As if they don’t have enough troubles…

 A violinist for the Cleveland Orchestra was robbed at gunpoint during a home invasion late Thursday by three robbers who stole his two violins worth $38,000, police said.

The 33-year-old violinist who joined the orchestra in 2013, ran across his rooftop as he was being chased by one of three robbers, police reports say.

His 33-year-old fiancee was pistol-whipped during the robbery, police said. No arrests have been made in the case and police are searching for the violins and the car stolen during the home invasion….

(from Cleveland.com)

Read on here.

 

Date: July 27, 2018

To: Staff and Musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra

From: André Gremillet, Executive Director

Re: Recent Washington Post article

As many of you are aware, there was an article yesterday in the Washington Post that prominently features our concertmaster William Preucil. Given the seriousness of these allegations, we will immediately be conducting an investigation into this matter. While we do so, Mr. Preucil has been suspended until further notice. We will also be making a public statement that you should expect to see shortly.

André

André Gremillet Executive Director The Cleveland Orchestra clevelandorchestra.com

 

The Scottish violinist shares some summer thoughts:

 

During the last few weeks I’ve met, heard and played alongside approximately 250 young musicians. We encountered repertoire by Bach, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Beethoven, Grieg and Janacek. I also had the pleasure of collaborating with over 70 teachers from all over the UK.

We’ve played in small formations and very very large ones. We’ve tried to be, musically speaking, as free and expressive as possible, but we’ve also demonstrated extreme patience in addressing the driest, most technical aspects of playing very difficult instruments. And most importantly we’ve tried to combine the two things, whilst tackling many many more disciplines that often feel like they require opposing parts of the brain. They pit one sensation against the other, and require immense concentration.

I still maintain that playing the violin well was and is harder than anything else I tried to do in school. Playing difficult instruments collectively is a very challenging activity indeed!

There’s usually a point where it becomes clear that all the imagination and will in the world can’t solve the problem of everyone struggling to shift up to an awkward high position on their instrument, and we have to take a step back in order to address the core of the problem.

We talk slowly and conscientiously about hand positions, about how to navigate the very blank and very unhelpful geography of the fingerboard, and how to do all this and still make it sound like music, not an exercise.

There’s also usually a moment when too much dry information has been imparted and we need to reach deep inside our collective intuition and inner hearing – we need to connect to our most visceral instinct for phrasing or intonation or sound, and hope that somehow from somewhere, magic happens and things sound and feel better.

I’ve found, during these coaching sessions that after the first 10 minutes, the excitement calms and the hard work begins. Then it’s a matter of managing expectations, and staying on problems long enough for everyone to hear an improvement, but not too long for us to lose concentration.

I try to be as committed, serious, detail oriented and driven as humanly possible in these workshops – to show I take these experiences to heart, and give them no less attention and focus than a professional concert. In turn, I expect a lot from all the young musicians I work with.

But, I’m only present with any given group for a condensed amount of time. And that time is usually high intensity, high energy and often infused with high emotions and excitement. That cannot be sustained week in week out, all year long. It is the hundreds of music teachers around the UK who are the constant in these young musician’s lives; they are not only teachers, they repair instruments, they counsel, they provide emotional and personal support, they come up with weird and wonderfully creative ways to sustain the attention of their students, and fight off cynical negative attitudes towards music teaching from all sides. These teachers occupy many roles and functions.
So, as always, let me thank them, pay tribute to them, and once again pledge my ever growing support for and commitment to them.

European String Teachers Association (ESTA UK)
Robin Michael
David Le Page
Catherine Francis
Mathew Lee
Sam Laverick
Corinne Kelly
Stuart Hazelton
Alison Major
Steve Bingham

MiSST
Stephanie Bissell
Bob Pepper
Truda White
Natalie Wild
Jonathan Gibson

NYOS
Holly Mathieson
Roddy Long

National Children’s Orchestras of Great Britain
Catherine Arlidge
Sophie Lewis
Jonathan Bloxham

Special thanks to Jenny Jamison, and to Laura Gardiner for all their incredible support and work.

