Rowland Winslow Floyd, founding oboist of the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, died on October 13 at the age of 80, following a stroke.
He was one of the last living students of Marcel Tabuteau, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1915 to 1954, and acknowledged founder of the American school of oboe playing.
Rowland studied first with Laila Storch, principal of the Houston Symphony and a former Tabuteau student and then with another Tabuteau alumnus, Marc Lifschey, before travelling to France to work with the master himself. Tabuteau died in 1966 while Rowland was still working with him.
Back in North America, Rowland played in San Francisco and Philaddlphia before joining the NAC in Ottawa on its foundation. He played there for 25 years under music directors Mario Bernardi, Ganriel Chmura, Trevor Pinnock and Pinchas Zukerman.
A celebration of his life will take place in Ottawa at a later date. The family respectfully requests that in lieu of gifts or flowers, please use the money you would have spent to treat yourself to something beautiful, spontaneous, maybe even a little extravagant – and do it in his honour.
We have been informed of the death of Peter Hall, a tenor active on the early music scene who made at least eight commercial recordings. He had been in poor health for several years.
Peter’s funeral will be on Friday, November 10th at 3.30 at Amersham (Chilterns) Crematorium, which is on the A404 just outside Amersham towards High Wycombe.
Donations, please, to Cancer Research.
It appears that Laurence Marchand quit at the end of July (without telling Slipped Disc). The former head of operations at Paris’s Châtelet left Verbier without explanation or the usual expressions of mutual esteem.
Her successor is insider Câline Herzog Yamakawa, who has worked at Verbier since 2006.
The festival will mark its 25th anniversary next summer.
Elijah Ho has written a fine profile of the pianist Daniil Trifonov, underpinned by admonitions from his teacher Sergei Babayan that he gives too much of himself, on stage and off.
“I do worry for a burnout,” says Babayan. “When he plays, he gives so much of himself. Sometimes I’m scared he’s burning that candle too intensely.”…
“As long as he takes care of himself — along with his incredible, beautiful soon-to-be wife, whom I adore — to not burn as crazily as he does, that would be my wish for him. ‘Proud’ is not the right word for how I feel about Daniil: I am simply privileged, grateful to have this diamond, this beautiful creature who can feel music this way, in my life.”
We have been notified of the death of the distinguished Alsatian composer, Jean-Jacques Werner.
Obituary note for Jean-Jacques Werner 1935-2017
By Pierrette Germain
English translation and adaptation: Christian Lesur
Jean-Jacques Werner passed away on Sunday 22 October in Barr where he had lived for several years. A French composer and conductor, he had returned to his native Alsace, to concentrate on composing after a very active conductor’s career, in Paris for the Radio France and other orchestras including the European Youth Orchestra and the Leon Barzin Orchestra which he founded in 1994, as well as in the USA, China, South Korea and several European Countries. He was particularly noted for his dedication to contemporary musical creation and the large number of such works he first performed.
Born in Strasburg in 1935, he had from childhood developed a strong relationship to the Rhine, the odoriferous Vosges forests, and the chimes of bells, the imprint of which may often be spotted in his works. Plentiful and diversified his production has concentrated on the orchestra, with special emphasis on chamber music and his more familiar instruments including the harp which he had practiced and violin, an instrument which his late wife Annie Jodry had so marvelously illustrated. He had received awards from SACEM and Institut de France. His last work, an opera, Luther ou le mendiant de la grâce (Luther or the beggar for grace), commissioned and composed on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, had just been performed for the first time to much acclaim days before his death.
The entire music faculty at Fiorello LaGuardia HS – best known as the setting for the movie Fame – have demanded a showdown with the principal over cutbacks in music teaching.
The embattled British prime minister turned up at the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Wednesday and Daniel Barenboim’s West-East Diwan Orchestra on Saturday in aid of multiple sclerosis research.
She should think of buying a season ticket.
photo: (c) South Bank Centre/Ben Larpent
The Albany Symphony Orchestra wakes up today $7 million richer, thanks to a legacy from Professor Heinrich Medicus, a Swiss-born nuclear physicist, who died in February.
The Albany Symphony, conductor David Alan Miller, has an annual budget of $2.3 million and an endowment of $500,000. It will need to scale up to accommodate this generous gift.
The Austrian Architekturbüro Cukrowicz Nachbaur has won the contract to design Munich’s new concert hall.
