For the past 17 years, Thomas Hodgman has been professor of music and director of choirs at Adrian College, Michigan, a liberal arts college affiliated to the Methodist Church.
The college has long been aware that, in 2005, the Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California paid $1.6 million to a woman who filed a civil lawsuit claiming that Hodgman sexually assaulted her and gave her an STD in the 1980s.
The victim wrote an open letter to Adrian College in November, demanding his dismissal, over the historic abuse of two teenaged students. Last week, Hodgman resigned ‘for personal reasons’, without comment from the college.
The Washington Post asked five of its art-form critics to write a few paragraphs explaining how they go about their jobs.
In her final paragraph, the classical music critic Anne Midgette offers as good a summary as I have read anywhere of what a critic’s priorities need to be in this year of our confusions and decline, 2108.
… debate, finally, is the point of the exercise. Don’t try to find a “right” answer, as if the performance you heard were a code that you’re trying to crack. Think of the experience as a conversation: The evening offers a point of view, and you respond to it. Is it a conversation that you want to continue, by going back and hearing that music again? Is it one you’re glad to have behind you? Is it something you want to talk about to other people — and can another person change your mind? All of this is part of the experience we have with any art form. And it’s a lot more fun to become an active participant than it is to receive the music in reverential, passive silence.
I’m thrilled to say a kind soul found & handed my bow in to London Underground staff. It’s in one piece & I am elated. The only thing I am sorry about is that they left no name or contact details for me to thank them properly. Thank you all for your thoughts, support & kind messages last week. It’s been a nail-biting week with a very very very happy ending!
Bernard Haitink, 88, was booked by the Berlin Philharmonic for three concerts this weekend to replace Zubin Mehta, 81, who is undergoing shoulder surgery.
But Haitink cancelled today due to illness.
Adam Fischer, 68, will step in.
Bookies are offering 100-8 against a triple cancellation.
The mid-sized agency ICA Artists will cease to exist some time this month.
It is reborn as Stephen Wright Management with a handful of artists and a small support staff. Quite a few former artists and staff are now pursuing other opportunities.
The artists retained by SWM are:
conductors Joseph Bastian, Dylan Corlay, Laurence Equilbey, Jacek Kaspszyk, Cem Mansur, John Nelson, Eduard Topchjan,Hugh Wolff
ICA Artists was the successor to the Van Walsum Agency after its founder sold out to Stephen Wright, former head of Harold Holt Ltd and founder of IMG Artists Europe. But ICA was neither mega nor boutique and Wright’s decision to reshape it as SWM makes good sense in current circumstances.
We have read in the Entartete Musik literature that at least 100 composers left Berlin in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. You will search in vain for the name of Gottfried Huppertz, composer of music for two of the great silent films, Die Niebelungen and Metropolis.
The Metropolis director Fritz Lang left Berlin for Paris after Goebbels banned The Testament of Dr Mabuse. But his composer stayed on at the UFA studios, hoping things would blow over.
All we know beyond that is that he died in Berlin in February 1937 of a heart attack, aged 49. What happened to Huppertz after Fritz Lang and most of his other film pals left? And was the heart attack brought on by political stress?
A terrific new recording of his complete music for Metropolis makes this question suddenly pertinent. Huppertz was a widely read by not a particularly original composer. His score betrays influences of Weill, Eisler, Schreker and even Hindemith. It is vivid, frenetic and incredibly listenable (the CD is out this month on Pan Classics).
Did Huppertz lose work under the Nazis because of his Weimarish style? Did he try to leave Berlin? Seriously, does anyone know what happened to Gottfried Huppertz?
Neville Holt Opera, the youngest of the countryhouse festivals, has signed the Royal Northern Sinfonia for Mozart and the Britten Sinfonia for Ades this summer.
It’s the first chance for symphony orchestras in the east of England to gain opera experience.
