Peter Dobrin reports:

She will phase in her involvement, visiting Curtis numerous times in the coming season, and taking up the post fulltime at the start of the 2018-19 school year.

“I’m very much looking forward to making the move,” said the violinist, 45, who has been on the faculty of University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for 14 years. She cited Curtis’ approach as one appeal of the job – the “commitment Curtis has to nurturing younger musicians to prepare them not just to play the instrument, but to also become responsible citizens. It’s a very comprehensive education for someone pursuing a musical career, and it’s a very intriguing position.”

More here. Midori herself studied at Juilliard.

Roberto Minczuk, controversial former music director of the collapsing Brazil Symphony Orchestra (OSB), has won the contest for the vacant podium at the New Mexico Philharmonic.

The unsuccessful candidates were Marcelo Lehninger, Rune Bergmann, Oriol Sans, Grant Cooper and Fawzi Haimor.

UPDATE: Lehninger and Bergmann withdrew early from the process.

The California-based Calder Quartet has signed an exclusive global recording deal with Pentatone.

Their first album will be all-Beethoven.

 

Benjamin Jacobson, Andrew Bulbrook, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Eric Beyers, cello

 

The Canadian prime minister talks about the piano icon in a short BBC radio interview with James Rhodes. ‘He embraced disruption in classical music,’ says Trudeau.

‘He is someone who, at a time when Canadians didn’t really feel they had a cultural imprint on the world, he was it. He transcended the Canadian modesty… we tend to need to have validation from outside our borders. He was so recognised as a giant in terms of music that he was someone Canadians are especially proud of.’

Listen here.

A concert by the National Philharmonic of Malta was thrown into chaos when the music director, Brian Schembri, failed to show up either for rehearsals or for the concert, the last of the present season.

Schembri is in dispute over a new contract, apparently.

An unnamed deputy conducted.

Malta longs to be taken seriously as a hub of European culture. Incidents like these do it no favours.

Tributes are flooding in here for Rex Makin, the impeccable Liverpool solicitor who drew up the first contract between Brian Epstein and the Beatles.

Mr Makin has died, aged 91.

Press statement:

On the morning of Monday, June 26, 2017, Maestro Noseda suffered a herniated disc which is also known as sciatica syndrome.  Prof. Michele Naddeo visited him today, June 27, 2017 at 11:00AM (Central European Time) and advised Maestro Noseda undergo a surgical treatment tomorrow at 1:00 PM (Central European Time) at the Clinica Fornaca in Torino. With his greatest regret, Maestro Noseda will have to cancel his remaining performances of the production of Macbeth at Teatro Regio Torino. Further information regarding the recovery will be released after the surgery tomorrow, June 28, 2017.

Slipped Disc wishes him a speedy recovery.

Noseda is the second LSO conductor to suffer this month, following Daniel Harding, who broke his wrist falling off a bike.

Arts Council England has lopped £2.5 million off the annual funding of four national companies – the National Theatre, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House and Royal Shakespeare Company – in order to boost arts spending on smaller companies.

The ACE has increased the number of organisations it funds from 700 to 831.

So far, so good.

But the big-beast cuts amount to a pathetic lapse of responsibility. If the ACE needed £2.5 million – or £10 million – it should have taken the entire amount from the pointless, misdirected Southbank Centre, which has long been ripe for privatisation. Unfortunately, the ACE is simply unable to make a single, bold strategic decision.

The money taken from the Big Four will be invested in 22 new, small organisations in London and give 21 increases to existing London orgs. London funding as a whole is on standstill.

London’s £3m for the 22 new orgs plus 21 uplifts comes from ROH, Southbank and National, plus seven NPOs that have left the portfolio.

 

From the press release:

Today, (27 June 2017) Arts Council England has announced the 253 arts and culture organisations in London that will be part of its National Portfolio between 2018 and 2022.

Due to its commitment to move more funds outside of the capital, London received a standstill budget: the same amount per year as the current 2015-2018 funding period.

Despite this, we have been able to bring in 24 new organisations into the London National Portfolio for the first time, and award additional investment to 21 current National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs), reaching more people and places in the capital with great art and culture than ever before.

