The death has been reported in a London hospital of Benny Nagari, a prolific Israeli composer and arranger. He worked with many of the leading Israeli singers and ensembles of the 1980s.
A month after Slipped Disc reported Boston Conservatory’s sacking of the internationally known clarinet player Michael Norsworthy, the Conservatory has confirmed his dismissal to the Boston Globe.
The reason? ‘Norsworthy ‘was terminated for failing to meet our standards of professional and appropriate communications’.
The real reason? Regrettably, the usual.
Norsworthy has failed to respond to requests for his side of things.
From the US pianist Richard Glazier on the cancelled Carnegie concert:
‘I was asked to play Gershwin last week for the US -Polish organization concert. I was so excited not knowing anything. I spoke to the people in Poland and it was all worked out. Then I found out about this hate organization. I questioned them and got this response (see below).
‘Then an article came out on NBC a couple of days ago… you will see after Gibbons was invited. Paul Bisaccia was invited and then I was invited. Lord only knows how many other people they invited before they got to me.
‘Response from this Polish American Organization…
No, Gala is not sponsored by Gazeta Polska, it is organized and sponsored by several companies.
Gazeta Polska Community of America is a US-based foundation that promotes inclusiveness, engagement of diverse social groups into civic activities, and stands for free speech and open debate. Its mission and primary activities concentrate on supporting Polish-American organizations, promoting Polish heritage and culture in the United States via educational and cultural events, and fostering Polish-American relations.Examples of activities include conferences and educational events in support of Polish-American NATO alliance cooperation, cultural events such as a high-profile concert in New York for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Poland’s regained independence, or anniversaries and remembrance events, for instance a farewell mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York for a state burial of the exhumed Polish national hero, Ignacy Matuszewski.
The foundation represents a broad social movement and is based on the legacy of Gazeta Polska, a Polish publication with traditions dating back to the 19th century that stood for the Polish struggle for freedom during the partition of Poland by hostile neighboring states, Poland’s reemergence during the interwar period, and the fight of its people to free themselves from the communist regime and repression after WW2.
The Foundation is independent and separate from the Gazeta Polska print media and its editorial board. With regard to the recent controversy about stickers referring to the LGBT movement that were attached to one print issue in Poland, the GPCA foundation did not and does not support, take part, or promote that media event. The stickers may be interpreted as discriminatory and we disassociate from such statements. The foundation stands against political censorship and kind, discrimination on the basis of beliefs, nationality or sexual orientation, as well as against totalitarian systems and ideologies, and those principles are written into the Foundation charter.
‘After the article from NBC came out I wrote them and said I delince the invitation after several back and fourth phone calls and emails from Poland.
‘Such great news that Carnegie cancelled the concert. Thank you for reporting.’
The only question that remains unanswered is why Carnegie accepted this organisation’s booking in the first place.
The veteran singer, 78, received a demonstrative welcome from the plutocratic audience before he sang in Verdi’s Luisa Miller.
The festival president has proclaimed her faith that he is innocent of alleged sexual harrassment, and the public seemed to agree.
The applause that greeted him was raucous, punctuated by shouts of bravo.
Read here.
He appears to have unqualified support in Spanish and Austrian media, and among his own profession.
Irony just died.
The Armenian government has announced the death yesterday of Yuri Harutyunyan, head of music at Armenfilm from 1967 to 1996 and founder of the Recording-Brevis label in the Armenian Composers’ Union.
On his own account, Harutyunyan composed 75 film scores.
The Austrian mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman has been in the forefront of several campaigns to protect opera singers from abuse and improve their working conditions. On the day that Placido Domingo returns to the Salzburg Festival in Luisa Miller, Elisabeth discusses his case with the Vienna newspaper, Der Standard.
She recalls the recent downfall of the Erl Festival artistic director Gustav Kuhn, who was forced to resign after five singers stood up and accused him of offences.
Elisabeth Kulman: ‘In the Kuhn cause, which I was allowed to accompany, the women, five in number, went public with an open letter, though with shaking knees, but with full names. This brought a turnaround in its credibility. It took enormous courage, but it paid off. Kuhn’s sexual assaults were officially confirmed and he was suspended…. It is extremely important that those affected step out of their victimhood and thus out of powerlessness and fight for their rights. Our women’s group stands confident and strengthened today. The common destiny has welded them together.’
