The Philadelphia Orchestra already has a Vice President of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Strategies. Her name is Doris Parent.
She is now joined by Judia Jackson, who will be Chief People & Culture Officer across both the orchestra and the Kimmel Center.
Her USP?
A skilled leader in her field, Judia has experience across a wide variety of industries, including pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, hospitality, energy, human capital management, retail, technology, and more. She has ties to the Philadelphia region, having worked for the Campbell Soup Company for several years.
The British opera singer and writer Mark Glanville has been devastated by the sudden deaths of two folk musicians in southern Italy. Giovanni Rossomano died of an undetected heart condition at 40. The cause of Giuseppe Nisi’s death is also cardiac arrest.
Mark writes:
This week Giovanni Rossomanno, one of the finest ‘zampogna’ (four-chanter bagpipe) and ‘ciaramella’ (shepherd’s oboe) players in Calabria, and Giuseppe Nisi, a singer who fronted the Pizzica group, ‘I Cantori di Villa Castelli’, both died. Giovanni was just 40. As representatives of the deep musical traditions of Calabria and Puglia, their deaths are a great loss to the musicians, dancers and audiences of those regions, and to me personally. I was privileged to perform informally with them both, and write about them in ‘Come and Dance in Puglia’, my forthcoming book about the region and its music.
Giovanni Rossomanno was one of the first people I met on arriving in Calabria.
‘We eventually came to a halt at the bottom of an unmade road where a newly gravelled carpark sparkled above a cliff. Scarcely had we done so when several large vehicles appeared with the Calabrian contingent, including Giovanni Rossomanno, a red-faced, genial giant, and Anna Invidia a striking, dark-haired girl, reputedly of gypsy stock. If her singing was visceral, so was the playing and dancing of Giovanni Rossomanno, owner of the largest ‘zampogna’ there, the length of his own extensive torso. I marvelled that he found enough breath to fill the vast goatskin, but he managed, apparently without effort, balancing it on top of his head when not playing it conventionally, dancing an agile version of the tarantella whenever he was not playing himself, a musical Hercules. I had brought along my pugliese-built ciaramella. Giovanni had two; one tuned to A, the other G. He kept them stuck inside his belt while he danced. His quick, staccato tonguing, so much a part of the traditional style of playing in Calabria, was virtuosic. ‘He is tradition’, Micu, a fellow zampogna player informed me later. ‘You know why he left at two in the morning? Because he had to go home to deliver a couple of kids from his nanny goat.’
Giuseppe Nisi I first encountered at a house party in Puglia.
‘Accompanying the dancers were the oldest members of the party, a cloth-hatted trio of septuagenarians comprising a singer, accordion and tambourine. They geed up the dancers with their relentlessly jolly music and frequent words of encouragement:
‘Brave le coppie!’ (Well done the couples!)
The dancer and musician Daniela Mazza, my Beatrice through this Paradise, told me they were ‘I Cantori di Villa Castelli.’ I realised I had seen them before, in a rather less intimate setting, before a crowd of 200,000 people at the final night of ‘La Notte della Taranta’ in Melpignano. Leading the band tonight was Giuseppe Nisi, tall, ruddy-faced, the epitome of geniality. Another member of the group, Vituccio, the tiny goatherd in a red neckerchief who had dominated the stage at Melpignano was absent, but Giuseppe’s unyielding joy was more than adequate compensation. Daniela suggested I play my ciaramella with them. Little larger than a standard recorder, made of olive wood, its bell ornately carved, it was the loudest, rawest instrument I had ever played (or possibly heard), the quack of a Calabrian duck among pugliese swans. Most tolerant of birds, ‘I Cantori’ allowed me to grace their waters, and even to sing ‘Kalinitta’ from the alien Griko tradition of the Salento, fifty kilometres further south. Giuseppe and ‘I Cantori di Villa Castelli’ frequently turned up at Pizzica parties, both large and small. They sought no praise or honour, just the joy of being able to play the music of Puglia’s marvellous dance tradition.
The French conductor Jean-Christophe Spinosi has joined German boutique Dorn Music for global management.
Spinosi, 55, leads the Ensemble Matheus and records extensively for the Naive label and DG.
He guest conducts extensively and works with Cecilia Bartoli at the Salzburg Festival.
Norma Waterson, matriarch of a British folk dynasty, has died at 82.
She formed The Watersons in the 1960s with her brother and sister, then married Martin Carthy. Ther daughter Eliza Carthy continues the singing tradition. The group drew Bob Dylan and Paul Simon into English folk tropes.
Norma was knowledgeable about her songs, and pitch perfect.
The Philharmonia Orchestra this morning parted company with its chief executive, Alexander Van Ingen.
