Shocking story just in from Naples.
Giovanbattista Cutolo, 24, horn player of the Scarlatti Camerata, was shot dead last night on the Piazza Municipio after a disagreement over a scooter parking space.
A 16 year-old suspect has been arrested.
Tatyana Koltunyuk,who was savaged by a shark last week off New York’s Rockaway Beach, is a member of a prolific Ukrainian-American family of musicians.
Two of her close relatives – Darya Koltunyuk, who does marketing and outreach for Princeton University Concerts, and Gregg Kallor, a pianist and composer – are trying to raise funds for her spiralling medical costs. Read this, and help if you can by donating here.
Darya Koltunyuk and Gregg Kallor are organizing this fundraiser.
My beloved, exquisite, and heroic mother Tatyana Koltunyuk was the victim of a shark attack while swimming in Rockaway Beach, NY. She has undergone 5 surgeries in the first 8 days since the attack, and will require more. Her medical team has told us that recovery will take several years of intense physical therapy and close medical monitoring, during which time she will have significantly limited mobility. Though the full impact of her injury is not yet known, it has left her with a permanent disability.
It has become clear in the nightmarish days since her trauma that the expenses for her care and post-trauma adjusted living will be considerable, and will likely include ongoing services and consultations, mobility assistance device(s), intensive physical and psychological therapy, making her home environment accessible and comfortable, and transportation to and from appointments. We can’t yet anticipate everything she will need because the extent of her injuries is unknown; she is still in the hospital and will be for at least several more weeks, and possibly more.
This fiercely intelligent and passionate woman emigrated to the United States from Odesa, Ukraine with my father and me when I was 3 years old. A few weeks after we arrived, my father died of a heart attack, leaving my mother to raise me on her own in a new country. The language barrier prevented my mom from continuing her career as a marine engineer, but she worked tirelessly to support our family. She made sure that I could take ballet lessons and piano lessons and have the best possible education; she took me to art museums and concerts and theater performances; we walked in every garden and park in the city that we could find. She worked a grueling life to ensure that I could thrive.
She is 65 years old and was eagerly anticipating her retirement, when she could — for the first time in her life — take a break. She talked about swimming in the ocean every day, walking around the city with a new puppy, and traveling with us. My husband and I will do everything in our power to make her retirement as comfortable and enjoyable as we possibly can, but the road ahead will be extremely challenging for her and for our family.
Limitless in the love and generosity she showers upon others, my mother is an empathetic, thoughtful, and deeply proud woman who would never ask for anything, always putting others before herself. So we are asking for help on her behalf. The funds raised will be held by her family. Thank you for your support.
The least surprising feature of the withdrawal of Sir John Eliot Gardiner from all engagements for the rest of 2023 is the lack of reaction one way or the other, from those who have worked with the condcutor for up to half a century.
JEG, 80, has always been a controversial figure. Stories about him abound wherever singers and musicians congregate. They were still being whispered in social media corners this past week, but never in public media.
Why is that? A number of reasons.
1 Many well-known performers owe him their start in life. Whatever he may have said or done to them since, the sense of gratitude persists.
2 Many musicians nurture hopes that he will engage them in future. As a self-starter, he casts by his own rules, not the formbook maintained by the music industry.
3 Quite a few musicioans are fond of one or other of his ex-wives and children and wish to spare them distress.
4 JEG is reputed to have friends in high places.
5 Most important of all, no conductor has created more work for more musicians at his own personal risk over a longer period in music history. JEG may have stepped back for the rest of 2023, but the music biz expect he will be back before very long, and there will be no want of bookings.
Agents for the British conductor have cleared his diary for the rest of the year, for reasons reported here last week:
Sir John Eliot Gardiner has taken the decision to withdraw from all engagements until next year. He will be taking time out of his professional activities for a period of reflection and, in consultation with his medical advisors, will be focussing on his mental health while engaging in a course of counselling.
He deeply regrets his behaviour and recognises that it has had a significant impact on colleagues for whom he has the most profound admiration and respect.
