Musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra are ending the season in unison, contributing a total of $74,000 to the organization that employs them. The donation represents 100 percent participation by the orchestra’s 96 members, according to leaders of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association….
“I don’t remember another occasion in my nearly 40 years with the orchestra when the musicians have made such a significant financial contribution to the POA,” said orchestra cellist Gloria dePasquale….
Nonprofits strive for 100 percent participation in campaigns and annual funds because, beyond the money itself, the gesture signals unity.
This is a shout out on behalf of saxophonist Jess Gillam:
On Thursday morning at approx 11.30am, my soprano saxophone was stolen in Hammersmith, London.
It is a Yanagisawa S901U Unlaquered soprano. I would really appreciate it if this post could be shared so that I can try and trace it. It was in a black Yanagisawa case (as pictured) with 2 yellow reflective stickers on – some of my business cards were in the case. If you see this saxophone for sale or if you see it online, I would really appreciate it if you could message me. Thank you very much.
From Marshall Marcus, CEO of the EUYO:
KAFKA RULES AT LUFTHANSA! A wonderful few hours trying to get Christian Lindberg to his EUYO rehearsal and concert tomorrow in Bolzano.
Lufthansa cancel his Stockholm Munich flight today at little notice and without asking him, book him on a flight 24 hours later which is no use to him. There is not a single Lufthansa person in the airport to talk to, no one on the phone at Lufthansa, and the lovely lady at SAS in Stockholm explains that without talking to Lufthansa she cannot change his flight.
So on to Specialised Travel where the wonderful Nichole puts a hold on a better flight today, but hey presto, we can’t buy the ticket until the previous coupon is closed. The airport say we can’t close it at the airport and Lufthansa, who we get on the phone eventually, says we can’t change it on the phone. By this time Christian has missed the new flight and some Lufthansa idiots say there is no more space on it anyway (not true as we have a hold on the seats through Specialised). So we fire Lufthansa and very speedily and easily buy an SAS ticket online.
So, end of the saga? Not so quick: as Specialised say, if the outward coupon on the Lufthansa flight is not closed before tomorrow morning’s outbound flight then Christian also loses his return to Stockholm. So now Christian is told by us to go back to the Lufthansa check-in desk and argue the case with non-existent Lufthansa staff. Lufthansa WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!!!!!!
All 16 members of Donald Trump’s committee on the arts and humanities resigned today in a public letter, criticising his ‘support for hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.’
The letter, which you can read here, is impressive.
But you do have to wonder why these dignitaries agreed in the first place to serve a President who has pledged to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.
These are the resignees:
Paula Boggs, Chuck Close, Richard Cohen, Fred Goldring, Howard L. Gottlieb, Vicki Kennedy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anne Luzzatto, Thom Mayne, Kalpen Modi, Eric Ortner, Ken Solomon, Caroline Taylor, Jill Cooper Udall, Andrew Weinstein, John Lloyd Young
UPDATE: It was further announced today that President Donald Trump and the First Lady will not attend the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony this December to avert ‘any political distractions.’
STOCKHOLM, August 18, 2017 – Universal Music Group (UMG), the world leader in music-based entertainment, today announces a brand-new album of solo piano music from legendary Swedish composer and ABBA co-founder Benny Andersson. The album titled simply ‘Piano’ will be released on 29th September, 2017 through iconic classical music label Deutsche Grammophon.
‘Piano’ takes listeners on a 21-track journey through his acclaimed and celebrated career as songs from ABBA, his musicals and other solo-compositions are re-interpreted as you have never heard them before, performed unaccompanied by just Benny himself, on his trusted grand piano. The album was recorded with Linn Fijal, engineer and studio manager at his own RMV Studios, on the island of Skeppsholmen, in the heart of his hometown Stockholm.
‘Nowadays young musicians have everything under their fingertips, they can learn a new piece just by listening to it on YouTube. They are amazingly well-informed but they have no culture. In my day everything was slow, but it meant that it was rooted. You had to seek things out and work on them slowly with the score. ‘
The US composer Bunita Marcus worked for seven years with Morton Feldman and subsequently accused him, after his death, of sexual abuse. Feldman wrote this piece as an act of homage to Marcus.
An architectural historian by profession, Paul Oliver wrote his first article for Jazz News in 1951 and his biography of Bessie Smith in 1959. He was regarded ever after as one of the foremost authorities on American blues and gospel music.
Paul died at Shipton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire, the most English of settings on August 15.
Meet Ethan Hein, self described as Doctoral fellow in music education at NYU; adjunct professor of music technology at NYU and Montclair State University.
The headline text is his latest Twitter thread.
He continues:
I have nothing against European classical music as music.
But it’s time to stop teaching it as if it’s in any way superior to or more fundamental than any other musical tradition.
Otherwise we’re giving intellectual and cultural validation to those assholes with the swastika flags.
It is academics like this who feed the swamp of misinformation in which the Trumpists thrive.
Anyone still wonder why musicology got a bad name?
