The Oregon Bach Festival saga is plumbing ever greater depths of academic tyranny and incompetence.

Matthew Halls, who was fired as artistic director on anonymous charges of race and sex discrimination, now says the university refused to show him the substance of the allegations made against him.

Here’s his statement, issued last night through a lawyer.

I am reading about these complaints for the first time now. At no stage did anybody from the University of Oregon or the Oregon Bach Festival leadership present me — or my attorney — with these documents. I was not given any opportunity to respond to these complaints before my contract was terminated. At no time did UO leadership talk to me about any impropriety on my part or suggest any changes in my teaching methods or treatment of musicians.

As a life-long musician and performer, I have always valued diversity among those I work with because it greatly enriches the quality of our work. Until now, I was unaware of any concerns about my treatment of the OBF musicians when I was Artistic Director. I apologise to anyone who felt that I favoured one gender over another. I do not in any way intend to favour a particular gender and I wish I had been given an opportunity to address these concerns while I was still employed.

Read on here.

This is Il Pomo d’Oro orchestra rehearsing with their leader, Federico Guglielmo.


We think it’s meant to be a joke.

The French contralto singer Nathalie Stutzmann has been named chief conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway.

A conducting protégée of Seiji Ozawa, Stutzmann, 52, succeeds Giordano Bellincampi next September.

This is her first job as chief conductor. She is principal guest with the RTE in Dublin.

 

 

 

The Philadelphia Orchestra announced last night that its search for a successor to President and Chief Executive Officer Allison Vulgamore, who leaves at the end of the year, had failed.

Instead, it will share responsibilities between Executive Vice Presidents Ryan Fleur and Matthew Loden as Interim Co-Presidents for the time being while the headhunters ontinue to practise their dark arts.

The failure is not Philly’s alone.

There is a vacuum of top talent in US orchestras. The New York Philharmonic was forced to go on bended knee to its former prez Deborah Borda when it was unable to identify a replacement for Matthew Van Besien. The Los Angeles Phil has yet to fill Borda’s office and other groups have stuck with unsatisfactory chiefs for want of anything better on the horizon. This situation has all the ingredients of a crisis.