The 2021 Grammy awards, scheduled for January 31st without an audience, have been called off due to high Covid levels in Los Angeles.

California recorded 74,000 new cases on January 4.

It is hoped to restage them in March, still without an audience.

The music director, shamed in his complicity with Peter Gelb’s wageless siege, has now offered to match individual gifts up to $50,000 to the musicians of the orchestra and chorus. It’s not clear if there’s a ceiling to his generosity.

The musicians are expressing gratitude.

As the MET Orchestra Musicians & the Met Opera Chorus Artists turn the page to 2021, we are pleased to begin with a special fundraising matching campaign, to support our community of artists in these unprecedented times.
Thanks to a generous contribution from Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin and his life partner Pierre Tourville, any donations from January 4-27, 2021 will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $50,000 — $25,000 each to the #orchestra and the #chorus. Yannick and Pierre are keen to support the unique artists of the Met orchestra and chorus at this difficult time, and hope this matching challenge will inspire others to do the same.
Supporters can donate via metorchestramusicians.org/#donate and Charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/mcafacethemusic – websites will be updated regularly to show the progress.
The Met Chorus Artists ‘Face the Music’ Fundraising campaign supports #choristers, #soloists, #dancers, #stage managers, stage #directors and #choreographers. The MET Orchestra Musicians Fund supports orchestra members, associates, librarians and affiliated music staff.  

 

Ninety years old when he died, five years ago today, Pierre Boulez was the dominant creative musician for more than half a century – dominant not so much for what he composed but for the doctrines he insinuated and imposed.

He was the most articulate of modernists, the most persuasive of atonalists. He could persuade you in the same breath that the future of music would be mechanical, and that it would be orchestral.

He was a man of immense charm, infatuated with his own power. His image was everywhere, in Berlin, Paris, London, New York and (below) in Chicago bus stops.

Five years on, who speaks of Boulez?

Members of the London Symphony Orchestra have informed us of the death today of John Georgiadis, leader (concertmaster) of the London Symphony Orchestra in two periods between 1965 and 1979.

He published a memoir two years ago about his battles with principal conductor Andre Previn and with various of his colleagues, but John looked back with fondness in later years, when he became a music director himself in towns as far flung as Bristol and Bangkok.

He was also leader of the Gabrieli String Quatrtet.

In July 2019, John underwent surgery for a brain tumour.

Read an excerpt from his anti-maestro memoirs here.

See also: A memento

 

We have been challenged on Twitter to provide a balancing post to our occasional fashion output.

Here’s a selection from our archives:

I Off the shoulder organist

2 The doctored pianist

3 Shirtsleeved chic

4 Chen up

5 Siemilar

6 Maestro casual

7 Retro Finn

8 The nah look

9 Leisure man

10 Dressing gowned

Slipped Disc has uncovered the identities of the European musicians who were hired by Peter Gelb for the Met’s New Year’s Gala, in place of the Metropolitan Opera’s own besieged and unwaged orchestra.

The string players were Yuuki Wong, Lukas Medlam, Tomasz Wabnic, Attila Pasztor and Benedict Ziervogel, known collectively as the Vienna Morphing Institute.

The orchestration and arrangements were by Tomasz Wabnic and Lukas Meldam.

The pianist was Cecile Restier, solo répétiteur at the Vienna State Opera.

 

 

Florida Grand Opera has scrapped its 2020-21 season of La Traviata, Otello and Faust, replacing the big hitters with four short operas by American composers.

The new lineup is Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, Daron Hagen’s New York Stories and a double bill of Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and Thomas Pasatieri’s Signor Deluso.

All are cast from withing, using FGO’s academy singers.

Larry Johnson has full details.

 

A New Year’s greeting from heat-seeking French cellist Camille Thomas.

The American composer and music critic Charles Shere has died of prostate cancer, aged 85.

A student of Luciano Berio, Shere was music director of radio KPFA in Berkeley in the 1960s and music critic of the Oakland (Cal.) Tribune 1971-8, while teaching music history and composition at Mills College, Oakland.

He wrote an opera – The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even, after the Marcel Duchamp, a Symphony in three movements and concertos for piano and for violin, enough to earn him an entry in New Grove.

(c) Duchamp estate, photo: Youtube

Last week, pianist Paul Allen was found murdered in a car in Dallas, Texas.

We now learn that another pianist, Mark Gratton, was shot in the abdomen on New Year’s Eve in Milton, Delaware.

He underwent emergency surgery for the removal of part of his colon. His mother has raised a GoFundMe site to cover hospital costs.