The Dallas Symphony has just named Gemma New principal guest conductor.

Gemma, 32, from New Zealand, is music director in Hamilton, Canada, and resident conductor with the St Louis Symphony.

The music director is Fabio Luisi.

 

The UK conductor Daniel Harding, who walked out earlier this year on the politically compromised Orchestre de Paris, renewed his contract today with the Swedish Radio Symphony for the next five years.

He will also become its artistic director.

Good call for both sides.

You see it here first.

Gregory Singer, a New York violin dealer, hired 55 musicians to play a Pledge of Allegiance in front of Fox News.

This is America 2018.

We hear the some of the freelance musicians were not made aware of what they would be playing.

From Melvyn’s fact-packed speech to the House of Lords:

 


Today our musicians travel freely; connections are essential in the global creative world. Post Brexit there will be no guarantee of free movement across Europe. In 2016, our orchestras made 96 visits to 26 different EU countries, according to the Association of British Orchestras – impossible to imagine after Brexit.

The post-Brexit visa system will result in a situation that has been graphically described in a well-researched article by the composer Howard Goodall. His work takes him all over Europe at a day’s notice by means of a ticket from Heathrow. This will now take him weeks to organise, and that will deter many of those in this country from going to Europe by reason of expense. The reverse is also true. Musicians from the EU play a crucial role in the day-to-day make-up of UK orchestras and are often called on at a couple of weeks’ notice, which the new system will make impossible. Between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of musicians in some orchestras are from other countries in the EU. There are around 14,000 EU citizens in the UK music industry. Given the restrictions that will be put in place, the future of that proportion looks bleak, and import duties will have to be paid on every instrument. Imagine that, with the LSO going one way and the Berlin Philharmonic going another.

This is not just about great orchestras and conductors. School jazz bands and youth orchestras will be subject to restrictions and expense. Young musicians from Britain will no longer be able to participate in EU-wide schemes such as the European Youth Orchestra, which is moving from the UK to Italy as a result of Brexit. That is a great shame for us and for them. Horace Trubridge of the Musicians’ Union has described the way that musicians hop regularly between Europe and Britain and said: “If every musician has to get a visa and carnet for every country they visit, it would make any work in Europe impossible to schedule … My members are already moving to Europe because they worry about their future work.”

We are not just talking about classical music. Peter Gabriel has expressed his alarm after a number of international artists were unable to perform at the Womad world music festival after visa issues. Gabriel, who founded Womad, said: “It is alarming that our UK festival would now have real problems bringing artists into this country … [many of whom] no longer want to come to the UK because of the difficulty, cost and delays with visas, along with the new fear that they will not be welcomed.”

This year marks the first time that artists declined invitations to perform at Womad….

Read on here.

 

There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of seats still available this morning for tonight’s Fanciulla del West, looking on the Met’s seat plan.

Plenty of them are with full views, but  the first one we were offered a $345 seat with obstructed view – plus an $85 suggested donation.

Clip-joint.

The world’s most sought-after tenor has not sung at the Met for more than four years.

A survey of 22 international orchestras reveals astonishing disparities in certain instruments.

The survey reports:

Bassoon (86% male), double bass (95%), and timpani (96%) players are predominately men.

Just one of the 103 trumpet players in the 22 orchestras is a woman, and there are no women among the 99 trombonists and 26 tuba players.

There is a small majority for women on flute and violin.

Now why is that?

Read on here.

The Toronto pianist Scott Cushnie, who went missing from his seniors apartment building in August, is believed to have died and been buried in a bizarre case of mistaken identity.

A local family who were searching for a missing relative received a call from a hospital abour an elderly man who died while walking downtown.

They assumed the deceased was theirs and organised a funeral.

Now, an exhumation is planned.

More here.

Scott, who had no family but many friends, was 80. Everybody called him Professor Piano.

Aus unserem bulging inbox:

Die Staatsoper Unter den Linden sucht neugierige Reporterinnen und Reporter zwischen 15 und 18 Jahren, die in den Herbstferien vom 29. Oktober bis 2. November 2018 Lust haben, einen Blick hinter die Kulissen der Oper zu werfen, Künstlerinnen und Künstler zu treffen und über ihre Erlebnisse zu schreiben oder in Videos zu berichten….

ANMELDUNG UND KONTAKT
Junge Staatsoper
T + 49 (0)30 20 35 46 97
operleben@staatsoper-berlin.de

Long Beach has named Jennifer Rivera as executive director and CEO, promoting her from director of development.

She was previously an active international singer and busy Huffington blogger.


Pictured her with her baby and Nicole Cabell

 

A closed hearing is going on at Moscow’s Meshchansky court this morning as prosecutors accuse the international opera director Kirill Serebrennikov, 49,  of embezzling $2 million at his theatre. The director maintains that he had no access to finance and the money was spent on productions.

His supporters argue that he has been victimised for his persistent criticism of the Putin regime.

He has been under house arrest for 14 months.

 

 

Marta Gardolińska was named young conductor in association with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra this summer.

That was supposed to mean educational concerts and suchlike until she found her feet.

But Ben Gernon fell sick yesterday and Marta stepped in to conduct tonight’s main subscription concert of Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture, Rachmaninov’s 2nd Symphony and Bruch’s first Violin Concerto with soloist Nikita Boriso-Glebsky in Poole.

She’ll repeat the concert tomorrow night in Portsmouth.

Go, Marta!