Reinhold Würth, 81, is known in Germany as King of the Screws.
He makes small bits of joinery on a massive scale. He’s also an epic art collector with an estimated private worth of $10.4 billion.
What to do with all those screws? Herr Würth and his wife Carmen are starting an orchestra in Baden-Württemberg.
Kent Nagano will conduct the opening concert, it was announced today.
Rosemary Siemens was playing a concert in Manitoba and having it filmed for future reference when she saw a man in a white suit coming down the gangway towards her….
Do not try this at a symphony concert. Please.
A rare picture of the great violinist visiting Israeli in 1950, seen here at the home of its first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.
The tour ended in near-disaster when Heifetz was physically attacked by a man who objected to him playing music by Richard Strauss, former head of the Nazi Reichsmusikkamer.
Heifetz did not return to Israel for almost 20 years.
Online auction starts tonight here.
The diva has reached the time of life for downsizing.
She is leaving her White Gates mansion in Westchester County and is selling the contents, which include – according to the auction catalogue – ‘artwork, furniture, decorations, silver, books, autographs and stage jewelry’.
The online auction is on March 29.
Gold, Green and Red Indian Enamel and Diamond Bangle Bracelet from the Jessye Norman sale, estimated price $2-3k
France Musique will play recordings by the great cellist and conductor from 7 am to 11pm on its webradio, on what would have been his 90th birthday.
He’s sorely missed.
The ousted director of English National Opera has formed a joint venture with Loretta Tomasi, the company’s former chief executive with whom he fought hammer and tongs over spending plans, precipitating first her departure and then his own.
Their company, Opera Ventures, will do pop-up co-productions, the first being Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek with Scottish Opera at this summer’s Edinburgh Festival. Funds have been raised and the plans are bold.
Friends say Berry and Tomasi are singing loudly off the same hymn sheet, harmoniously too.
We wish them well.
Tomasi, Damon Albarn, Berry, Rufus Norris in happier times. photo: PA/ENO
The star violinist and senior conductor gave a concert in Leipzig this weekend.
Afterwards it became known that both had donated their fees to an educational charity for refugees in Germany.
The joint donation is estimated at 60,000 Euros.
Get your heads around this:
While the Curtis Institute of Music had already taken steps towards migrating its huge collection of recordings from tape cassettes to CDs, the accelerated rate of format change proved difficult to keep up with, and Curtis began to look towards a better long-term storage solution.
Curtis’ collection of audio and visual files is vast, and rapidly expanding. There are about 100 concerts in the student recital series alone, plus orchestra concerts, operas, masterclasses, and tour performances each year. Each student recital needs to be recorded and cataloged for future reference. Audio files can range from 100-300MB and video files from 1-8GB.
More here.
Orchestra Noir strives to raise ‘the invisible curtain and [bring] classical music to diverse, younger audiences that is relevant and respectful of their community.’
‘In orchestral music, sometimes we forget the heritage that goes into it. We forget that you can play R&B [and] hip-hop with an orchestra,’ says founder-conductor Jason Ikeem Rodgers.
The Minnesota conductor was today named Honorary Conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, where he has been principal guest for three years.
‘I am really happy to continue my involvement with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and to be connected to this wonderful country,’ said Osmo Vänskä.
Ted Gioia complains that music critics have turned into lifestyle reporters:
When I was a child, Gunther Schuller’s byline appeared in Saturday Review, and Leonard Bernstein hosted music specials on CBS. In my teens, I could read smart, musically astute critics in many magazines and newspapers. I might disagree with the judgments of Harold Schoenberg, John Rockwell, Winthrop Sargeant, Robert Palmer, Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Alfred Frankenstein, and others, but they knew their stuff. Many of them were musicians themselves. Sargeant had served as a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. Frankenstein had played clarinet with the Chicago Symphony. Palmer gigged in bands before he started writing about them. Feather had recorded as a pianist, and although he would never put Oscar Peterson out of business, he knew his sharps and flats….
… We need smart musical criticism more than ever nowadays. In my many years as music scribe, I’ve never encountered such a huge gap between the skilled and the unskilled, the talented and the wannabes. Listening to new releases, I am reminded of how an Australian friend once described the United States to me: “You Americans represent the best of the best, and the worst of the worst, all hopelessly mixed together.” The same is true of the output of the music industry in the present day. I hear artists who can sing like birds, others who would need to retire if Auto-Tune disappeared. I encounter songwriters who have mastered all the nuances of harmony, others who couldn’t modulate keys if you handed them the chords on a silver flash drive. I’m dazzled by performers who possess a deep grasp of rhythm; others apparently haven’t yet figured out the simplest syncopations.
Certainly non-musical factors also deserve attention from critics. We have all encountered artists with very little technical skill, who still succeed because they compensate with an excess of imagination and creative vision. And who knows, maybe waving a foam finger or dressing like a robot warrants a paragraph or two, even if it’s little more than a gimmick. But let’s not kid ourselves, these can’t serve as the foundation for a healthy musical culture. Musical knowledge empowers artistic expression. Critics who are unwilling, or perhaps incapable, of assessing such matters may still have some insights to offer, but they will struggle to fulfil the most basic responsibility of the music critic, which is to pay close attention to the sounds.
Read the full article here.
