At the Philharmonie de Paris this Saturday:

What meaning should be given to music in situations of humanitarian crisis, conflict or post-conflict, or natural disaster? This day will give a large place to musicians and researchers and will offer both a series of ethnomusicological and anthropological field studies in Europe, Oceania and Africa, and several musical moments. It will show that musical practices can relate to survival, the transmission of memory, or even be vectors of identity claims.  

UPDATE: Due to the health situation, we were forced to cancel this conference.

 

Two websites went live today, both belonging to ex-Cami execs.

The veteran Doug Sheldon, 79, has long threatened to go back into business after his abrupt and unexplained exit from Cami in April 2019. He has relaunched today with old faithful Anne-Sophie Mutter, young hopefuls Claire Huangci and Simone Lamsma and sundry others. This is the Sheldonartists site.

 

Just one beat behind is Sheldon’s nemesis, the last Cami chief Tim Fox with AMP Worldwide.

Fox has lots more artists, among whom only the conductor Fabio Luisi is top-drawer. He has three associates: Alison Ahart Williams, Alicia Horwitz and Georgina Ryder.

 

Lyric’s leaders have told their staff the future will be bleak long after the post-Covid resumption unless the unions accept new deals.

Watch video here.

There will be no happy ending.

 

The Daily Mail has the tragic story of Joshua Burke, a violin prodigy who graduated last summer as a medical doctor, only to take his own life during Covid-19 isolation.

Joshua, who was 35,  won a scholarship to the Yehudi Menuhin School and a degree from the Royal College of Music. He toured as a soloist with the London Chamber Orchestra, maintaining friendships with many of his classmates. Five years ago he switched to medicine.

He graduated from Warwick University in July 2019, but suffered from depression. He was found dead this summer, on June 14. There was an obituary last month in the BMJ.

His uncle said: ‘He struggled with ethical problems in medicine, his growing depression and corona isolation. He may not have asked loudly enough for the needed help.’

It’s a terrible tale of our times.

Read on here.

Sakari Oramo has been renewed as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra until after the 2023 Proms.

That news will bring great cheer to his many Finnish proteges.

 

Oramo said: ‘Very often in these strange times my thoughts go back to a miraculous few days in 2011, when all of a sudden I found the most exciting artistic partnership of my life – the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The programme featured ‘Tintagel’ by Arnold Bax, Sibelius’s Third Symphony and vocal works by Sibelius and Kaija Saariaho with my dear Anu Komsi. What a quintessentially BBC SO-like programme that was – and yet probably one that hadn’t been dreamt of before.

‘This is the very strength of the BBC SO programming concept: strong on content, always looking for purposeful combinations of masterpieces old and new, well known and, above all, less familiar. The ability of this miraculous orchestra to transform itself according to the music they play (literally ANY music) – and their warm-hearted supportiveness, instinctive brilliance and ability to capture the essence of what makes a great musical performance – make them unique. From our Studio Concerts and recordings, through to our Barbican concerts, performances on tour in the UK and abroad and of course at the BBC Proms, including three editions of the Last Night of the Proms, I have relished and enjoyed every single performance together. May there be many more in the future, and may the BBC SO continue to blossom as London’s, the UK’s and the world’s beacon for artistic inventiveness.’

 

 

The cult pianist, 75, has told the New York Times that he’s unlikly to perform again.

He suffered a pair of strokes in early 2018 that left him partly paralysed down one side.

His work was extensively recorded by his table-tennis partner Manfred Eicher at ECM.

Terry Barfoot and Tony Cliff, regular contributors to Classical Music magazine and its associated publications, died this month.

Terry, who was 70, ran weekend music appreciation courses in small country hotels.

Tony, 69, was Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Salford, before settling in Cornwall.

 

The composer and pianist Arthur Maddox has died, aged 80.

Based in Eugene, Oregon, he worked with the National Academy of Artistic Gymnastics and the official pianist of the US Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team. He was a close friend of the novelist Ken Kesey. His children’s piece Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear has been widely performed by US orchestras.

As a student, he helped John Cage make a four-hand version of his piece Cheap Imitation.

 

 

 

English National Opera will stage John Adams’ El Niño at the London Coliseum on November 27 and 28.

Singers include Nardus Williams, Jennifer Johnston, James Rutherford and three countertenors Jake Arditti, Tom Scott-Cowell and Feargal Mostyn-Williams, along with the Finchley Children’s Music Group. Martin Brabbins conducts.

El Niño was premiered 20 years ago in Paris by Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White, but has never matched the impact of Adams’s major operas.

 

The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra has received a green light from its government to accept money from the so-called European Foundation for Support of Culture. The Malta-registered EFSC is widely regarded as a Kremlin-front operation.

Malta’s culture ministry said it had been satisfied by relevant clarifications’ about the foundation.

Malta has never claimed to be the EU’s least corruptible country.

The Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig has named Elena Bashkirova as its new president.

An outstanding pianist, Bashkirova is artistic director of the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, wjich she founded in 1998. She is married to Daniel Barenboim and has two musician sons of that name.

The foundation also has a new managing director Patrick Schmeing, formerly of the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn.

 

The Bolshoi has announced a concert celebration of the life of Placido Domingo this weekend under the title Plácido Domingo: Life in Opera.

It will feature Anna Netrebko, Pretty Yende, Piotr Beczala, Yusif Eyvazov, Ildar Abdrazakov and Michael Volle, among others. The Bolshoi Theatre orchestra will be conducted by its music director Tugan Sokhiev.

By his friends shall ye know him.