The London Symphony Orchestra has finally filled the vacancy left by the death of Rod Franks in 2014.
The new co-principal trumpet is David Elton, who has held the seat at the Sydney Symphony for the past six years Before that he was in Perth and Adelaide. He has also appeared with several world orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic.
Photo: Tim Walsh/SSO
Liza Ravenscroft at British Airways has written to Slipped Disc, maintaining that two of her colleagues have put out ‘misleading information’ about the company’s instrument policy.
Ms Ravenscroft holds the title of Global News Manager at BA, though she has oddly not written to us in that capacity. Her duties include ‘deputising for Head of Crisis, regularly Comms department lead at Gold crisis sessions, advising operations teams on how to manage reputation during large scale incidents.’
She has asked us to publish the following statement:
We appreciate how precious instruments are to musicians and offer special arrangements for transporting them, which are detailed on ba.com.
We will always do our best to accommodate smaller musical instruments in the cabin.
In order to ensure there is enough space for all customers to store their belongings, larger musical instruments, such as guitars and cellos, can be carried in the hold in a hard case. Alternatively customers can choose to buy an extra seat to carry them in the cabin at a discounted rate.
The statement is vaguely reassuring, without in any way explaining how other BA staff gave out misleading information – or, heaven forfend, apologising for it.
Being BA means never having to say you are sorry.
AP have published an interesting survey of companies – mostly in Germany, some in Japan and South Korea – that give employees time to play in the firm’s orchestra.
Companies with employee orchestras include engineering firm Siemens, maker of trains and medical scanners; carmakers Daimler, BMW and Ford; auto components and electronics maker Robert Bosch GmbH; airline Lufthansa, and chemical firm BASF.
At a recent rehearsal, Weitkamp and the SAP musicians filled the cavernous, 2,300-seat Rosengarten auditorium in the southwestern German town of Mannheim with rich, warm string sound, practicing first a bouncy pop mix of Mozart’s Prague Symphony and Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus.” Then the brass blared out the stirring opening notes of John Williams’ theme music for the Olympics, as the orchestra prepared to play at a graduation ceremony for the local college.
Read on here.
Michael Volpe, head of Holland Park Opera, has written a useful reflection on how opera houses and festivals are influenced by social media in their decisions on future production. Some of them are running scared of a Twitter storm.
Here’s what Kasper Holten, former head of opera at Covent Garden tells him: ‘We have a culture that is about success – star ratings, bums on seats, Twitter opinion – and that threatens risk-taking for sure. But one customer said to me that it was only worth taking risks if they are successful. Of course, that doesn’t make sense, does it? The one thing I noticed about being in the UK is that there seems to be a resistance to the idea of ‘concept’.’
Michael Volpe continues: Engaging with furious, critical patrons is something Holten clearly enjoys, and I concur with him that it is always pleasing to discuss, to learn from audiences and sometimes find a way to at least shift their thinking. The trouble is, I worry most about those who don’t engage and just vote with their feet, creating volatility — and I say this despite the fact that the ROH currently operates on occupancies of over 95%…
Read on here.
pic: Holland Park Opera
The world’s least favourite airline* has changed course overnight. After months of assuring us that violins and other small instruments are welcome aboard, here’s the latest message from Customer Service (sic).
Hi Norman. It’s true that we’ve changed our policy and we’re unable to allow musical instruments to be carried in cabin as hand baggage without charge. We ask all passengers travelling with musical instruments to contact us for assistance prior to their journey. ^Oliver
Until they change course again our advice is: take another plane.
UPDATE: Alison Balsom has received a similar message.
That’s it, I’m done @British_Airways – we’ve all been so patient with the lowering standards but not to let professional musicians bring on their (small) instruments as hand baggage? We take hundreds of thousands of flights -it’s our living. A greedy disgrace.
— Alison Balsom (@alisonbalsom) December 19, 2017
* See https://www.thesun.co.uk/travel/5149642/british-airways-slumps-to-third-from-bottom-in-annual-passenger-survey-by-which/
Who says irony doesn’t work online?
Krystian Zimerman was due to play in Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety symphony tonight n Paris but he’s not feeling well.
Kirill Gerstein jumps in.
Costa Pilavachi, former Universal Music v-p, has joined the board of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
He’s a rare catch for the Scots, who usually pack boards with local prominenti.
Dallas Morning News reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating four major Trump donors with ties to President Putin and his inner circle. The four contributed $10 million to the Trump campaign and are being treated by investigators as ‘Putin proxies’.
Two are of close musical interest.
Alexander Shustorovich (left, below) is co-owner and chief executive of IMG Artists.
Len Blavatnik owns Warner Music.
Dallas report here.
Zubin Mehta, out for a shoulder operation, has left two weeks of February concerts unfilled with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Bernard Haitink will take the first.
The second week goes to Petrenko – not Kirill, who is the incoming chief of the Berlin Phil, but the unrelated Vasily Petrenko, music director in Liverpool and Oslo.
This will be Vasily’s Berlin Phil debut.
Walking down Abbey Road one summer’s morning in 2011, I found the the studios besieged by a thousand teenaged girls in scenes unseen since the Beatles.
Back at my desk I shared this pop phenomenon – a South Korean band called SHINee – on Slipped Disc. Withing an hour, the site surged with new readers.
It is with great sadness that I learn that Kim Jonghyun, the group’s lead singer, was found dead today in his apartment in the Gangnam district of Seoul. He had reportedly been suffering from depression.
May his soul rest in peace.
It’s exactly two weeks since the Metropolitan Opera suspended the conductor James Levine and called in its lawyers, Proskauer Rose, to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct dating back almost half a century.
Proskauer Rose LLP is a New York corporate law firm with offices in several countries. It represents the board of the Metropolitan Opera in hardball negotiations with the unions.
The man nominated to conduct the sexual abuse inquiry is Robert J Cleary, head of the investigations practice at Proskauer Rose. Cleary is a former US attorney for the district of New Jersey and the souhern district of Illinois. He was lead prosecutor in the Unibomber case. He joined Proskauer Rose in 2002. So far, so fine.
But let’s be under no illusions here. The job of Proskauer Rose is, in the normal run of things, to make the Met board come up smelling of roses. The board is its client in this case.
The test will be how it treats the complaints. In a normal inquiry, the first action is to interview all parties to the allegations and then to work outwards to others who might have information. Two weeks have passed and we see no sign of inquiry team members calling on complainants or issuing appeals for others to come forward. It may be that there is a mountain of paperwork to be examined before formal interviews can take place, but unless we see a rustle of activity from the lawyers early in the New Year, the objectivity of the exercise may be called into question.
The same test must be applied to the Boston Symphony, which has not announced a formal investigation but ought to be looking into multiple allegations at Tanglewood concerning more than one conductor. Institutions need to examine more than just their current procedures before faith can be restored.
