Carlos Espinosa-Machado, 34, has pleaded no contest in Douglas County, Kansas, to one count of indecent liberties with a child and one count of furnishing alcohol to a minor for illicit purposes. He will be sentenced next month.

Espinosa-Machado is assistant professor and symphony orchestra director at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.

Report here.

 

Daughter of an eponymous publisher and later his hugely successful successor, Livia recalls the years when she played third horn in the London Symphony Orchestra and principal in the Halle.

Her memory is pinpoint.

Watch.

 

 

photo: Anne-Katrin Purkiss

The UK public are responding warmly to an appeal on behalf of Chris Toon, a clarinet player and teacher from Derbyshire who swerved his motorbike to avoid a group of cyclists and suffered a broken back.

Chris needs expensive equipment in order to continue teaching.

A local BBC story has gone viral and donations are pouring in here.

Do help if you can.

Desperate efforts over the past week to keep the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra alive failed last night when the board voted to shut down the orchestra after 38 years.

‘Efforts to garner increased community support and seat a new Board came up short,’ said Board Chair Joe Campanelli. ‘I want to personally thank all those who have supported this great orchestra over the years. The organization also deeply appreciates the extraordinary dedication of our talented musicians and brilliant music director, Heiichiro Ohyama, as well as our Board. If funding is available, a grand celebratory concert may be planned.’

Sad times.

Drew McManus has published his annual survey of maestro earnings, and there’s one notable omission*. But before we go into the small print let’s congratulate Marin Alsop on being the first woman conductor to pull down a £1 million salary. What’s more, it’s the first time Baltimore has ever paid seven digits for a conductor.


photo: Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts

 

Here’s the top ten list of earners for the 2014/15 season:

1 Chicago Symphony: $2,776,869 (Riccardo Muti)

2 San Francisco Symphony: $2,715,815 (Michae Tilson Thomas)

3 Dallas Symphony: $2,657,139 (Jaap Van Zweden)

4 Los Angeles Philharmonic: $1,906,100 (Gustavo Dudamel)

5 New York Philharmonic: $1,672,450 (Alan Gilbert)

6 Cleveland Orchestra: $1,248,711 (Franz Welser-Möst)

7 Philadelphia Orchestra: $1,110,000 (Yannick Nézet-Séguin)

8 Saint Louis Symphony: $1,042,644 (David Robertson)

9 Baltimore Symphony: $1,015,937 (Marin Alsop)

10 Detroit Symphony: $828,591 (Leonard Slatkin)

 

Right, the small print:

Boston and Houston failed, for some reason, to report music director salaries, perhaps because both men were in their first year. Dallas posted a drop in Jaap Van Zweden’s earnings – he was top dog on a record $5.1 million last year – they may have found another way to shield them.

And one other big earner is simply missing.

*Christoph Eschenbach, in his last full season as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, is not listed as one of the organisation’s five highest paid contractors. That could be because the fifth highest paid contractor was reported at $2,709,973 whereas Eschenbach’s compensation the previous season was $2,274,151.

Even so, says Drew, ‘this is the first time I’ve encountered a scenario where a multi-million dollar music director wasn’t included on a 990 due to legitimately not being the five highest paid independent contractors.’

More details here.

Michael Johnson has been racing through the piano duo’s memoirs, Katia et Marielle Labèque : Une vie à quatre mains (Buchet et Castel).

The actor Dirk Bogarde, their neighbour in London in the 1980s, could not bear the sound of two pianos.

Olivier Messiaen tried to split them up:

Once as we were working on “Visions de l’Amen” at the Conservatory, someone poked his head around the corner – it was Olivier Messiaen… After listening to us, he said he wanted to rerecord the piece (superseding his recording of 1941). Would one of us be able to play it with his wife Yvonne Loriod? We refused, to avoid being separated, and finally Messiaen relented …

‘We have never felt the need to see each others’ hands in order to stay together. Only Olivier Messiaen asked us to move the pianos side-by-side to record his “Visions de l’Amen” because that is how he always played it with his wife Yvonne Loriod.’

More here.

 

 

We have advised readers, time and again, not to try taking an instrument on Ryanair.

Here’s why.

Laurie Niles at violinist.com reports that Danwen Jiang, Professor of Violin at Arizona State University, flew with three of her students from Milano-Bergamo to a festival in Nuremberg.

They were forced to buy an extra seat for each of their violins – or pay 50 Euros to stow them in the hold.

OK, one more time: do not fly Ryanair with a violin. Got it?

Ivana Loudova was an intense voice in Czech music who published more than 100 works.

She studied in France with Messaien and Jolivet and worked for a while in a Paris experimental studio, but her gift was for natural expression and she was able to be prolific without self- repetition.

Her closest working relationship abroad was with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra.

She died in Prague on July 25.

Looking at the current chiefs of British orchestras, one anomaly leaps off the screen.

All but one of them are men.

And none of them is young.

True, since the 2016 accounts were finalised, the Philharmonia has appointed Helen Sprott in place of the retiring Davd Whelton and the RPO replaced Maclay with James Williams, 36. But the rest of the team would fit comfortably in a rugby bath, singing the same rude songs.

Now, in an age of supposedly equal opportunity, why is that?

 

Any thoughts from the (male-run) Association of British Orchestras?

A Slipped Disc reader, surveying the 2016 accounts of British orchestras, has helped us to come up with the following league table of top-paid orchestra managers.

They are:

1 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – £265,000 (Ian Maclay)

2 London Symphony Orchestra – £185,000 (Kathryn McDowell)

 

 

3 London Philharmonic             – £184,715 (Tim Walker)

4 Philharmonia                        – £142,384 (David Whelton)

5 Royal Liverpool Phil               – £115,000 (Michael Eakin)

6 Bournemouth Symphony       – £105,000 (Dougie Scarfe)

6= CBSO                                – £105,000 (Stephen Maddock)

8 Halle Orchestra                     – £95,000 (John Summers)

9 Royal Scottish                       – £85,333 (Krishna Thiagarajan)

10 Britten Sinfonia                   – £85,000 (David Butcher)

11 Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment  – £65,479 (Crispin Woodhead)

12 City of London Sinfonia        – £65,000 (Matthew Swann)

12= Scottish Chamber Orch      – £65,000 (Gavin Reid)

14 London Sinfonietta              – £60,945 (Andrew Burke)

15 Orchestra of the Swan         – £45,910 (David Curtis)

 

Notes to the accounts:

The list is not comprehensive. The BBC does not disclose what it pays to orchestra managers. We have not seen accounts from the Ulster Orchestra and some chamber orchestras.

But the picture is pretty clear. Top management wages in the UK are a fraction of the going rate in US orchestras and are not necessarily linked to performance, either financial or artistic.

That David Whelton, who kept the Philharmonia competitive for 30 years, should earn barely half the salary of Ian Maclay at the RPO says more than we can print about the present state of orchestra management. The RPO, in the year reported, posted a net loss of £573,000. The causes given are falls in touring and local authority subsidy.

By comparison to these compensation packages, the average wage for orchestra players outside London is below £30,000.

 

UPDATE: And it’s such an old boys’ club…