The ballerina Maria Alexandrova, 38, has announced on Instagram that she is leaving the company:

My dear beloved colleagues and spectators I want to say heartfelt THANK YOU to all of you for this amazing story we shared together in Bolshoi. But this great part of my life is over. I took the decision to turn this page. Artist’s place is on stage, the rest is just an illusion and unnecessary soul-devastating dither.

The Sryian-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh has been allowed to return to the US at the end of a tour with Yo Yo Ma.

Kinan writes: ‘I was able after all to fly back to NY last night (as  green card holders are no longer included in the travel ban). It is simply crazy.

‘It is incredible how one signature can change the lives of so many people.

‘I look forward to making more music, keeping one’s voice loud and clear is what one should continue to do I guess.’

We have been informed by close friends of the death of Gervase de Peyer, the foremost British clarinet player of his time. Gervase was 90.

A founder of the Melos Ensemble, with whom he recorded extensively, Gervase was principal clarinet of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1956 to 1973. He was also a founder of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and an influential teacher.

His student Thomas Piercy writes:

‘His sound – bold, colorful – was in my head since I was a teenager. I moved to NYC to study with him and continued to learn from him until the last time we spoke. He was always there to give advice and encouragement, both about music and life.

‘His personality and musicality were a great match: bigger than life, full of energy, endlessly curious. His playing was unique and almost instantly recognizable: full of charm and elegance, with a powerful technique always at the service to the music. Many composers wrote their music for him, as they knew he would bring a great life to those little black dots on the page. Playing for him, and with him, was a walk on the high-wire: endlessly exciting and thrilling; always learning and living something new.

‘It was a true honor and joy to become friends with Gervase and his dear wife Katia. So many good laughs; so many good talks about music and life. My deepest sympathies to Katia and the family.

‘Very early on in my lessons with Gervase, he told me to write something down. He said it was important.
I still have that note.

“Do Something,
Say Something,
Don’t be Predictable.”‘

Leontyne Price will be 90 this week, on February 10.

Selected to sing at a 1953 Met fund-raiser, she had to wait eight years before she won a stage role in New York. By this time she had sung in Vienna with Herbert von Karajan and made debuts at Covent Garden, Salzburg, Verona and La Scala, where she was the first Afro-American to take the stage.

She was a trailblazer, an icon and an ambassador for art. In 1966, she opened the new Metropolitan Opera as Cleopatra in Anthony and Cleopatra by her close friend Samuel Barber. In all, she sang 201 times at the Met, blowing away the last vestiges of discrimination.

Happy birthday, Miss Price.

Dr Anna Edwards has been conducting research on why there is still resistance in some orchestras to woman conductors. For instance:

In a phone interview with the highly regarded conducting pedagogue Gustav Meier, he emphatically stated, “The main thing is that there is no difference between the men conductors and the women conductors. There is no difference.” Although I believe his heart was in the right place, I respectfully but emphatically disagree. We DO have differences. You can see and hear these differences. You can see our differences by the way we dress, by the gestures we use, by the gender we choose to identify ourselves with. You can hear the differences by the way we talk, by the way we problem solve, and by the way we connect with people.

Read her full essay here.

Dr. Anna Edwards is Music Director of Seattle Collaborative Orchestra and Saratoga Ochestra