The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra has named Kevin Lin as its next concertmaster, starting September.

Lin, a New Yorker, is presently co-leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Indy SO has been leaderless since Zachary DePue quit in mid-2018.

Pat Collins of the Cafe Orchestra is gone.

 

The Baltimore and Sao Paulo music director will conduct ‘An International Call for Unity and Joy’ at the opening of the World Economic Forum’s 50th Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, on January 20.

She will lead the European Union Youth Orchestra, Brazil’s São Paulo Symphony Choir and international soloists in the Scherzo and Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, using a new Brazilian Portuguese text for the Ode to Joy.

 

Island City Opera has suspended a March production of Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers due to the imposition of a new California emplyment law which came into force on January 1.

The law, which is designed to stop ‘gig work’, is being interpreted by ICO’s lawyers to affect freelance performers in an opera production.

That could have widespread implications at SanFran and LA Opera.

More detail here.

The Wreckers, huh?

 

Message received:

La bohème, Friday 10 January, 7.30pm

Due to illness, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva has withdrawn from singing the role of Mimì in tomorrow’s performance of La bohème. The role will now be sung by Romanian-born British soprano Simona Mihai (pictured), who sang Mimì in this production in the 2017–18 Season and will also sing Musetta later in this Season’s run.

From our Chile correspondent Felipe Elgueta:

An extraordinary performance of Mahler’s second symphony in the heart of troubled Santiago de Chile ended on Tuesday with flags waved and slogans chanted for the movement for social justice.

Mahler would probably have approved.

The performance was organised and conducted by Alejandra Urrutia, who had just lost her father.

The chorus was made up mostly of beginners. The orchestra was composed of young professionals and conservatory students, many of them recent migrants from stricken Venezuela.

This is a very 2020 concert.

Watch.

Speech of Alejandra Urrutia. Conductor

Two days after the first Concierto por La Hermandad (Concert for our
Humanity) last year, we met with Paula, Angelica, Caroline and Felipe
in a café and started planning this year’s concert. Mahler! It has to
be Gustav Mahler!

Paula was convinced that it had to be the Second Symphony and… she convinced us.
Life, death, nostalgia and finally surrender to what is to come. Beautiful!

And two months ago, the whole theme became very much more personal
when my beloved father, passed away… Gustav Mahler gave me the
possibility to understand at a deeper level what it means to die and
be reborn. He gave me a way to go on an inner journey finding meaning,
comfort and clarity that the future would be fuller because of the
past we had lived together.

Then… after this grand farewell, came another one… all that we are
living here in Chile. One can see the transformation all around us, in
fact it’s hard not to. But this day at least, we have the opportunity
to experience the transcendence…the rebirth, to feel what is to come
through the other side because of our united humanity.

And we have the guidance tonight of this great composer Gustav Mahler
accompanied by two incredible soloists – soprano Fanny Becerra and
contralto Claudia Lepe. An orchestra of the highest level of talent
and spirit. They are fabulous! And a citizen’s choir, totally
dedicated and sublime.

A new era for music. Collaboration between many. Success for all.

Finally, to understand how small our world really is… less than a
week ago, a new friend arrived at our door, from Mexico. Francisco
Bricio. Francisco saw in the world of social media, the news of this
great Concert for Humanity. He is the president of the Mahler Society
of Mexico and Vice-President of the Mahler Foundation of Vienna and
happened to be passing through Santiago for his vacation with his
beautiful family. He came to a rehearsal and shared with us wonderful
history of Mahler and this symphony, inspiring us as musicians and
enhancing the notes we play and sing that we will live toghether now.

photo and report: Felipe Elgueta

The outstanding Russian pianist Andrei Gugnin – roughly treated at a Balkan border over Christmas – is the year’s first major signing by an international artists’ agency.

He’s seriously good, and he will be managed out of IMG’s London office.

The Cambridge-based Academy of Ancient Music period ensemble has earned associate status at the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice.

It is the first ensemble chose by the theatre, which is being restored to its original 1637 dimensions and is holding fundraising galas to achieve that end.

Britain is due to leave the EU at the end of the month, after which residencies will become tougher to obtain.

On January 19, Linda Watson will be decorated at the Vienna State Opera with the title Kammersängerin, a decoration that dates back to Mozartian times.

Watson, 60, will be singing Ortrud that night in Wagner’s Lohengrin.

Originally from California, she was brought to Vienna as a mezzo-soprano by Leonard Bernstein to sing in his opera, A Quiet Place. She went on to become an ensemble member in Leipzig and Düsseldorf, moving on to a major international career with more Ring recordings to her credit than – it is reckoned – any soprano still active.

 

The Zurich Festival, set up in 1996 as a rival to Lucerne and Verbier, is shutting down.

This summer will be its last.

A joint venture of the Tonhalle, the opera house and the Kunsthaus, spearheaded by Alexander Pereira, the festival received 1.4 million Swiss francs in subsidy from the canton and the city, but Zurich banks failed to follow suit.

In 2016 the festival went biennial and retired its director Elmar Weingarten.

Now it’s shutting down.

Zurich goes bust. You’ve been waiting a long time to read that headline.