Sky Arts is now available to watch on Freeview and Freesat on channel numbers 11 and 147.

This could be the first real arts challenge to the BBC since ITV closed down the South Bank Show.

Sky has announced four new programme commissions, among them:
Charles Hazlewood: Beethoven and Me: marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of
Ludwig Van Beethoven, Charles Hazlewood explores the life of the great composer, taking a
personal and unique perspective on this troubled genius and a detailed look at his famous
5th symphony masterpiece.

 

A sensational social commentary by Broadway star Kelli O’Hara.

Was she ever at the Met?


 

press release:

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announces the first performance in front of a live audience on one of the Center’s famed stages in more than six months. Featuring two of America’s most celebrated vocalists, Renée Fleming and Vanessa Williams, the concert launches the innovative On Stage at the Opera House series, designed to safely bring back live performing arts to the National Cultural Center. The configuration of the theater has been re-imagined to place the artists on a 30 x 24-foot stage extension built over the orchestra-level seating area. An invited audience of 40 people will enter through the wide loading doors on the Center’s front plaza and will sit in physically-distanced pairs on the stage facing the iconic red interior of the hall.

Unnoticed by local media, Simon Rattle will be giving the UK premiere this weekend of Sinfonia No 4, ‘Strands’ by George Walker, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he did in 1996.

Rattle calls the work ‘deeply felt, extraordinarily well put together and absolutely his own voice.

The concert is with audience at LSO St Lukes and on Marquee online.

Walker died two years ago, aged 96.

 

The Scottish-born opera singer Caroline Kaart, a popular presenter of opera on Dutch television and radio after she retired from the stage, died today aged 88.

 

 

Fort Worth Opera has hired Afton Battle as General Director, barely six months after she joined Joffrey Ballet in Chicago as campaign director. Wherever she’s going, it’s fast.

She says: ‘“I have been chosen to steer this amazing company, and together we will focus on expanding our reach and engagement into communities that have been historically marginalized (Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, LGBTQIA) by forging relationships with community leaders and stakeholders.’

 

We are hearing that two dozen players have been dismissed by the sheikh-funded Gulf orchestra amid worsening financial conditions. The Philharmonic gives about 40 concerts a year and the players are mostly European.

Among those leaving are Daniel Edelhoff, Christoph Leroux, Kamil Musaev, Lilya and Alya Bekirova. Veronika Papai and Aniko Kovacs. We are trying to reach the players for confirmation.

From the website:
The orchestra was founded by Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned in 2007. The orchestra of 101 musicians was chosen by a jury of international music professionals through auditions held in European and Arab countries. Selection criteria were driven by musician quality. The Philharmonic held its Inaugural Concert on October 30th, 2008, conducted by Lorin Maazel.

 

The Czech Philharmonic has taken the unusual step of dividing into separate, no-contact groups as Covid cases spike across the country.

The orchestra’s opening concerts are dedicated to former chief conductor Vaclav Neumann, whose centenary falls on 29 September.

 

Under the headline ‘Monaco Hosts Investment and Sustainability Event CC Forum’ we read that Placido Domingo will be ‘outstanding guest of honour’ this month at the forum’s VIP Gala.

Also on the agenda: HRH Queen Diambi Kabatusuila of the Democratic Republic of Congo will be speaking during the final panel about ‘Prospects, Challenging and Sustainable Investment Opportunities in Africa’. Other panelists include HSH Prince Michael of Liechtenstein, Medpoint CEO HE Shaikha Noora Al-Khalifa and Lord Marland, who served as the UK Prime Minister’s Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Business, Innovation and Skills, and Treasurer of the Conservative Party.

 

 

Show me who your friends are…

That’s the strapline on Alex Ross’s nuanced and cautious survey in the New Yorker of upheavals in American universities and orchestras over supposed white supremacism in western music.

In respect of the Schenker row he writes: At bottom, the entire music-education system rests upon the Schenkerian assumption that the Western tonality, with its major-minor harmony and its equal-tempered scale, is the master language. 

One could argue that case from a different angle. His conclusion, though, is indisputable:

The ultimate mistake is to look to music—or to any art form—as a zone of moral improvement, a refuge of sweetness and light. Attempts to cleanse the canon of disreputable figures end up replicating the great-man theory in a negative register, with arch-villains taking the place of geniuses.

Read on here.

 

 

The death has been announced of Ann Getty, wife of the oil billionaire and composer Gordon Getty. She was 79.

Based in San Francisco, she was a copious supporter of the San Francisco Symphony, the Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Opera.

But she also spent much time in London, where she was George Weidenfeld’s publishing partner and was involved in several music causes.

San Francisco Opera writes: Pass through the stage door, and you see her name next to the entryway: Ann Getty. It’s hardly the only mark she’s left on this institution. When Ann, a philanthropist and designer, passed away yesterday, she left a legacy as one of the most passionate champions of the arts in San Francisco, someone for whom music and theater were a way of life.

As we process the news of her passing, we grieve the loss of someone whose generosity and spirit nurtured opera on this stage — and art across this city. Our condolences to her family and friends.