Lucia Lucas is a trans woman who sings baritone roles.

Lucia was originally identified as a male until her change five years ago.

She is now singing Wotan at Magdeburg Opera.

Watch here.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic music director is to receive the 25th annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, endowed by the early movie stars.

How did he get that?

Among recent winners is the Disney Hall architect Frank Gehry, who might have put in a good word.

Dude says he is ‘humbled’.

The violinist has signed with Columbia Artists for the English-speaking world, parting company with Opus 3, in a deal that also includes his travelling Kremerata Baltica ensemble.

It’s quite a catch for the rebranded ex-Cami list.

Kremer comments: ‘In the spirit of Oscar Wilde’aphorism‘I have a very simple taste: I like only the best.’

Columbia’s Doug Sheldon says: ‘I am most pleased for the opportunity to work with Gidon, surely one of the world’s most respected, admired and forward-thinking artists, and thrilled for the chance to develop imaginative programs for Kremerata Baltica in several international territories.’

Sonia Simmenauer at Impressariat Simmenauer will continue to represent him in Europe.

We have received notice of the death of Dale Newton, a cellist in the Grant Park Orchestra since 1974, often acting as principal, and son of a violist in the Chicago Symphony.

Dale was a Chicago fixture and his orchestra’s delegate to the ICSOM.

I’ve been thinking about the conductors who made a difference to my life – not on record, but in live performance, the ones who taught me to live in the moment, and transcend it.

These are the maestros who came to mind.

1 Otto Klemperer

2 Carlos Kleiber

3 Klaus Tennstedt

4 Rafael Kubelik

5 Leonard Bernstein

6 Georg Solti

7 Riccardo Muti

8 Riccardo Chailly

9 Mariss Jansons

10 Neville Marriner

The omissions? Karajan, Böhm, Ormandy, Maazel, Mehta produced off-the-shelf performances.

Gergiev in the early 1990s delivered some of the most exciting concerts imaginable, only to compromise his work with skipped rehearsals and dark political connections.

The list remains open. I hope to add more with the passage of time.

Kirill P and Mirga G could be contenders.

 

 

There has been a bit of an online outcry against the musicians who turned out on Fox News this week to promote a Trump conductor’s dubious allegiance pledge.

Should they have turned down a paid gig? It’s tough out there.

The horn player Audrey Flores tells is as it is:

Most of us spend thousands of dollars on our precious degrees: should we only play jobs that break down to what we paid per hour?  I was accepted by a school who wanted me to pay $13.5k a semester for a course that required 12 hours a week.   By that calculation, I should have only taken jobs that paid $70 an hour, or at least $200 for a three-hour service.  Wow would I have loved to get those calls! At the level I’m at now, I’ve taken union work that paid $125 for 8 hours of work, because it was technically a soundcheck before a performance that paid into the pension fund.  I’ve also played 2-hour shows for $82, again under a union CBA.

The bigger question in my mind is: how much is a musician worth if they take a barista job that pays $15 an hour (hah!) when they could be playing somewhere else for $20 an hour?  Does a musician make a sound if they’re answering phones in midtown?  And does your landlord care about your worth as a musician?

Read on here.

 

 

It was reconfirmed in Chicago last night that the music director had signed on til August 2022. That’s good.

Less bright is the Orchestra’s annual result: the CSO trimmed its losses by half a million bucks but is still $900.000 in the red.

The musicians’s contract ran out last month but they’ve agreed to extend it to next spring in the hope of reaching an amicable agreement.

Details here.

 

photo: Todd Rosenberg/CSO

They have chosen 12 semi-finalists in Hannover:

Timothy Chooi, Leonard Fu, Rennosuke Fukuda, Yuichiro Fukuda, Mayumi Kanagawa, Cosima Soulez Larivière, Anna Lee, Youjin Lee, Mathilde Milwidsky, Seiji Okamoto, Olga Šroubková and Dmytro Udovychenko.

The semis start tonight.

From our occasional series know as ‘sh*t happens’:

Just eight days before the start of its 12th performance season, the National Chamber Ensemble (in Arlington, Virgina) was faced with a potential disaster — the group’s concertmaster and violin soloist broke his hand.

Leo Sushansky, who doubles as the NCE’s artistic director, suffered a “freak accident” Friday (Oct. 12), the group said. Mary Anne Ellifritz, a member of the NCE’s board, says Sushansky was rushing to answer a phone call when he made a perilous decision to avoid a disassembled harpsichord on his living room floor.

“He thought he would hop over it and make it to the phone in time,” Ellifritz wrote in an email. “He tripped on the music holder and went down… He wasn’t aware that he had gotten hurt at first, just bruised. When he went to put the hand under cold water, he saw it the fingers and hand were oddly shaped….” 

Sh*t gets worse. Read on here.