Kelly Tweeddale, President of Vancouver Symphony and VSO School of Music, has been snared as Executive Director of San Francisco Ballet.
Kelly has just led a dazzling centennial season in Canada. These things get noticed below the line.
She has previously worked for the Cleveland Orchestra and Seattle Opera.
Kelly Tweeddale became President of the Vancouver Symphony and VSO School of Music in November 2015 to lead Canada’s third largest orchestra during a time of innovation and growth that has included planning for the organization’s centennial celebration, the selection of a new music director, and expansion of its performance season. Since her arrival, VSO has experienced tremendous growth with earned revenues increasing by 35%, contributed revenues by 28%, and endowment assets growing by 72%. Tweeddale has also led the VSO School of Music, one of the only North American purpose-built music schools to leverage the mentorship opportunities available with a professional orchestra. Tweeddale’s 30-year career has had one focal point: connecting people and places through the performing arts.
The Welsh composer Paul Mealor, who wrote the hit motet Ubi Caritas et Amor for the 2011 Royal Wedding, is stepping back from his professional engagements to deal with mental health problems.
He has sharply reduced his duties at the University of Aberdeen, following concerns expressed by some students.
“I have been very fortunate to enjoy the types of opportunities for my work that do not come the way of a composer and conductor very often.
“As a result, I have found myself saying ‘yes’ to more and more requests, which I was immensely flattered to receive and which were simply too good to turn down.
“At the same time, I have a full-time teaching schedule at the university and, although I am passionate about both roles, I have been trying to keep afloat a hectic and unrealistic schedule.
“This has taken a toll on my mental wellbeing and on the choir I lead. In the last few months, I’ve not managed that in the way that I would wish.”
He added: “I am grateful to both my colleagues and students who have raised concerns about my wellbeing.
“Taking a leave of absence from the university for several weeks has allowed me to reflect upon the pressures I have faced and the ways in which I have been dealing with them.
“Regrettably, alcohol had become more of a crutch to me than it should and this had been adversely affecting my life and my work.”
The concert starts at 1900 London time, 1400 New York.
The Baltimore Symphony seson has been abruptly ended.
The players are unemployed through the summer, under pressure from their CEO Peter Kjome to sign a new 40-week contract.
Latest from the Baltimore Sun: When asked if the musicians would receive health insurance this summer if they decline the proposed contract, Kjome did not immediately respond.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) is investing $500,000 in grants to local female musicians, an effort to support music made by and for women in a male-dominated industry.
The finances are part of the office’s NYC Women’s Film, TV and Theatre Fund — now renamed the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre, as music is brought under its umbrella for the first time. Currently in its second run, the program has already awarded $1.5 million to 63 film, TV, theatre and digital media projects made by women-identifying creatives.
Newly-appointed MOME commissioner Anne del Castillo announced the funding Tuesday (June 4) at the third annual New York Music Month conference: Innovation at the Intersection of Music + Tech.
The Latvian virtuoso Jānis Tretjuks has died suddenly, of an unknown cause.
An international competition winner, he was soloist with the Sinfonietta Riga and a teacher at Trossingen University, where he was both popular and respected.
The funeral is in Riga on Saturday.
Message from Trossingen Hochschule:
Wir trauern um Jānis Tretjuks
Unser Lehrbeaufragte für historische Klarinette, Jānis Tretjuks, ist – für alle überraschend – im Alter von 29 Jahren plötzlich verstorben. Mit Jānis verliert die Hochschule einen überaus begabten, allseits geschätzten jungen Musiker, der schon als Student (bei Prof. Chen Halevi und Prof. Dr. Ernst Schlader) durch seine künstlerische Individualität und Originalität hervortrat. Wir denken auch an seine Angehörigen und vielen internationalen Freunde in der Hochschule und an vielen Orten nah und fern.
Erst kürzlich wurde er mit dem „Grand Music Award“ 2018, der höchsten Auszeichnung seiner lettischen Heimat im Musikbereich für “Outstanding Work in an Ensemble” ausgezeichnet. Erst in der letzten Woche war er in Trossingen Gastgeber einer Masterclass von Prof. Lorenzo Coppola… Sein Tod kam wirklich aus “heiterem Himmel” und hinterlässt tiefe Betroffenheit, aber auch große Dankbarkeit für seine Arbeit und seine künstlerischen Impulse für die Hochschule.
1989 in Riga, Lettland, geboren, wechselte Janis Tretjuks nach dem Studium in seiner Heimat im Herbst 2011 an die Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen in die Klasse von Prof. Chen Halevi. Ab 2014 studierte er hier moderne Klarinette im Masterstudiengang sowie historische Klarinette bei Prof. Dr. Ernst Schlader. Seit Oktober 2016 unterrichtete er selbst als Dozent für historische Klarinette in Trossingen. Tretjuks ist Preisträger mehrerer Wettbewerbe, trat in Europa sowohl als Solist wie auch als Kammermusiker auf und gab regelmäßig Meisterkurse. Insbesondere im Ensemble Tutz Frequenz blieb er gemeinsam mit den beiden Trossinger Alumni Teddy Ezra und Ido Azrad den historischen Holzbläsern der Trossinger Hochschule eng verbunden.
Neben der Alten Musik begeisterten ihn auch zeitgenössische Kompositionen. So nahm er am 8. Rolandseck Festival ‘Künstler-Ich’ mit einem Werk von Christian Spitzenstätter teil.
When I joined the Evening Standard as Assistant Editor in 2002, the first part of my mission was to build London’s strongest team of critics and arts writers.
For a while, we led the field.
After six years, attrition set in. The paper was sold to a Russian KGB muppet, became a freesheet and finally hired a failed politician (pictured) as editor.
Yesterday, it fired the last two theatre critics – Fiona Mountford and Henry Hitchings – supposedly to save money.
Barry Millington, the classical critic, has not been contacted about his future.
There are birthday events today in Bayreuth and Berlin.
He was an utterly mediocre composer, a gay pathbreaker and a moderately resourceful festival manager.
Any more questions?
Friends are sharing sadness at the death of Nancianne Parrella, an inspirational chorus teacher and long-serving organist at Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City.
Sought after by many US orchestras, Nancianne played with the New York Philharmonic in Lorin Maazel’s farewell concerts, having also worked with Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Zdenek Macal, Neeme Järvi and Louis Langreé.
She was a faculty member of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, NJ.
Nancianne suffered a stroke on Monday. She was 83.
David Hyslop, America’s chief orchestral fireman, has been hauled in to stabilise the Orlando Philharmonic, which has just lost its latest boss inside three years.
David, 76, was CEO at the Oregon Symphony (1972-1978), St. Louis Symphony (1978-1991), and Minnesota Orchestra (1991-2003) before pulling on a helmet and embracing a fireman’s life. Calming down boards, horong new conductors, he must have plucked at least ten orchestras by now from the burning.
