A reader complained that the new roundup feature is taking the space once allocated to concert reviews. He cited two New York Philharmonic concerts in a week that went uncovered. This was the creepy response:
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After four years of consecutive surplus, the Cleveland Orchestra has posted a $2.4 million deficit for 2016, its first year under the leadership of Andre Gremillet.
Some of the loss was incurred in the Miami residency. And the endowment shrank in vaue by 4.4 percent.
Strange statement on the deficit from the orchestra’s board president Dennis LaBarre: ‘We face our challenges… We could have made [it] go away, but we want our challenges to be out there to incentivize ourselves to overcome them.’
Hm.
In September, the Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård stepped in at three days notice to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
Last month, he stood in for Valery Gergiev with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Next week, he’s replacing Dan Ettinger for Turandot at the Bavarian State Opera.
He’s classical music’s last-minute.com.
It’s an exclusive offer being advertised on Slipped Disc. Click here.
Musicians in the orchestra of the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele of Messina are in shock today at the death of Greta Medini, 26, who fell from a viaduct onto the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway.
It was confirmed today that Greta had driven her red Fiat onto the viaduct, stopped, left the car and jumped.
Her body had to be winched up by helicopter.
Greta played in the Messina orchestra between 2013 and last year, often occupying the concertmaster’s seat. Se is described as ‘shy, sweet and unaffected’.
The president-elect is struggling to find musicians who will agree to play at his inauguration.
Donald J Trump has shown no great interest in the arts, and many in the arts recoiled from the abrasive tone of his election campaign.
It is now reported, in the New York Daily News’s Page 6, that the president elect met on Friday with the Italian crooner Andrea Bocelli, offering him up to a million bucks to sing on inauguration day.
A source exclusively told Page Six, “Trump has a long-standing relationship with Bocelli, and wants to ask him in person to perform. The plan is to have acts at the inauguration that are meaningful for Trump, and he’s a huge fan of Bocelli.”
Any repertoire suggestions?
Picture from a 2010 event at Trump’s Florida estate
The Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili has been voted Musician of the Year on the main French television channel, TF1.
New research from Imperial College London and the neighbouring Royal College of Music. Read here.
The conclusions are based on a very small sample of 352 visitors to an exhibition. However, there may be possible implications for the use of music during surgery in the operating theatre.
Dr Daisy Fancourt, lead author of the research from the Centre for Performance Science, said: “Although this study is clearly tongue-in-cheek, and was all performed in our spare time, it is part of our wider research into the effect of music on performance – particularly in a medical setting such as an operating theatre.”
She explained that music is reportedly played up to 72 per cent of the time in an operating theatre. However, experts are divided on whether it has a beneficial effect. Some research, for instance, has found that Jamaican music and Hip-Hop increases operating speed and surgical instrument manipulation. However another study reported that one in four anaesthetists, who are responsible for keeping patients sedated, said music reduced their vigilance.
The Orchestre Philhamonique de Radio France were out yesterday raising cash and awareness for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund.
They were, for once, allowed to carry their instruments on board.
Easyjet has not posted this story, pour pas encourager des autres.
The orchestra has cancelled two tour concerts in April in Chapel Hill, N.C., in response to the a law that revokes rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The sanction was announced by executive director Brent Assink, after consultation with the board and the music director, Michael Tilson Thomas.
