David Lan has resigned after 17 years as artistic director of the Young Vic.
He brought numerous directors to work in London for the first time, among them Patrice Chéreau, Luc Bondy, Ivo Van Hove, Benedict Andrews and Simon Stone.
Under David’s leadership, the Young Vic has been a cosmopolitan hub in London’s theatreland. We will need it more than ever after Brexit.
photo (c) Simon Annand
David, 65, has also been Consulting Artistic Director of the planned Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Centre at the World Trade Centre in New York.
The up-and-coming Manchester Camerata has upgraded its board.
Stephen Dauncey, Director of Finance at Manchester University, becomes chairman.
He takes over from Judith Watson, who set the orchestra on an upward curve since 2013.
Nigel Grainge, brother of Universal Music CEO Sir Lucian Grainge, has died in Los Angeles of post-operative complications. He was 70.
London born, Nigel Grainge ran his own record label, Ensign, signing The Boomtown Rats, Waterboys and Sinead O’Connor. After selling Ensign to Chrysalis, he remained in the music biz as a consultant.
Our sympathies to his family.
The Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has pulled out of this week’s Berlin Philharmonic concerts with an unspecified arm injury.
His replacement will be Ludovic Morlot, making his Berlin Phil debut.
The bicentennial of the birth of the prophet of Communism is coming up next year so Theater Bonn has commissioned an opera from Jonathan Dove on the home life of Karl Marx in London.
It’s supposed to be a satire.
With a walk-on part for Jeremy Corbyn?
Nudge to the librettist, Charles Hart.
The diva was being played off stage at the Tony awards last night, but she didn’t want to go.
So she took out her frustration on the orchestra….
And the clip’s now going viral as a gif.
In life as on stage, when someone tries to play you off, be all the Bette Midler you can be. pic.twitter.com/bFnSKGdvDY
The chair of the judges at the 2017 Van Cliburn Competition has responded to some of the criticism aired today in an email to Slipped Disc:
Here are three things everyone needs to understand.
The Cliburn is judged in its entirety, not just on the concerto. We listed to all 30 pianists, eliminate 10 and so on. All voting is done anonymously and we are not allowed to speak about the competetors. There is no point system, simply a yes or no as far as advancement. This is true for all rounds and is the only fair way to avoid controversies that have plagued many competitions.
During the the three solo recitals we heard many superb performances of both standard and unusual repertoire. Very few of the audience or medici viewers take the time to go through all of this and it is exhausting for both pianists and the jury panel.
As much as I would love to have some off the beaten track concerti, fiscal responsibility and rehearsal time comes into play. Each contestant has only 50 minutes plus the general rehearsal to get through their works. I met with each for 20 minutes prior to the first rehearsal. If one of the commentators on this blog wish to contribute about 400 thousand dollars for extra rehearsals, please contact the Cliburn. It is also important to remember that we do not know until the announcement of the finalists who will be playing which concerto, so that creates another set of problems.
I was proud to be head of an incredible group of pianists, each of whom brought great experience to the competition. Although I have reservations about contests in music, there is no question that the process was fair and unimpeachable. And rest assured, some of these pianists are about to have terrific careers, based on what we heard over the course of almost three weeks.
Leonard Slatkin
The Spaniard Octavio Más-Arocas has been named music director of the Mansfield Symphony Orchestra in Ohio.
Más-Arocas, a Kurt Masur protege, is director of orchestral studies and associate professor of conducting at the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music.
In Virginia, Daniel W. Boothe will be music director of Symphonicity, the Symphony Orchestra of Virginia Beach.
The death is reported of the Liverpool composer Malcolm Lipkin.
Shocked by the loss of his teacher, Matyas Seiber, in a 1960 car accident, Lipkin lost some of his early momentum and settled into a personal byway of the English pastoral style.
He wrote three symphonies and received several BBC commissions.
You couldn’t make it up…
New immigration rules, apparently.
Saber Xie, 26, an accomplished pianist from China who lives in NZ on a skilled worker’s visa, has been told she must leave – even though she is expecting a baby with a New Zealand father.
Simple humanity seems to have got lost in transition.
Mark Veregge was stopped by police last month and will be brought to court on June 30.
In addition to lecturing at Stanford’s department of music, he is principal percussionist with the California Symphony and personnel manager for the Opera San Jose.
