battle herself, has been built on the backs of exploited black labor.
The Negro spiritual, in my view, is the soundtrack of the struggle of African peoples in the Western Hemisphere, particularly America. This music was birthed out of the fight for freedom, justice and equality that continues to this day. The music by the chorus is interspersed with quotes from Frederick Douglass & Harriet Tubman, issuing from the blood, sweat, tears and suffering of an enslaved people and their disenfranchised descendants.
There is no question Douglass and Tubman would agree that for the vast majority of black musicians working on this project to not be compensated fairly and equally is exploitation at its worst; exploitation of our music, our heritage and our people. Sometimes, we as artists have to take a stand, and in my small way as a musician born and raised in Mississippi, I have chosen not to participate in this production that shies away from liberty and justice for all.
The sound engineer and avant-garde composer Eugeniusz Rudnik, one of the first electronic exerimentalists in Eastern Europe, has died at 83.
As a sound engineer at Polish Radio, he began to produce atmospheric background music for programmes in the late 1950s. This led to more daring tapes, some of which could not be played in his own country. Rudnik worked with leading composers, including Penderecki and Nordheim, creating electronic versions of their score. He also collaborated with the Stockhausen studio in Cologne.
The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra has named Alexander Prior to succeed Bill Eddins as chief conductor, it has just been announced.
Prior, 24, made his name a decade ago, composing in a late-romantic style and conducting his works in Russia. I wrote about him at the time.
Since then, the going has got a lot harder. He will start in Edmonton in 2017-18.