He’s the second manager to go in as many years, and just when the orchestra is sounding great with music director Santtu-Matias Rouvali.
The Philharmonia is having a brilliant season, selling out the Royal Festival Hall and resuming its concerts in Europe.
But nerves are frayed and the board appears suddenly to have lost its.
Managing a London orchestra is not a job for the faint-hearted.
UPDATE: Kate Collis, Chief Operating Officer, has taken over as interim Chief Executive while the board conducts a successor search.
The German violinist has given a fascinating interview in Prague to our Czech partners, operaplus. She talks about her childhood when she went a year without a teacher, about the development of her technique and about how to hold the violin.
‘I began with a Menuhin support but was never happy with it,’ she says. ‘I went from a small pillow to a smaller one, then to a deerskin that stops the violin slipping. Then I came up with a brilliant idea that works best for women. Just lay the violin on your naked skin.
‘There’s a bit of moisture to hold it there. For me personally that’s ideal. But not for everyone. It depends on the length of your neck.’
Watch. Lovely German expressions (with English and Czech subtitles).
René Robert, 84, a Swiss photographer renowned as a chronicle of the art of flamenco, suffered a fall on his evening walk around 9 o’clock on January 19 in the Place de la République area.
As he lay on the pavement, dozens of people just walked by.
At six the next morning, someone called the emergency services, but it was too late. He was pronounced dead on the spot.
Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, is played in the UAE presidential palace as Israeli President Herzog is welcomed by Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.
The Crewe-born soprano Gemma Summerfield has won the Tenor Viñas international competition in Bareclona.
She beat French mezzo-soprano Eugénie Joneau into second place; third was the South Korean tenor SeokJong Baek.
Gemma, 31, is agented by Simon Goldstone at Rayfield Allied.
The American cellist’s widow Helen Nightengale has set up a foundation in his memory. She writes:
Our home used to be filled with the sounds of Lynn practicing, each note rousing the senses and soothing the spirit.
Then when Lynn died almost two years ago, I packed up his cello and stored it in the back of my closet. There it sat for a year as my children, and I processed his death and the deafening quiet in a house that had known the daily practice and music that Lynn brought.
As a family, we want his cello to make the beautiful music it was created for once again. We realize that the cello was his voice and personality, and it shouldn’t be silenced.
Today, January 30, would have been Lynn’s 78th birthday and to celebrate we are launching the Foundations first program, the Harrell Dungey Cello Loan Competition. This program will allow a deserving young cellist to use Lynn’s cello for the next two years.
We’ve already started laying the groundwork for this program, but to make this competition as accessible as possible, I need your support.
Giving directly to the Lynn Harrell Foundation, Cello Lending Program helps us make sure the cello stays in pristine condition and protected while in the hands of a budding cellist. Our goal is to raise $25,000 for this program to create the groundwork for not only this year’s candidate but for those that follow.
It will also guarantee that the winning candidate is not burdened with any additional financial costs resulting from winning.
Will you consider making a gift today to give Lynn’s cello new life and be a voice to a new generation?
More than 1,000 sympathisers have signed a petition on change.org demanding the repealse of Mariinsky principal horn Anatoly Chepkov, who has been arrested in St Petersburg charged with a sexual assault on his infant granddaughter.
Chepkov denies the offence.
The petition says: Anatoly Vasilyevich is an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR, who in 2008 was awarded the medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree, by the President of the Russian Federation.
We categorically disagree with the indictment, and also consider it impossible to keep Anatoly Vasilyevich in custody due to his age (73) and existing chronic diseases.
Nevsky News reports that musicians at the Mariinsky Theatre are in uproar over an explosion of Covid infections, which they blame directly on their music director.
The first cases were recorded after a performance in Moscow’s Zaryadye Park, then spiralled to dozens of cases. One musicians said: ‘More than 30 people are positive after today’s test. Not all tests have come yet, and not everyone has done it … ‘
Another sad: ‘Gergiev always does what he wants. He is the king, and we are his serf musicians. He has a complete sense of impunity. He is a manager, he makes money. Only sometimes – creativity.’
Gergiev is presently conducting in Vienna.
He is due to give a concert with the Mariinsky in Madrid on Friday. Many of the players are still suffering from Covid.
Catch it while you can.
Photo (c) Laura Luostarinen
UPDATE: “Cases of illness at the Mariinsky Theatre, both in the creative team and in other workshops, do not have a significant impact on the current work of the theater and the tour schedule, ” the press service of the Mariinsky Theater reported.“In addition to these measures, the Mariinsky Theater carefully monitors compliance with all necessary security measures: including temperature measurements at the service and spectator entrances, wearing medical masks inside the theater is mandatory, and surfaces and all the premises of the theater are regularly disinfected.”