• A total budget of £161 million Grant in Aid and National Lottery will be invested in London for 253 organisations per year.

• Increased investment in 15 boroughs.

• An increase of more than £727,000 per year to six Outer London boroughs: Barking & Dagenham (£212,500, 169%), Brent (£138,355, 15%), Hounslow (£20,116, 20%), Haringey (£147,916, 25%), Newham (£127,000, 6%) and NPO investment in Bromley for the first time (£81,957). This totals more than £2.9 million over the full funding period (2018-22)

• The three boroughs with the lowest levels of engagement (Newham, Hounslow and Barking & Dagenham) will all benefit from increased investment.

• More than £64.9 million will be invested in diverse-led organisations per year.

• 20% of the London portfolio is committed to touring nationally or internationally

• Three museums and one library service will join the 72 museums and seven libraries across the country being integrated into the National Portfolio for the first time.

New entrants and additional investments were prioritised for new, small and/or diverse organisations which reflect and serve the community of modern London.

Shubbak Festival, the UK’s largest (biennial) festival of contemporary art and culture from across the Arab world will receive £85,000 per year. The 2019 festival will feature at least 50 events across 30 venues, at least 100 artists from both UK and Arab countries.

Three hip-hop organisations, ZooNation, Boy Blue Entertainment and Avant Garde Dance Company, will receive over £671,000 per year in recognition of hip-hop as an important contemporary artform with capacity to reach new audiences and combine cultures.

Three diverse-led theatre organisations, the Tricycle in Brent, the Bush in Hammersmith, and Talawa in Hackney will receive additional funding of £268,161 per year (a total investment of £7,460,420 over 2018-22). This significant and strategic boost to touring as well as produce theatres, will help overcome the barriers and challenges Black and minority ethnic theatre-makers encounter across the country, and have a substantial impact on the diversity of the whole sector.

 

press release:

ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ

Σοβαροί λόγοι υγείας καθιστούν αδύνατη τη συμμετοχή της κορυφαίας σολίστ Μάρτα Άργκεριχ στην, προγραμματισμένη για τις 15 Ιουλίου 2017, συναυλία της Κρατικής Ορχήστρας Αθηνών στο Ωδείο Ηρώδου Αττικού. Ως εκ τούτου, το Ελληνικό Φεστιβάλ και η Κ.Ο.Α. επιλέγουν την ακύρωση της συναυλίας, με τη λογική του επαναπρογραμματισμού της στο εγγύτερο δυνατό μέλλον κι εύχονται στη σπουδαία καλλιτέχSee more

Announcement

Serious Health reasons make it impossible for top soloist Martha aArgerich to attend concert, scheduled for 15 July 2017, by the Athens State Orchestra at the Atticus conservatory. Therefore, the Greek festival has chosen to cancel the concert, with the hope of reprogramming it in the nearest possible future and wishing the great artist a speedy recovery.

For the refund process, the public should follow the following procedure:
Cash Purchases: return of money from the centre at of the festival (University 39, within lodge pesmazoglou daily 9.00-16.00 and Saturday 10.00-15.00)
Credit Cards or debit cards: the refund is automatically made by cancelling tickets

Information:
Athens State Orchestra

Previously, she cancelled a trip to Australia.

Posted from Ephesus, Turkey, by the pianist Fazil Say:

ENO has jumped the gun on this morning’s ACE announcement. tweeting that it has been readmitted to the funding organisation’s National Portfolio.

However, it will remain at the present reduced funding level of £12.38 million.

Here’s the ENO press release, once again turning a setback into victory.

The civil case against Montana State University for employing a music professor and conductor who was accused of rape has been postponed for a fourth time with both sides accusing each other of failing to disclose evidence.

Shuichi Komiyama, 47 at the time of the alleged offence in 2011, was music professor and conductor at MSU Symphony Orchestra when one of his students, aged 22, complained that he had unwanted sex with her. Komiyama, a popular conductor who had taken the orchestra on a tour of Asia, was suspended and banned from the campus. He resigned later that year.

The plaintiff claims that the university was negligent when it hired Shuichi Komiyama in 2006, having failed to discover that he had a prior felony conviction in California, where he was convicted for an affair with a high school girl. Details here.

The trial has been rescheduled for March 2018.