The tenor Rhys Meirion, a former cast member at English National Opera, has joined a host of other local celebrities in showing his bits for a mental health charity.

Only the family dog spares us the full monty.

Photo: Y Lolfa

 

Played exactly as written.

 

More?

Message, after a long silence, from our favourite skimpy pianist:

I can’t wait to be back on stage this weekend with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by my friend Eric Jacobsen! Looking forward to playing some Strauss with wonderful colleagues and friends.
“‘She is simply without par in the piano world today, and I can’t wait to work with her to bring Strauss’s witty, zany and virtuosic ‘Burleske’ to Orlando Philharmonic audiences,’ wrote Philharmonic music director Eric Jacobsen, describing Wang’s visit as ‘a dream come true.'”

 

A fresh rant from the mad, mad world of American musicology. The author is Dave Molk, former Assistant Teaching Professor at Georgetown University. This is why you send your kids to college. Ready for it?

The 2020 presidential election once again laid bare the ongoing thrall of white grievance and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. We can’t be impartial about this—oppression within education is a reflection and a reinforcement of oppression within society, and when we fail to address injustice, we ensure its continuance. Let us push back against the claimed inevitability of this insupportable curriculum.

The best thing we can do for our students is to embrace an engaged, transformative pedagogy in which, as bell hooks eloquently writes in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, “our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students.” This requires at least a realignment and probably a rethinking of what higher education is supposed to be.

With a transformative pedagogy, we recalibrate our classrooms into spaces where we acknowledge the humanity of our students and are explicit about how the work we do in the classroom relates to their lives outside of it. We talk openly with students and with each other about racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and other forms of identity-based oppression. That this call to arms isn’t a new one only underscores its urgency. That these discussions aren’t necessarily easy only underscores their urgency.

Read on here.

 

The Schleswig-Holstein festival in northwest Germany is taking no unnecessary Covid risks in the summer of 2021.

Two thirds of the concerts have been planned as open-air events.

The festival runs from July 3 to August 29.

 

Hint to Bayreuth? Salzburg? Lucerne? The Proms?

It’s a crafty, copyright-avoiding conconction by the Estonian composer Jaan Rääts who died last week, aged 88.

So cool, Jaan.

The symphony orchestra of Montreal, Canada, headless since Kent Nagano stepped down last year, invited the usual slew of hopefuls and put them through their paces during Nagano’s last two seasons.

The Venezuelan Rafael Payare, 40 and mid-career, made his debut in September 2018 with Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht,’ Mozart’s 3rd violin concerto with the concertmaster as soloist and Beethoven’s Eroica. The players liked what they saw and told the selection committee.

Talks began with his agents, AskonasHolt, who held out for a big five-year deal, in exchange for 14-16 weeks a year. The agreement was sealed in the Covid New Year. Everyone seems happy.

So why are more famous orchestras like the Concertgebouw, Bavarian Radio and Paris Opéra finding it so hard to appoint a chief? So much so that the C’bouw thinks it won’t find the right person before 2025?

Because they have got so puffed up on self-esteem that only a ‘big’ name will suit their supposedly elevated status. So they get fixated on fame and paralysed in the search. They have forgotten the simplicity of the process. See one, like one, talk to the agent, sign one.

Done deal.

It’s not rocket science.

Macedonian media have reported the death of Zoran Dzorlev, one of the country’s leading violinists.

He directed a number of national institutions and was professor of violin in the capital.

 

David McLoughlin has resigned as chief executive of Wexford Festival Opera. He will leave in March, after 13 years in the job.

The next festival is scheduled for October.

The American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund has applied once more to the U.S. Treasury Department for permission to slash benefits for around half of its 51,521 members.

The pension fund is currently in ‘critical and declining’ status, following years of warnings from musicians that it was being mishandled. It is now expected to run dry within 20 years.

If approved by the Treasury, the new cuts will kick in next January 1.

Over-80s will not be affected.