Marin Mazzie, the singing actress who created the role of Clara in Sondheim’s Passion in 1994, has died of ovarian cancer.
More here.
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music has chosen Pittsburgh Symphony’s Jeffrey Turner as professor of music in double bass.
Turner played principal in Pittsburgh since 1992, having joined the orchestra in 1987.
At a press conference today, Sir Simon Rattle launched an LSO East London Academy to help young musicians from the more deprived half of the metropolis.
Opening at LSO St Luke’s in April 2019, the Acacemy will include coaching, mentoring and masterclasses with LSO players and will be free to all participants.
Theater Magdeburg has announced its next GMD.
She is Anna Skryleva, Moscow born and trained, living in Germany since 1999.
She has been assistant to Jeffrey Tate at Cologne Opera and to Simone Young in Hamburg.
Stéphane Lissner, directeur of the Paris Opéra since 2014, has been told that his contract will not be renewed beyond 2021, it is officially confirmed today.
Sources are saying the decision to replace him has been manipulated by President Macron’s director of communications, Sylvain Fort.
A previous version opf this story misread a key element.
Aida Garifullina says: It’s only in Russian, but it’s very good for you.
The Polish-born pianist, who has lived in Switzerland for years, made an extraordinary speech before his encores at the Lucerne Festival on Tuesday.
After a short reminiscence of his friendship with Leonard Bernstein, he digressed into a diatribe against the arms industry, singling out the Swiss for criticism over their record of supplying arms to countries that are engaged in civil war.
The audience, which included senior Swiss politicians, responded with tepid applause.
Zimerman last used a concert platform for political purposes in 2009 when he spoke out in Los Angeles against US missile deployment policy. He has not returned since to the US.
The Lucerne Festival said this was the first time its stage has been used for a political speech.
The new appointments include two assistant concertmasters and a principal clarinet, trumpet and bassoon. Five musicians are new hires, two are internal upgrades and one is a returnee.
Principal Trumpet Robert Sullivan rejoins the CSO. Christopher Pell is the new principal clarinet and Christopher Sales principal bassoon, StefaniMatsuo and Philip Marten become associate and assistant concertmasters, Charles Morey, Caterina Longhi and Christopher Fischer join the strings.
That’s quite a shakeup.
Not necessarily our opinion, but a scathing end-of-decade report on a widely-read Bavarian website.
Actually, a really useful article as pure history, but the Katie-out agenda is ultimately clear.
Read here.
A survey of 389 British piano teachers conducted by the Finchcocks learning centre yields some predictable depressing results:
Finchcocks’ survey revealed that over a third of piano teachers – 37% – do not undertake any formal professional development. For most teachers, this was not because they had no interest in developing their skills – in fact the vast majority (90%) said they wanted more training – but it was because of the scarcity of courses available for teachers. Indeed 25% of piano teachers surveyed rated the provision of teaching resources available to piano teachers as “poor” or “very poor”.
Motivation, practice and rhythm key teaching challenges
An almost unanimous 94% of piano teachers surveyed stated that they’d like to develop techniques for better motivating their students; 9 out of 10 teachers stated that they’d like to develop methods of instilling better practice techniques in their students; and 89% of teachers admitted that teaching students to play rhythmically was a key challenge.
