Some of the most respected musicians in Britain- including the composers Judith Weir, Howard Goodall and James MacMillan have published a letter calling on the National Musicians Church to revoke its decision to close the church to musicians who want to hire it for rehearsal and performance.
They write:
This move was made without consultation and contradicts assurances given when the church was taken over in 2013 by Holy Trinity Brompton. At present, the historic building rings with rehearsals and concerts by the country’s finest ensembles, including the Sixteen. It is deeply regrettable that the current incumbent, the Rev David Ingall, wishes to exclude superb music, even as he asserts that “our ministry as the National Musicians’ Church continues to be a core part of our church’s identity and vision”. We don’t understand how excluding musicians and listeners who regularly visit the church during rehearsals and concerts would further this goal.
Nicky Carpenter, board chair of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1990 to 1995, led the orchestra in a period of relative prosperity.
When the board, of which she remained a member, locked out the musicians in 2012, she kept open covert lines of communication with the musicians and was instrumental in achieving a settlement in 2014.
Marshall Marcus, chief executive of the European Union Youth Orchestra and a director of Sistema England, has written a piece in the Guardian newspaper calling for the world to support Gustavo Dudamel.
Among other things, he writes:
A news piece yesterday in what is probably the world’s most read online music site called for “musicians who believe in justice and human rights … to make their voices heard”. And now is indeed the time. To lose El Sistema would be to lose one of the most precious commodities Venezuela has ever produced.
The slogan of El Sistema is tocar y luchar – “to play and to struggle”. In the US, where Dudamel is music and artistic director of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, the Take a Stand platform brings together a number of El Sistema-inspired partners. El Sistema has spread around the world and now has hundreds of imitation programmes, thousands of young musicians and millions of supporters and audience members in every continent of the globe. Now that Dudamel has put himself on the line, it is time for all of those people to voice their support.
No one should be deceived about the power of such voices. But as the situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate, making life for ordinary citizens impossible, it is simply too late to think about whether music and politics should be kept apart. Dudamel may have wanted that, but events have now taken over. And for everyone around the world who cares about Dudamel, his Sistema or the opportunity for young people to develop through music-making, it is now time to “take a stand”.
Marshall Marcus has stated that the Guardian article was edited without his consent and furnished with a misleading headline.
The Russian-based Greek conductor has issued a strong statement attacking the Russian justice system for its arrest of the opera director Kirill Serebrennikov. Here is his statement in Russian and English:
Любое государство должно стремиться к созданию такой системы управления, где люди доверяют правоохранительным органам, доверяют суду. Но ситуация, свидетелями которой мы стали, создает ровно противоположный эффект.
Что мы видим сейчас? Известные господа открыто присваивают огромные средства и остаются на свободе, более того, пользуются привилегиями и продолжают руководить государственными театрами. А люди, которые занимаются настоящим делом, создают нечто действительно новое в современном искусстве, что получает признание во всем мире, оказываются за решеткой.
Более того, интеллигентного человека, не оказывающего сопротивления, хватают и уводят в тюрьму люди в масках, как преступника. Такое грубое обращение и предвзятое отношение к художнику недопустимо. Это дискредитирует саму систему правосудия в нашей стране. Если так будет продолжаться, режиссеры будут бояться делать свою работу, которая требует свободы высказывания и поиска нового языка. А если государственная система лишится доверия, мы пропали.
Мы солидарны с Кириллом Серебренниковым и поддерживаем его. Под арестом сейчас находится не только крупный российский режиссер, на скамье подсудимых – современное российское искусство.
Теодор Курентзис
Every state should aim at creating a system where people trust law enforcement agencies, trust the courts. We are now witnessing the opposite situation. What do we see? Well-known men openly defraud huge sums of money and remain free. Moreover, they are still in charge of state theatres, and enjoy great privileges. At the same time, people who are doing real work, people who create something new in modern art that is recognised all over the world, these people end up in prison.
There is more to it: an intelligent man who does not resist arrest is slammed down by masked men as if he is a criminal. Such harsh and prejudicial treatment of an artist is unacceptable. It diminishes the system of justice in our country. If it continues, directors will be afraid of doing a job which includes freedom of speech and search for a new language. And if there is no trust in the government system, what is left?