Except (and he’s not alone in this), the tenor never looks…
And nor will the Lucca orchestra.
The Canadian tenor Emile Belcourt, who has died at 91, was a stalwart of English National Opera for more than 30 years, singing Loge in the indelible Reggie Goodall Ring, Herod in Salome, Danilo in the Merry Widow and countless other parts.
He married the Irish soprano Norma Burrowes in 1980.
I remember him best in 1986 in the world premiere of Michael Nyman’s brilliant chamber opera, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, based on Oliver Sacks’s case study.
Emile was born in Laflèche, Saskatchewan on June 27, 1926, to Adrien and Jeanne Belcourt. Even in early life, Emile was full of the kind of energy that can’t be contained. He often told us that when he was a small child, his grandfather would sit him down at the table, place a stopwatch and a quarter in front of him, and say, “If you can sit still for five minutes, that money’s yours.” He never did get that quarter.
Emile’s mother Jeanne (née Rivard) was perhaps his first musical influence. She was a piano teacher, church organist, and she even played the piano during silent films at the local theatre. She fostered his musical talents from an early age, encouraging him to learn the violin and to sing in music festivals. After a stint in the Navy at the end of WWII, Emile went away to University to study pharmacy, but his mother made him promise to keep taking singing lessons. This paid off greatly; in 1949, the same year he earned his degree, he brought the house down singing Una Furtiva Lagrima at the Justice Brown competition, winning best amateur singer in Saskatchewan. A British adjudicator in attendance, Helen Henschel, convinced him to follow her back to London—advice that would soon propel him into an illustrious singing career that would take him all over the world.
Emile went to England and joined the chorus at the prestigious Glyndebourne Opera House. In 1951, he married Margaret Eagle of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Impressed by the Austrian singers at Glyndebourne, he went on to study at the Academy in Vienna, where he trained in lieder and was encouraged to develop his voice as a baritone. Emile and Margie started their family there; they would go on to have seven children over the course of ten years. In 1954, Emile joined the company at the opera house in Ulm, Germany, where he stayed for three years, and then in Bonn, Germany, where he stayed for one year. By the late 1950s, he was in Paris, and starting to return to tenor roles. He was cast in the title role in Pelléas et Mélisande, in a production that was broadcast on French public radio; this recording caught the attention of Scottish Opera, who immediately engaged him to perform the same role for them. From there, he made his English debut at Covent Garden as Gonzalve in L’Heure Espagnole in 1963, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, and later that year, he joined Sadler’s Wells Opera Company (now the English National Opera) with a debut performance as Pluto in Orpheus in the Underworld.
In 1965, Emile was cast as Jimmy Mahoney in a production of Weill/Brecht’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, directed by Philip Saville for BBC Television. For this occasion, Emile bought his very first television set so that he and his family could watch his starring performance.
The ENO became Emile’s home company for the next three decades, and he gave many memorable lead performances there, including Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus, Herod in Salome, Danilo in The Merry Widow, Shuisky in Boris Godunov, Raoul in La Vie parisienne, among many others. He received much critical acclaim for his performance as Loge in Sir Reginald Goodall’s famed production of The Rhinegold, which was recorded in 1975 for EMI. He reprised this role many times in productions in both London and Seattle. Emile believed strongly that opera should be performed in the language of the audience viewing it, and his English Loge was renowned not only for his singing, but also for his brilliant acting, clear enunciation, and remarkable commitment to the meaning of the text.
Emile often came back home to Canada to perform, singing for the COC, the Edmonton Opera, and the Guelph Spring Festival. He married Irish soprano Norma Burrowes in 1980, and they had two children, whom they raised in England and Canada. He also made a name for himself in musicals and musical theatre, appearing in lead roles in Sweeney Todd, Kiss me Kate, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Lend me a Tenor, among others. At very short notice, he took over the lead role of Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha for two weeks in the West End in London. Most notably, he played a starring role as Émile de Becque in a revival of South Pacific that packed the Prince of Wales theatre in London for over a year in 1988. The production also toured in Osaka and Tokyo, Japan.
In 1986, Emile sang the role of Dr. S in Michael Nyman’s opera adaptation of Oliver Sacks’ case study The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Emile often spoke of his admiration for Sacks, who appeared alongside him in the 1987 film version.
Emile continued to sing well into his seventies, performing for the soundtrack of Mike Newell’s 1999 film Pushing Tin. He gave a memorable concert on his 80th birthday in Toronto at the Heliconian Hall, where he showcased his early love of German lieder. In recent years, he kept his love of music alive by singing every day, supporting his wife Norma Burrowes in her teaching of young singers, and encouraging his son Sebastien who is now pursuing his own singing career. He spent his last years surrounded by music and family, enjoying the little things in life, and generally charming everyone he met.
Emile led a big, long life, with too many highlights and adventures to list here. He lived his life with great zeal, and loved and cared for his family and friends. He will be sorely missed.
A celebration of Emile’s life and career will be held at the Heliconian Hall in Toronto on September 24, 2017, at3pm.
