The winner of the 2018 Grand Prix Vincenzo Bellini in Vendome, France, is Nombulelo Yende, 27, from South Africa.

Her sister Pretty was launched by winning the prize in 2010.

This is my little sister @nombulelo_yende, she’s a third born to our family. I’m so proud of her. Last night she won her first international voice competition in Vendome 🇫🇷 just outside Paris. Vincenzo Bellini Bel Canto Competition. She got the main prize, a special prize as well as the audience prize. Here’s a clip from her performance in the finals earlier this year at her first international competition as a finalist. (Full clip on my IGTV channel )💞💞💞💞 we love you Buli #shesings #herfuture #proud

A post shared by Pretty Yende (@pretty_yende_official) on Nov 18, 2018 at 4:46am PST

French jazz stood still and President Macron sent condolences when the violinist Didier Lockwood died suddenly in February. The opera world shared its sorrow’s with Didier’s wife, Patricia Petibon.

This weekend, Patricia bounced back in her first Traviata, staged in Malmo, Sweden.

Congratulations to Patricia Petibon, who made her stunning debut as Violetta Valérie in an amazing production of Olivier Py at the #Malmö Opera! . . . #patriciapetibon #olivierpy #latraviata #violetta #malmöopera #standingovations #triumph

A post shared by Helga Machreich-Unterzaucher (@helga_mach_reich) on Nov 18, 2018 at 2:48am PST

The pianist and conductor is Zsolt Bognar’s latest guest in Living the Classical Life.

He talks about Sviatoslav Richter, the Soviet system, playing football, fame and wealth, and the human soul.

‘Don’t go for the career,’ he advises. ‘Just go for the music you are playing.’

Watch.

French musicians are in shock at the death of Thierry Lalo, founder of Voice Messengers.

The group have posted this message:

Les Voice Messengers ont l’immense tristesse de vous annoncer la disparition de leur fondateur, pianiste, arrangeur et directeur musical, Thierry Lalo, survenue ce vendredi 16 novembre 2018.

Thierry Lalo avait fondé les Voice Messengers en 1994, et il a, durant ces 24 dernières années, travaillé avec passion et acharnement pour faire vivre cet ensemble de jazz vocal qui lui tenait tant à coeur.

Amoureux fou de jazz, il aura passé sa vie à le célébrer, que ce soit au travers des opéras-jazz qu’il a composés, de ses nombreux ateliers et master-class, ou encore de cette biographie de John Lewis qu’il avait écrite en 1991.

The punchline? ‘Apparently, Beethoven isn’t just a dog.’

The things you learn at the San Diego Symphony.

If they won’t come for the music, maybe they’ll stay for the strip.

This is the Alma Quartet yesterday at Muziekcentrum van de Omroep in Holland.

They are playing Schulhoff. We’ve no idea what she’s doing.

You see it here first.

From the New York University Journal:

One day in 1942 when Film Scoring professor Paul Chihara was a child, his family was rounded up and sent to live in an internment camp. Even though they were American citizens, he and his family, minus his father who had been arrested and taken away to a prisoner of war camp the year before, spent three years of his youth in Minidoka, Idaho, because they were Japanese-American.

The Royal Scottish Orchestra has commissioned Professor Chihara to compose a work for speaker and orchestra based on the words of statesmen and politicians of the early years of World War II, when the United States government rounded up and incarcerated people of Japanese descent.

“A Matter of Honor” will premiere at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on March 22, 2019, and the American premiere will take place in Los Angeles at Soka University on April 3.

The score of “A Matter of Honor” is a musical memory of those three years of Chihara’s childhood growing up behind barbed wire and surrounded by armed guards on the enclosing walls of the internment camp. It references the music he heard every day, the Big Band songs, the Japanese pre-War pop songs, and some classical music that his fellow prisoners managed to perform.

Chihara and his assistant, Jennifer Fagre, wrote the libretto from the actual words of the most influential men of the era: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Earl Warren (later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), and General John DeWitt, Lieutenant General in charge of the defense of the West Coast, as well as contemporary words of Japanese-Americans interned at the time of the War. The title of the work is from a quote from the late Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who served in the 442nd Infantry regiment of the American military.

“Minidoka was not Stalag VII,” notes Professor Chihara, “nor was the relocation of the Japanese Americans during World War II like the Holocaust. Our experiences were pale compared with those unspeakable tragedies. But it was a tragedy nonetheless, and a grave injustice to fellow American citizens, as well as a complete disregard for the constitution or the hallowed laws of our land, somehow completely ignored by politicians, judges, free press, and the ACLU.”

Near the end of his life, the old master sent these to the last of his prodigies, Franz von Vecsey:

I love the final admonition: Loud playing and quick playing alone cannot do it; at most it only dazzles the ignorant in the audience. All depends upon beautiful playing and distinct playing.

H/t to Cho-Liang Lin for spotting the poster at Juilliard.

Michael Bloomberg has just given $1.8 billion to abolish student loans and make tuition affordable at Johns Hopkins University, which includes the Peabody Institute.

Bloomberg is a Baltimore grad.

It’s not clear how his gift will affect music tuition, but it will make Peabody more diverse and attractive to bright students and that can only be beneficial for a city that seemed to be heading for culture crash.

Statement follows.

Beginning in the fall of 2019, Johns Hopkins will be a loan-free institution. We will replace all undergraduate student loans with scholarships, and we will reduce overall family contributions to financial aid.

In addition, for the spring 2019 semester, we will offer immediate loan relief to every enrolled undergraduate student whose financial aid package includes a federal need-based loan.

This will make admissions at Hopkins forever need-blind; finances will never again factor into decisions. The school will be able to offer more generous levels of financial aid, replacing loans for many students with scholarship grants. It will ease the burden of debt for many graduates. And it will make the campus more socioeconomically diverse.