From the University of the Pacific, California:

Peter Witte has been appointed Dean of the Conservatory of Music. Peter comes to us from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), where he has served as the Dean of their internationally renowned Conservatory of Music and Dance since 2008. He brings with him a record of increasing student diversity and academic success. The Provost is proud that the reputation of Pacific’s Conservatory has enabled us to attract such a talented leader to help shape its future.

During his tenure at UMKC, the Conservatory achieved its $48 million fundraising goal, the largest in UMKC history for a single project, for the proposed $96 million UMKC downtown arts campus. This project will move the Conservatory into the heart of Kansas City’s new downtown arts district. His other accomplishments include launching a more inclusive and holistic review of student applications, resulting in a 45 percent increase in enrollment of students of color and international students; increasing the number of degrees awarded and the undergraduate retention rate; and establishing partnerships with local music and arts organizations.

 

The New Zealand soprano Anna Leese, who has sung at Covent Garden and across Europe, recently married an Italian winemaker, Stefano Guidi, They have a small child.

 

Stefano has received terrible news. He has an aggressive form of Motor Neurone Disease that is advancing fast. He has two years to live, they have been told.

Funds are needed to help Anna cope.

Friends have organised an benefit concert in London. Please try to go.

Details below. And read Stefano’s blog about their situation.

A Gala Benefit Concert – Singing for Stefano

Milton Court, 1 Milton Street, London, EC2Y 9BH (Location)

7.00pm on Saturday 8th April 2017

 

This star studded gala concert is being organised by the musical friends of New Zealand opera star Anna Leese to support husband Stefano Guidi, Anna and their baby Matteo in a time of great need.

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The evening will be hosted by renowned baritone Sir Thomas Allen with many other star singers including Sophie Bevan, Sarah Castle, Jacques Imbrailo, Madeleine Pierard, David Butt Philip and Wendy Dawn Thompson, accompanied by Bryan Evans, Alisdair Hogarth and Gary Matthewman and Lada Valesova.

 

The patrons include two of the world’s great singers, José Carreras and Thomas Allen, along with the UK’s leading opera patron, Sir Vernon Ellis, this and  New Zealand High Commissioner, Sir Lockwood Smith and his wife Alexandra.

 

New Zealand soprano Anna Leese trained at the Royal College of Music and has regularly graced the stage and concert platform in the UK and Europe.

 

Stefano, a passionate Italian wine maker and beautiful family man had only recently moved to New Zealand to create a new life with Anna. Last year just before the birth of Matteo, Stefano was diagnosed with the most aggressive form of Motor Neurone Disease. Already he is facing many frightening challenges, which require great emotional, physical and financial support. This is vividly described in Anna’s blog Happy New Year at

https://stefanosmndjourney.wordpress.com/

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Our target is to raise £25,000 through this event, which will help them make the most of life and support Anna through the difficult times ahead. Tickets start at £25.

 

Buy Tickets / Make Donations

 

The Boston Symphony music director has taken up the instrument in public for the first time since he was in his early twenties in Latvia.

His duet partner is BSO principal trumpet, Thomas Rolfs

 

Huang Feili returned to China from the US in 1951, believing in Mao’s vision.

Thirteen years later he was attacked for being a spy, beaten up by his Beijing students and treated as a non-person for several years.

Huang has died in Hong Kong, at a great age.

The President of the Russian Shooting Federation – a gun lobby, of sorts – prepares for his solo moment in Strauss’s Radetzky March.

Live concert, live ammunition?

They’ve announced another $30 million building.

 

press release:

The Boston Symphony Orchestra announces a major new investment in the future of Tanglewood that will  broaden its reputation as one of the premier festivals in the world and famed summer home of the BSO since 1937, as well as that of its acclaimed summer music academy, the Tanglewood Music Center, founded in 1940.  Launching a new chapter in the illustrious festival’s 80-year history, Tanglewood has announced plans for the construction of a new multi-use, multi-season four-building complex designed to support the performance and rehearsal activities of the Tanglewood Music Center and be the focal point of a new initiative, the Tanglewood Learning Institute, offering wide-ranging education and enrichment programs designed to enhance the patron experience.

Scheduled to open in summer 2019, the new building complex will be designed by William Rawn Associates, Architects, and will be the largest building project at Tanglewood since the construction of Ozawa Hall (1994), also designed by William Rawn Associates.  Reed Hilderbrand will serve as the project’s landscape architects.

Stephen Carpenter learned a lot about Mendelssohn when he was general manager of the Orchestra Age of Enlightenment.

So much detail that he’s now guiding Mendelssohn tours in Scotland.

See here.