The singer’s estate has put out a call to artists to sing for Jessye on September 15, the daye she would have turned 75.

Among those to respond so far are Martina Arroyo, Simon Estes, Harolyn Blackwell, George Shirley, J’Nai Bridges, Measha Brueggergosman, Justin Austin, Brandie Sutton and Russell Thomas. Funds from the concert will go to the Jessye Norman School of Arts.

Jessye died last September, at 74.

There’s Osmo Vänskä sitting in Seoul after 14 days quarantine with all this week’s concerts cancelled.

But he’s not alone.

Christoph Poppen flew out to conduct two concerts, served his 14 days, then found last night’s date cancelled. Both are HP artists so they’ll have plenty to compare.

It’s tough out there.

 

On a walk around the marina in Exmouth this week I read a sign saying ‘Berth holders only’ and I thought how much my dear friend Berthold Goldschmidt would have laughed.

Berthold, who died in 1996 at the age of 93, enjoyed stupendous success in the last decade of his life, after suffering half a century of oblivion. His entire works were recorded, mostly on Decca, and performed around the world.

In the last few years I haven’t heard much of them and, walking around the marina, I realised how much I missed him – and his music.

BG with Decca producer Michael Haas

We hear that the Lithuanian tenor Vaidas Vysniauskas, better known as Kristian Benedikt, is in intensive care with covid-19. His wife Lina is also hospitalised.

They have three kids at home.

Benedikt, who is 48, has sung Otello in Vienna and Dresden and Samson in Saint-Saens’s opera at the Met.

 

A UK research team backed by Public Health England and the Culture Department has concluded that singing produces no more aerosols than speaking loudly in a pub.

The researchers – from Imperial College, Bristol University, the Royal Brompton Hospital and three other centres – studied the aerosols emitted by 25 professional singers.

They found that the numbers rose with any increase of vocal activity, no matter whether singing or speaking, in church or concert, classical or rock music.

Jonathan Reid, Professor of physical chemistry at Bristol, said: ‘Our research has provided a rigorous scientific basis for Covid-19 recommendations for arts venues to operate safely for both the performers and audience by ensuring that spaces are appropriately ventilated to reduce the risk of airborne transmission.’

This is hugely encouraging, vastly more so than the latest German studies.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: ‘Singing is an important passion and pastime for many people who I’m sure will join me in welcoming the findings of this important study.’

UPDATE: Some more from the Bristol team:

While singing does not produce very substantially more aerosol than speaking at a similar volume.  The researchers discovered that there is a steep rise in aerosol mass with increase in the loudness of the singing and speaking, rising by as much as a factor of 20-30.

 Musical organisations could consider treating speaking and singing equally, with more attention focused on the volume at which the vocalisation occurs, the number of participants (source strength), the type of room in which the activity occurs (i.e. air exchange rate) and the duration of the rehearsal and period over which performers are vocalising.

It has just been announced that people arriving from Austria will have to serve a 14-day quarantine in the UK.

The decision, which follows rising Covid rates in Austria, dashed the country’s claim to guarantee artist comfort and safety.

This year, Cecilia Bartoli saw her Salzburg Spring Festival silenced by Covid.

Today, she announced details of the 2021 event.

Robert Carsen will direct Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo. Gianluca Capuano will conduct Les Musiciens de Prince-Monaco in this and in La clemenza di Tito. A concert performance of Tosca will feature Anja Harteros, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel under Zubin Mehta’s baton.

 

Several friends have reported the passing of Eitan Silkoff, a gifted violinist who was born in Tel Aviv, grew up in the US and studied at the Amsterdam Conservatorium. He played in several US orchestras and had a teaching practice.

The circumstances of his death are not known.

 

The AskonasHolt director Gaetan Le Divelec has just gone online to say he’s leaving the agency at the end of the year. Gaetan, who has worked for AH since 1999, looks after Andras Schiff, Robin Ticciati, Alina Ibragimova and other leading talents.

He says his reasons for leaving are ‘purely connected to my personal journey’ but he goes on to write that the past five months have represented ‘an unprecedented challenge for anyone working in the performing arts.’

AskonasHolt has made unprecedented personnel cuts in recent weeks. It has also seemed fairly inactive and confused through the Covid period compared to its chief London rival HP. In any event, this is a major upheaval at Askonas, at the lowest moment in its history.

The Boulanger Initiative of Washington DC has just had a board enlargement, according to a press release sent to us.

The BI is ‘a non-profit advocacy organization for womxn composers’.

This is not a misprint.

According to Wikipedia, The term Womxn (/ˈwʊmɪnks/), used by some feminists, especially in the intersectional feminist movement, is one of several alternative spellings of the English word woman. It is used to avoid the spelling woman (which contains and derives from the word men), and to foreground transgender, nonbinary, and women of color.

The person who sent us their board statement signed off as ‘He/Him/His’.

So it goes.

 

The Swiss opera director Jossi Wieler has been awarded this year’s Grand Prix Theatre, worth 100,000 Swiss francs.

The prize was in recoginition of his February production of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots in Geneva.

 

 

 

 

Annie Yim, unable to get home from Vancouver due to the pandemic and cancelled flights, applied herself to being a volunteer at Inner City Farms.

Now she has founded Concerts on the Farm with Vancouver pianists Robert Silverman and Mark Anderson, the Emily Carr String Quartet and cellist Jonathan Lo.

Unusual, but effective.