Last November, the young American conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong, 30, signed on with IMG Artists.
He had just become music director of the Eugene Symphony, in Oregon.
Today, he was named music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony in California.
Not a famous orchestra, but it’s a job. And a commission. Which is all the agency is after.
Jean-Philippe Thiebaut, co-principal oboe of the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, has put out an appeal for the return of his instrument, which was stolen at the box-office of one of Europe’s busiest railway stations.
press release, just in:
The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Berliner Philharmoniker have signed a contract to continue the Easter Festival. The general manager of the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, Andrea Zietzschmann, and Festspielhaus general manager Andreas Mölich-Zebhauser have announced that the collaboration will initially be extended until 2022. The foundation boards of the Kulturstiftung Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation unanimously supported this extension.
“The Berliner Philharmoniker are delighted to continue holding the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden for another five years,” says Andrea Zietzschmann. “Not only have we found a home here for our annual opera production but also ideal conditions to present the versatility of the orchestra in chamber music, educational and symphonic concerts with our artistic partners. We thank the team and the supporters of the Festspielhaus for their wonderful cooperation.”
At the next festival in 2019, Kirill Petrenko and Riccardo Muti will conduct the Berliner Philharmoniker’s concerts in Baden-Baden. Robert Wilson will direct a new production of Verdi’s opera “Otello”, with Daniele Gatti conducting. Kirill Petrenko, the new chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker from the autumn of 2019, will direct the Easter Festival’s opera productions from spring 2020.
Gavin Bryars’ chamber opera Marilyn Forever opens next month in a Volksoper production at the casino on Schwarzenbergplatz.
It’s a European premiere. (Anyone seen it before? Previous showings have been in Canada and Australia.)
Rebecca Babb-Nelsen plays the windswept role.
Patrick Williams, a Curtis grad who has played with Chicago, Pittsburgh and Fort Worth, was appointed principal flute in the Louisiana Philharmonic last night.
He has been acting principal in New Orleans for past the two seasons.
Istvan Simon, the principal dancer who was suspended two weeks ago when he accused the Semperoper balletmaster of sexual harassment, has been fired after an internal investigation dismissed his claims.
‘The relationship of trust has been broken,’ the company said.
A dispatch by the composer Graham Lack:
For many years now the two main Christian churches in Germany, the Katholische Kirche (representing the Catholic faith) and the Evangelische Kirche (essentially the Protestant/Lutheran tradition) enjoyed a good relationship with GEMA, the “Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte”, the German equivalent of PPL PRS for Music in the UK.
Each parish church paid via its head office an annual, one time, lump sum of €45 to cover all concerts taking place in a church building, liturgy excluded. All each parish church needed to do up to now was submit a “music list” of composer names and works performed, without receiving any additional post-concert bill as music-making was covered by a blanket agreement.
Upon receiving each list, GEMA paid royalties to the composers. Interestingly (as with concerts in regular concert halls), this was done neither on the basis of pre-concert ticket sales and money taken at the box office, nor was it done according to the promoters’ apparent net profit: composer royalties are independently based and calculated according to the length of each work and the performing forces required, regardless of what happened promoter side. This is entirely fair when compared to what happens, or does not happen, in the UK one might note, where promoters of classical music pay a percentage (standard 4.8) of net admission receipts. Hence, GEMA paid out substantially more money to composers than was ever received from the churches.
Some time during 2017 GEMA raised the parish fee from €45 to €75. The Evangelische Kirche quickly settled the issue and signed a new agreement. The Katholische Kirche refused the new tariff point blank. So, as of 1 January 2018, each Catholic parish church in Germany that presents concerts of church music is faced with a GEMA bill for performing music that is not in the public domain.
To understand the enormity of this one needs, as I say, to grasp the way the GEMA system works: a promoter in Germany pays a fee not according to income from the concert, but based on the greatest possible income, or “targeted gross”, if the concert were to be full, regardless of actual takings or profits. The GEMA fee is actually calculated according to the size of a space in square metres (be it a church or a concert hall), the total number of seats, and the price of the tickets. The GEMA fee for a sold out concert would be the same for one with only 10% attendance.
Composers’ royalties are calculated, as explained above, independently of the promoter/GEMA calculation. Again, this is entirely fair. One example should suffice: the composer of a string quartet (four independent polyphonic voices, i.e. four players) lasting three minutes receives the same royalties regardless of the size of the hall. The same goes for a composer who has written a work for very large orchestra, one with 46 independent parts (16 violins count as one “polyphonic voice”) that lasts 70 minutes. The same royalties are paid to the composer whether the space has 2400 seats or 400, or whether the ticket prices were ca. €80 or €15, or whether the promoter made a profit or a loss.
The upshot is that many concerts are being cancelled by Catholic parishes. German choirs planning a longer work by John Rutter, are finding that their parish can not or will not pay a GEMA bill that might amount to anything from, say, €120 to €800. Composers of sacred music urgently need the Catholic Church in Germany to negotiate a new deal with GEMA.
Here’s more on the subject in German.
Blaise DéJardin, of the Boston Symphony’s cello section, won yesterday’s audition for principal cello. He has been a member of the orchestra since 2008.
Boston likes to promote from within.
photo: Marco Borggreve
The American choreographer arrived in Hamburg in 1973, aged 24.
Five years later he founded the Hamburg Ballet School. In 1996 he became ballet director of Hamburg State Opera. Today the city renewed his contract until 2023, which will bring up his half-century at the age of 84.
Statement by Andris Nelsons, music director at Boston and Leipzig, and his ex-wife, soprano Kristine Opolais:
Andris Nelsons and Kristine Opolais have divorced following seven years of marriage. Both Mr. Nelsons and Ms. Opolais are united in putting their daughter at the center of their private lives. With complete respect and admiration for one another, Mr. Nelsons and Ms. Opolais look forward to continuing their artistic relationship together. The family asks for privacy at this time and no further comments will be given.
In happier times…
UPDATE: There was forewarning of change last week when Opolais changed her agency. In a long-distance marriage, with the maestro shuttling from one orchestra to another, maintaining a stable marriage is not easy.
The Philharmonic architect has won the Colburn music school project across the road.
More here.
I can’t tear my eyes away from Chandos’s new release of chamber music by the compelling Grazyna Bacewicz.
The cover is so fit for purpose. It conveys all you need to know about the dullness of life in a small town under Communism – a dullness that Bacewicz (1909-69) somehow both reflects and dispels.
And the unsourced picture is not real: it is colourised, another layer of deception.
There is no hope in this picture, only ennui. But the music is redemptive.
Give that art director a bonus.