Throughout his unique 60-year career, John Eliot has striven to encourage and support generations of talented artists, and he passionately believes that all performers should feel comfortable and secure in their working environment.
Over the next few months he will be undergoing an extensive, tailored course of treatment and he asks for space and privacy while the programme is ongoing.
John Eliot said: “I am taking a step back in order to get the specialist help I recognise that I have needed for some time. I want to apologise to colleagues who have felt badly treated and anyone who may feel let down by my decision to take time out to address my issues. I am heartbroken to have caused so much distress and I am determined to learn from my mistakes”.
That’s all, folks.
A right-wing rant on the Federalist media site alleges that equality and diversity policies were the death knell for Philly’s progressive opoera company.
It’s a knee-jerk rant…. but it’s not entirely wrong about the money drying up:
…By dedicating classic arts companies to woke programming and ideology, they thought they had a path to relevance that would bring them larger and younger audiences as well as the funding they needed to continue operating.
But they were wrong. And the proof of their folly has just been delivered in the failure of Opera Philadelphia, the company that has been most invested in the concept that going woke would save classical music….
More here.
There goes another one:
SPRINGFIELD — New England Public Media will use its main radio signals to present news programming, moving daytime classical music shows to other stations.
The switch, beginning Monday, follows a trend by public radio stations across the country to elevate news in response to audience demand.
More here.
The Berlin state prosecutor’s office yesterday dropped an investigation into Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann on grounds of ‘lack of evidence’.
The heavy-metal band are an iconic fixture in the German music pantheon.
The orchestra has just rolled out its contribution to Bavaria’s Musica Viva series.
No orchestra in the UK or US would do anything nearly so dangerous.
IANNIS XENAKIS [1922-2001]
Jonchaies [1977]
MÁRTON ILLÉS [*1975]
Lég-szín-tér [2023]
KARL AMADEUS HARTMANN [1905-1963]
Gesangsszene für Bariton und Orchester [1963] -Christian Gerhaher
GYÖRGY KURTÁG [*1926]
Stele [1994]
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has announced the sudden death of long-serving double-bass Gareth Wood, its chair in the turbulent 1990s. Gareth was 73.
In recent years, he composed successfully for brass bands.
The resourceful but often-troubled orchestra has begun its season by cancelling three concerts (out of 14) and sacking 15 staff.
Apparently, film and variety concerts are selling well but the old audience for symphony concerts never returned from Covid. Some estimate the symphonic downturn at 75%.
The NJSO had its centenary last year. The music director since 2015 is Xian Zhang.
Here’s what Opera boss Alexander Neef tells Le Point:
He understood that the Paris Opera is an ogre that is always hungry. It really was too much for him. We felt the stress mounting between January and the time he resigned. He had a hard time expressing it verbally because as soon as he entered the pit, he was happy. But he understood that he could not perform his duties as expected. That’s dealing with the ogre: not only administration, but everything that is not musical, plus 175 orchestral musicians to take care of…’
This does not stack up. Only a naif or an amateur would not know the size of the job, and Dude is neither.
He flunked the challenge and peremptorily quit. Let’s see how he fares in New York.
The sudden death has been announced of Jamie Crick, an early broadcaster on Classic FM who moved on to Jazz FM and Scala Radio.
His company bio reads: Jamie joined Bauer Media UK’s Jazz FM in 2014, first as a guest presenter and then taking on the Jazz FM Breakfast show. He then moved to the Afternoon Drive slot in 2016 where he has remained at home, regularly presenting the station’s most listened to slot.
He was also a presenter on Jazz FM’s sister station Scala Radio which he joined at launch in 2019 and where he hosted a programme celebrating his second love – the music of musicals, a station of which called Encore Radio that he co-founded and launched in 2018. Prior to his time at Jazz FM, Jamie was known for his 20-year stint on Classic FM from 1994.
Elsewhere, Jamie has been instrumental in the UK Pride community over the years having organised many pride events and was Creative Director of the UK’s first radio station for the LGBT+ Gaydar Radio.