Further thanks to the following. Apologies if I’ve missed off any names. Don’t hesitate to write to us and say so if I have.

The violist Paul Neubauer and Wu Han recently performed a newly-discovered viola impromptu by Dmitry Shostakovich.

The score was found in the papers of a member of the Borodin Quartet. It is one of DSCH’s Jewish-themed works.

You see it here first.

Not the novelist.

His CIA cousin Nicolas, a bon viveur and unsuccessful composer.

Igor engages with him in five languages and a bottle of Chivas.

Gripping stuff.

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

There’s a debate going on among agents as to whether it is better for an artist to have an exclusive record contract or to work across several labels. Alisa Weilerstein, who has made outstanding recordings of the Elgar, Dvorak and Shostakovich concertos for Decca, has now popped up on a Dutch label with the two Haydn concertos and Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. Pentatone is a terrific label, run by former Philips professionals. This ought to be a top-drawer recommendation. Why it isn’t is a matter of some perplexity….

Read on here.

And here.

The MUK – Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien – has approinted Jennifer Stumm as its next professor of viola, starting September.

Jennifer, a Curtis grad, is from Atlanta, Georgia. She runs an Illumina collective in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Vienna is lucky to have her.

David Chambers, Vice President for Development at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the past 10 months, yesterday joined the San Francisco Symphony as Chief Revenue and Advancement Officer.

That same afternoon, Philip Koester – Chicago’s Vice President for Sales and Marketing – joined the LA Phil as Vice President of Marketing and Communications.

Make of that what you will.

 

The Bavarian Ministry of Science confirmed today that it is looking into a third likely perpetrator of sexual abuse in the music academy.

The first – former president of the Munich Academy of Music and Performing Arts, Siegfried Mauser – has been sentenced to two years and nine months for sexual assault.

The second – a suspended professor of composition – has been charged with several counts of rape.

The identity of the third suspect is not yet known.

PiotrBeczala is one of the best selfie-takers in the business. Director Yuval Sharon was quick to get in on the act.

Can anyone name the others?


photo: Tomasz Konieczny

Sonya Knussen tells us:

The Tanglewood Music Center is celebrating OK’s life every week at the moment with a faculty performance of a Knussen chamber work at the 10am Sunday Morning Chamber Music Concerts and a performance of “Songs and a Sea Interlude” at the TMCO FCM concert on July 30th at 8pm conducted by Stefan Asbury.  My parents met at Tanglewood. 

 

The violinist Zeneba Bowers has gone public in the Washington Post today with an account of her experience of alleged sexual assault by the Cleveland concertmaster, William Preucil. In an additional reflection for her friends (and Slipped Disc), Zeneba decides that she has left some important things unsaid:

Thanks to Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone at the Washington Post who wrote a very important article about the MeToo movement in the classical world. This post is just to add a little further detail for those that are interested. I’m adding in a few notes about the music business since many of my friends are not in the biz.

1. New World Symphony is an elite orchestral academy whose goal is to place its students in leadership positions in orchestras around the world. Concertmasters from top orchestras were brought in to teach us private lessons. When NWS posted the sign-up sheet for lessons, I’d make a beeline to it and I’d always take the last lesson of the day. That way I could get extra time if the lesson wanted to go long, and if I felt I had a rapport with the teacher, I would always ask them if I could take them out for a coffee or beer afterward. I used to keep a yellow legal pad. As things happened in rehearsal (conflicts between principal players, concertmaster/conductor relations, etc.), I’d record them on my yellow legal pad. Then at one of these coffee or beer summits I’d ask my questions (e.g. “How would you handle this?” Or “What’s standard protocol for this?” It was part of my effort to educate myself, as I hoped to be in a leadership position myself someday, and virtually none of the “rules” are actually written down. I went to several coffee/beer summits with several concertmasters without incident. All but one were male.

