The jury has been announced for next year’s Iturbi Competition in Valencia, Spain, and eyebrows have been shooting up at the sight of Barrett Wissman as one of its members.

Wissman, a convicted fraudster, is co-owner of IMG Artists.

Sitting on a competition jury he has the opportunity to be both poacher of talent and gamekeeper for his own artists.

Agency bosses have no place on an independent jury, no matter how clean their hands might be, or how sincere their repentance.

 

No one does it better.

 

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is officially resident at London’s Southbank Centre, which is closed.

It also had premises at King’s Place, which is presently dormant.

So the OAE has signed on for a five-year residency at Acland Burghley secondary school in Camden, where the assembly hall is acoustically suited to rehearsals.

Smart thinking.

Read on here.

 

The mayor has called off all cultural events, starting with this weekend’s opening of the opera season, in light of soaring new Covid cases.

 

It is exactly six months that I started this daily series, at the onset of lockdown. I hope it continues to console and surprise.

Just love this piece.