They’ve announced the 2017 intake. There are 116 musicians aged 16-19, from 33 U.S. states, including 28 returnees from last year. Marin Alsop will conduct. Warner owner Len Blavatnik is the major sponsor.
Violin
Fiyi Adebekun, Lansdale, PA
Jonathan Altman, Modesto, CA
Kelsea Kyu-Ri Au, Henderson, NV
Kevin Bai, Plano, TX
Anna Black, Eagle, ID *
Simon Luke Brown, Davis, OK
Maya Bulos, Lafayette, CA
Claire Cai, Mount Sinai, NY
Daniel Choo, Knoxville, TN
Jonathan Chu, San Francisco, CA *
Chelsea Cline, Honolulu, HI
Allyson Cohen, Narberth, PA
Hannah Duncan, Belle Plaine, IA
Isabella Egawa, Bala Cynwyd, PA
Daniel Guevara, Hialeah, FL
Chloe Harvel, Nashville, TN *
Kingston Ho, New Providence, NJ +
David Horak, Norwich, VT *
Erica Yeawon Hwang, San Diego, CA
Evan Johanson, Seattle, WA *
Ellie Kanayama, Albany, CA
Haeun Kim, Birmingham, AL
Andrew Y. Kim, New York, NY
Alyssa Kim, River Edge, NJ
Andrew Lee, Los Altos Hills, CA *
Johnny May, Penn Valley, PA
Serena Shapard, Cleveland Heights, OH
Emilia Sharpe, Winston Salem, NC *
Natasha von Bartheld, Reno, NV
Jason Wang, Keller, TX *
Annalisa Welinder, Port Jefferson, NY
William Yao, Barrington, RI *
Steven Baloue, Chicago, IL +
Kayla Cabrera, Crete, IL *
Sophie Choate, Provo, UT
Emma DeJarnette, Snellville, GA *
Juliette Duguid, Westfield, NJ +
Matthew Garcia, Harlingen, TX +
Andrew Hughes, Old Tappan, NJ *
Tyler Jacoby, Flower Mound, TX
Sean Juhl, New York, NY *
Alex Koller, Orlando, FL
Conor McAvinue, Wilmington, DE
Peter Morin, Deerfield, IL
Tabby Rhee, Brookfield, WI
Karlie Roberts, Eugene, OR
Joshua Chiang, San Jose, CA
Ryan Chung, Manhasset, NY *
Drew Dansby, Charlotte, NC
Simon Housner, Cherry Hill, NJ *
Dylan Howard, Oxford, MS
Annie SeEun Hyung, Irvine, CA
David S. Kim, East Brunswick, NJ *
Sang-O Park, Haverford, PA
Isabel Won, Belle Mead, NJ
Alexander Wu, Penn Valley, PA
Esther Yu, Rye, NY
Joy Zhao, Chalfont, PA *
Diego Garza-Romero, Edinburg, TX +
Redd Coltrane Ingram, New Albany, OH +
Pablo Kennedy, Austin, TX
Rachel Martin, Pittsburgh, PA
Dimitrios Mattas, Fruit Heights, UT
Ella Sharpe, Winston Salem, NC *
Willie Swett, New York, NY *
Sarah Wager, Rochester, NY
Ryan Wahidi, Creve Coeur, MO *
Sophia Jean, Lakeland, FL +
Danielle Kim, Aldie, VA
Jarrett May, Keller, TX
Arin Sarkissian, La Crescenta, CA
Jessica Shand, Colorado Springs, CO *
Peter Davies, Dallas, TX
Mekhi Gladden, Atlanta, GA
Elias Medina-Brewster, Miami, FL *
T. Colton Potter, Orlando, FL
Kate Wegener, Easton, CT
Amer Hasan, Tinley Park, IL
Daniel Kim, Skillman, NJ *
Jonathan López, El Paso, TX +
Anders Peterson, Northfield, MN
Katia Waxman, Chicago, IL
Christopher Chung, Johns Creek, GA
Allen Jiang, Chicago, IL
Connor Reilly, Palmyra, VA
Samuel Rhoton, Salem, OR
Tatia Slouka, Littleton, CO
Jennifer Bywaters, London, ON
Nathan Cloeter, Lake Jackson, TX +
August Haller, Brooklyn, NY
Elisabeth Pesavento, Interlochen, MI *
Scott Sanders, Mansfield, TX
Emma Shaw, Tampa, FL *
Michael Stevens, East Islip, NY *
Shawn Zheng, Murfreesboro, TN
Aaron DuBois, Baldwinsville, NY
EJ Miranda, Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Shane O’Brien, Benicia, CA
James Vaughen, Champaign, IL *
Christopher Houlihan, Chevy Chase, MD
Hanae Yoshida, Irvine, CA
David Schonberger, El Paso, TX +
Joshua Lewis, Chesapeake Beach, MD
Alvin Chung, Potomac, MD
Jeremy Davis, Diamond Bar, CA
Omar El-Abidin, Wall, NJ *
Simon Herron, Hanover, NH
Braden Vaughn, Ellicott City, MD
Juanito Riveros, Rowlett, TX
Clara Warford, Nashville, TN
Kathryn Knox, Unionville, CT
Nicholas Mateo Hernandez, Bakersfield, CA
Maya Miro Johnson, Salt Lake City, UT
Euan Shields, San Francisco, CA
Camilo Gonzalez-Sol, Takoma Park, MD
J.P. Redmond, Yonkers, NY