2. My lesson with Preucil was at 4pm. I remember that little detail because I remember being concerned about the appearance, but I thought that a 5pm drink was not a big deal. Right outside the hall is a large pedestrian zone full of cafes and bars. It was broad daylight and there were thousands of people around. The last lesson of the day was always 4pm, and as I mentioned above, I always tried to snag it.

We walked a couple of blocks down the pedestrian zone and stopped at one of the many cafes. I think it was a whiskey bar but I wasn’t a whiskey drinker at the time. I don’t remember what drink I had but it was probably a glass of wine. (I know it was alcohol; so if that is a judgement issue for you, go ahead and start chalking up your black marks now.)
I went through my legal pad questions; in my memory we had a good time. He is an affable guy and easy to talk to. His hotel was at the end of the pedestrian zone, and my apartment was a few blocks past that, so we walked together. About two blocks past the bar, he stopped dead in the street, and started panicking; he had left his Stradivarius at the bar.

He started running and I ran with him. We got to the bar sweated and panicked, but there it was, tucked by a chair. We were both extremely relieved and shared a moment in the street, laughing and trying to catch our breath. He begged me not to tell anyone. Of course I agreed. This was the “good” kind of way a man in power asks a subordinate not to tell anyone about an incident: No one was harmed, but had it become public knowledge that he left a priceless work of art sitting in a whiskey bar in Miami it would have really damaged his reputation. I felt like we now had a little secret and I was happy to keep it for him. I’d had a great violin lesson, we had had a good time going over my work questions, and now this funny thing happened, and I thought the day was a success. We kept walking down the pedestrian zone and as we got within sight of his hotel he asked if I would like to have a cigar with him. “My ticket to the boy’s club!”, I thought. It was still daylight out. I felt safe. It was not until I got in to the room that I saw there was no balcony, and there would be no cigars.

Note: I did not give him my phone number. As I ran home panicked and crying after the incident, he must have called the front desk at NWS housing to get my number. My phone was ringing as I walked in the door. There was no caller ID in those days so I picked it up.

3. Obviously the most disturbing part of this type of incident is the physical violation of your body. But one aspect of this that is so overlooked is the impact that something like this has on your career.

Networking is vital to our little music business. A mentor or teacher can see you on stage and see you have the chops for the job, but they will know several dozen just like you. Often the thing that sets you apart is a personal connection, however small. That can be the difference between you getting a chamber music opportunity, or a substitute gig on an orchestra tour, or even a one-year contract in an orchestra (which can lead to a full-time, tenured gig.) It’s no accident that we don’t have equal representation of women and men in leadership positions in the music world. If we do network, and something like this happens, then plenty of people ask “Why were you going out with him” or “What did you think would happen”. (For reference, just see any comment stream on this article.) If we don’t network, then we are cut off from all the opportunities (and they are vast) that occur because of networking.

After this incident, which I have only recently begun to be able to call an attempted rape (because it was, but I feel sick even typing it out), I realized that a lot of my opportunities would be cut off. The 18 years I had invested to that point in my life studying this instrument and attending elite schools already had a hard stop on any progress I could make because I’d made a powerful enemy, and any audition I took to get in to any of the places he worked would be a futile waste.
I realized that in all likelihood, there were many like him in the business, and this would happen again and again; and I despaired. I realized that I would have to create my own opportunities, if I wanted to perform music and know that I would be safe. I have attempted to do that in my career.

I am very grateful to the Washington Post for writing this story. Obviously they couldn’t include this amount of detail or the story would have been the entire paper, but I think the work they did was excellent. And I don’t just mean this article, but also the respectful way they have treated me over the last 6 months.
I was unable to read the article before it went to print; that’s how real newspapers work. I read the article when I landed in Atlanta after flying in from Milan, sweaty and stressed and exhausted. Over the years, in the course of my career, I have been misquoted dozens of times, and I had a decent amount of stress about this article since I would have no chance to see it before the world did. But I put my trust in the professionalism of the writers, and I’m glad I did.