We are at one with Kirill Serebrennikov and support him through this. This is not just a famous Russian director who has been imprisoned. The future of Russian contemporary art is at stake.
Teodor Currentzis
Photo by Nina Vorobyeva
From meduza.io:
A Moscow court has placed director Kirill Serebrennikov under house arrest until October 19 on controversial charges of embezzling a large sum of money from the government. Serebrennikov will be forbidden from corresponding or speaking to the outside world, including Internet use, phone calls, and meetings. Serebrennikov cannot leave his home without permission from state investigators, who convinced the judge that he is a flight risk, in light of his property abroad and residency permit in Latvia, though Russian police seized his passport in May. The court refused to release him on a 68-million-ruble ($1.2-million) bail, which Serebrennikov requested and Irina Prokhorova — sister of the famous billionaire — offered to pay. A large crowd of supporters gathered inside and outside the courtroom, protesting Serebrennikov’s arrest.
Stuttgart Opera, where Serebrennikov is due to stage Hansel and Gretel next month, has summoned the rest of his team in an attempt to save the production. Some 14,000 people have signed a petition calling for his release on what many believe to be a purely political prosecution.
I am bereft by reports of the death of Sue Steward, a formidable writer on world music and a fantastic photographer.
Sue was among the first people I hired at the former Evening Standard and her reports and reviews always brought a smile to the page. She was warm, witty, charmingly naive and incredibly humane.
As a young woman she hung out with the punk revolution and wrote perceptively about its aims. Later, she travelled the world, delving into indigenous musics. She was an infallible authority on Cuba. She also had an acute eye for a picture.
Sue suffered a stroke earlier this week. Her death has been reported on her Facebook page. Sue was 70.
Anyone who has spent time with Gustavo Dudamel is left in no doubt that he is a true believer He believes in the power of music to relieve social injustice. He believes in the ideals of the Sistema programme from which he emerged, in the genius of its founder Jose Antonio Abreu and in the egalitarian side of Venezuela’s revolutionary leader, Hugo Chavez.
He adored Chavez and wept openly at his funeral.
Chavez, as revolutionary leaders go, was not the worst. He observed most of the trappings of democracy and held reasonably fair elections. He also maintained close relations with pariah regimes – Iran, North Korea and the like – and enjoyed baiting the USA. Only towards the end of his life did the nastier side start of Chavism to emerge as the middle-classes were terrorised by armed thugs and hounded out of the country.
Dudamel turned a blind eye to these violations and focussed on the music.
He embraced Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, a man with no regard for democracy or human rights and no concern for anything except power. Dudamel kept his silence as civilians were murdered by Maduro’s thugs and the population starved into near-submission. He lives in Los Angeles, away from the melee.
So what prompted Dudamel to switch sides? He was apparently impressed by the persistence of mass demonstrations against the regime, and outraged by the murder of a Sistema musician. He has not, in any way, broken with Venezuela and his only intervention so far has been to call for peace and dialogue.
But that, for Maduro, makes him an enemy of the people.
There is no turning back. Dudamel is no dissident, but he has been prompted by conscience to speak out. Those of us who admire Dudamel as a musician and a man will be heartened by his stance. It will not have been easy for him to abandon the role of regime poster-boy and accept its abuse. He does not know whether it its safe for him to return to Venezuela.
But he has stood, once again, for his beliefs in human rights and justice, and he will now be aware that, like every true artist, he is fundamentally an outsider.
Never heard of it?
Mozart called it the Spattisches Klavier, after a maker of his time.
The Italians knew it as the cembalo angelico.
Now, the Russian pianist Alexei Lyubimov has recorded a set of solo works by C P E Bach who is believed to have written specifically for a Spath piano.
It’s not the first such recording on a profile label – there was one last year on BIS – but sometimes it’s the second swallow that heralds the coming of spring.
The death is reported of the US guitarist and composer John Abercrombie, an understated niche legend who made two dozen albums for the boutique Munich label, ECM. He was 72.
His debut album Timeless is an epic of progressive jazz.
