The French violinist Augustin Dumay has been injured in a fall.

He is being replaced temporarily on the competition jury by Guillaume Molko, concertmaster of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

An interview with the diva’s voice coach, Mary Callaghan Lynch:

Christopher Florio, 39, music teacher at Harker Upper School and conductor of the California Youth Symphony in Palo Alto, has been arrested on suspicion of internet crimes against children.

Report here.

The soprano Asmik Grigorian, who has scored a huge success as Salzburg’s Salome, was replaced last night at a few hours’ notice by the Swedish singer Malin Byström.

Grigorian is said to be ‘acutely ill’.

We wish her better.

From the Baltimore Sun:

BALTIMORE — Math majors at Goucher College will soon be a thing of the past. Gone, too, will be physics majors, music majors and students in a range of subjects the school is eliminating from its offerings as part of a cost-cutting “academic revitalization” announced Wednesday.

“A small college can’t just keep adding majors,” President Jose Bowen said in a statement to the Baltimore Sun. “Sometimes we need to move resources from one to another and subtract too.”

The liberal arts school in Towson joins a growing number of institutions removing majors such as math and physics to save money. Seven Texas universities began eliminating their physics programs in 2010. The University of the District of Columbia cut 17 degree programs, including physics, five years ago….

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

Universally popular in the first half of the 20th-century, the music of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari has vanished into thin air. A Venetian of German ancestry and education, Wolf-Ferrari rejected modernism and allowed himself to become — along with Mascagni, Repighi, Malipiero and most Italian composers — a cultural poster-boy for the Mussolini regime. This affiliation accelerated his reputational decline after 1945; he died three years later.

But there is nothing ideological about his music. Nor is it in any sense reactionary….

Read on here.

And here.

A first?

RICHMOND, Va. (Aug. 16, 2018) — The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business has selected the Richmond Symphony as its artist-in-residence for the 2018-19 academic year.

Now in its third year, the VCU School of Business artist-in-residence program supports the school’s strategic plan and vision to drive the future of business through the power of creativity. The Richmond Symphony will be the first musical artist and first organization to serve in the role….

More here.