She is more circumspect about the Domingo incident. Read here.
Last night, the Salzburg Festival gave a dinner in Piotr Beczala’s honour with the Domingos in attendance (below).
The British-born pianist Jack Gibbons was thrilled to be invited to play in a Carnegie Hall concert celebrating the centenary of US-Polish diplomatic relations. Then he found that it was being organised by an anti-LGBT lobbying group.
Here’s Jack’s story:
A few months ago I was deeply honored to be asked to play again at Carnegie Hall this autumn for an event that was described to me as celebrating 100 years of diplomatic relations between Poland and America (with in attendance a sea of specially invited guests from embassies, consulates, the UN and so forth). I had been asked to contribute the music of two composers who are central to my repertoire, Chopin and Gershwin, ending the evening with the latter’s Rhapsody in Blue. In addition I would be working with the soprano Angel Blue in extracts from Porgy and Bess (Angel Blue is about to open in the lead role of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s first production of Porgy and Bess in 30 years). Also invited to take part was the Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, and other distinguished artists, and in addition I would be working with soloists from the Polish National Ballet on a specially devised choreography of my own “authentic Gershwin” repertoire. It sounded like a dream concert and one I was only too happy to be a part of. The fact that I had yet to be told the name of the organisation behind the concert was odd, but in the light of the artists I would be working with it seemed unimportant at the time.
Fast forwarding a few months (and bear with me in this change of direction) at the end of July I was reading troubling reports from the BBC of a Polish weekly magazine called Gazeta Polska, who were offering printed stickers to their readers declaring LGBT-free zones using a chilling symbol of a black X superimposed on the rainbow flag. Further reading led to an equally chilling editorial from the Gazeta Polska’s editor Tomasz Sakiewicz describing LGBT as “an ideology that has all the features of a totalitarian one”, justifying the statement with nefarious comparisons with the tactics of the Communist and Nazi regimes.
Imagine my shock only minutes after reading these reports when I turned to the Carnegie Hall website and for the first time discovered that the concert I was due to take part in on October 24 was being “presented by the Gazeta Polska Community of America”. I immediately requested clarification from my contact in Warsaw, as well as from friends in the Polish community, and it quickly became apparent that there was no disguising the close affiliation with the Gazeta Polska magazine in Poland. The Carnegie Hall event had been benignly billed as “From Chopin to Gershwin” and I imagined that without any media scrutiny most New Yorkers would probably remain unaware of the anti-LGBT propaganda that lay behind a concert soon to be promoted throughout the city.
Needless to say I had no choice but to withdraw from the concert after discovering the link. It was not a decision I took lightly, but I could not with good conscience take part in an event that had connections to an organization that expressed views that I regarded as abhorrent and which were in opposition to everything I stood for. I also felt it my duty to let the other performers involved know the nature of the organisation behind the concert. After contacting both Charles Richard-Hamelin and Angel Blue and informing them of the activities of Gazeta Polska, they both had no hesitation in withdrawing from the event as well. And thus it was that I found myself in the unhappy position of dismantling what had at first seemed like a dream concert at Carnegie Hall. I was glad to read just today that the latest artist caught in the Gazeta Polska trap, the pianist Paul Bisaccia, has also wisely withdrawn from the event – not an easy thing to do given the allure of Carnegie Hall.
The sad aspect of all this is that music, more than any other art form, has the extraordinary ability to bring people together, to rise above prejudice, welcoming everyone, regardless of our differences, to its enchanting harmonies. On 26 July this year, the day I withdrew from the Carnegie Hall concert after learning of the Gazeta Polska connection, I wrote a Facebook post on the remarkable Astolphe de Custine. Astolphe de Custine was one of Chopin’s most ardent supporters and contained within his correspondence are some remarkable letters to Chopin, including an extraordinary one written after Chopin’s last public performance in Paris in 1848, containing these memorable lines: “Art, as you understand it, is the only thing that can unite mankind divided by the hard realities of life. One may love and understand one’s neighbour through Chopin.” Astolphe de Custine had good reason to write such words, having been persecuted for his homosexuality, at one point beaten and left for dead, and subject to the most vile homophobic attacks in the press; his remarks could not be more apposite here.
The Carnegie Hall date, Jack tells Slippedisc, has now been cancelled.
