Steven Grahl is the new Organist at Christ Church Cathedral, succeeding Stephen Darlington, who has served for 32 years. Grahl also joins the Faculty of Music in the University in ‘significant roles’.
Steven Grahl has been Director of Music at Peterborough Cathedral since 2014. He is also Conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford, and President of the Incorporated Association of Organists.
Hendrik Vanden Abeele, artistic director of Belgian Chant group Psallentes, has published an open letter, detailing his treatment over 11 years by the University of Leuven.
He accuses the university, among other things of ‘lying, manipulating and isolating, threatening and intimidating, and placing the blame for what is happening on the victim himself.’
He writes:
It is no coincidence that I began this message with the words Me Too. Under this painful name, countless disconcerting stories have come to our knowledge recently about sexual abuse. Prior to that, we also had terrible accounts of child abuse. I think it is now high time for a new hashtag, again with a theme, so that stories about classic abuse of power can come to light as well. This sort of abuse, although not physical, often also has very serious consequences.
Read on here.
First review just in from ZealNY of last night’s revival of Francois Girard’s production:
Nézet-Séguin and the Metropolitan Opera orchestra stole the show tonight with a beautifully paced, languidly expansive and exquisite reading of Wagner’s Parsifal. In this orchestrally driving work, the work from conductor and musicians was sublime. The playing, across the pit, superb – tuning, ensemble, balance, tone. The brass performed magnificently despite tempos that you might hear in recording but rarely in a live performance…
Girard’s solution is clever, particularly so in Acts I and III. The ensemble slowly morphs from interesting vignette to beautiful vignette as a projected backdrop plays in real time – brooding sky, rising moon, forms that could be sand dune or human body. The result (with set design by Michael Levine and projections by Peter Flaherty) is starkly visual, architectural, and captivating.
And to this canvas, Girard pulls from his cast some impressive scene work. Gripping is Amfostas (brilliantly by Peter Mattei) as he reluctantly reveals and raises the Holy Grail, for an agonizingly long period of time, against Girard’s carefully and richly choreographed backdrop in Act I….
More here.
Evelyn Herlitzius, Klaus Florian Vogt and René Pape in ‘Parsifal’ at the Metropolitan Opera; photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.
UPDATE: Second opinion here from New York Classical Review.
Renato Bonacini Ladetto founded the Bonacini Quartet in Genoa in 1945 before emigrating to the US in 1950.
He co-founded the New York String Sextet, was professor at Hartt School of Music for three decades and player in the New York Philharmonic and RCA Victor Symphony orchestras.
After playing as assistant concertmaster at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, Leopold Stokowski chose him as soloist and concertmaster for his Capital Records recordings.
Later, Renato was music director of the Connecticut String Orchestra.
He died in Connecticut on January 31.
Abigail Mitchell, a newly hired chorus extra at the Metropolitan Opera, finds herself struggling with lack of signage, unhelpful nicknames and elevators the lead to the bowels of despair:
Not to be fooled again, next time I checked the elevator before getting in to make sure that it went to my destination: C level. It did! So down I went, feeling confident. But when I stepped out I found myself in some sort of creepy, deserted basement. Large pieces of lighting equipment were piled around, and after I wandered a bit I discovered—safely at a distance, thankfully—that I must be by the lift, for the floor gave way in a sheer drop off. It was, I’m convinced, the place where the monster in Stranger Things lives.
I started to panic. It was so clearly the wrong place I was hesitant to wander around, but there was no one nearby to help me. I took out my phone—maybe I can send Daniel Hoy a desperate SOS? No reception. Increasing panic clouded my reasoning and for a moment I couldn’t even find the button to call the elevator back. I’ll be stuck here forever! I’ll die here! Someone will find my body in seven years when they’re looking for those old lights from that ’95 production of The Ghosts of Versailles!…
Read on here.
We regret to report the death last night (Feb 5) of Caroline Brown, founder of the Hanover Band, after a long struggle with cancer. Caroline was 64.
Her husband, Stephen Neiman, shared the sad news.
Founded in March 1980, the Band focused on music of the 18th and 19th centuries played most on period instruments, with occasional use of baroque and modern flutes where appropriate. Pitch was set at A=430.
It recorded symphonic cycles of Beethoven, Schubert, Weber and Schumann and made numerous TV appearances.
Caroline, a cellist, studied with Anna Shuttleworth and Joan Dickson at the Royal College of Music, before winning a scholaship to study at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna with Andre Navarra.
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.
Here are his student ratings.
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.
— Anne Midgette
Read the full article here.
A message from the Chineke founder:
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!
UPDATE: It just got better still. Chi-chi is on Desert Island Discs next Sunday.
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
violinists Alena Baeva, Kyung Wha Chung, Moné Hattori, Yi-Ja Susanne Hou, Elina Vähälä
pianists Stephen Kovacevich, Anna Tsybuleva
and cellist Alexander Chaushian.
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.
Nothing quite like it. The source is here.
