You can watch this gorgeous concert from Verbier via Medici.
Two classical music legends combine their staggering talents in this blockbuster evening from the 30th anniversary edition of the Verbier Festival: superstar soprano Renée Fleming and piano virtuoso Evgeny Kissin.
A festival mainstay since its first edition, Kissin accompanies Fleming (and performs a handful of solo piano selections) in a wonderful programme of songs by Schubert, Liszt, Rachmaninov, and Duparc.
We hear that the University of Huddersfield in west Yorkshire has removed the Walker house organ that was gifted to it by Michael Phipps and was placed in the concert hall that is named after him.
The organ has been quietly relocated to St. Wilfred’s church in Ripon.
Its absence means music students at the university have no further access to a top-class organ. There is also talk that Phipps Hall will be repurposed to become a pop music studio.
There is still an organ in the St Pauls Hall.
The University of Huddersfield used to have the best organ facilities in any music department in the North of England.
The university is home to the renowned Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, whose future may be in jeopardy.
Do let us know if you have further information.
Dear Alma,
I am in my mid-30’s, teach at a small private university (which is about a half-time job), and on the weekends I play in a wedding gig quartet. I am from a medium sized city, and by the end of high school, I had learned 2 concertos (only some movements) and the equivalent of a recital program. I played in my school and youth orchestras, playing a movement of my concerto in my senior year. I grew up in the Suzuki Method, and my teacher was very specific. She would keep me on pieces for a very long time, meticulously working on details. I moved away from Suzuki when I was 16. I got into a solid music school for college but was absolutely overwhelmed by learning any new repertoire. Orchestra was a nightmare. I just sat in the back and faked it. I made up a slew of excuses from illness, injury and family problems to steer my teacher towards just reworking the pieces I already knew. When I graduated, I used these pieces and a well-spoken interview to get my university job, which I have had now for 10 years. I feel like I am living a lie. My school has been increasingly pressuring me to play in public, and I can’t even play the pieces that I am teaching. I never demonstrate. I try to only teach the handful of pieces I know but I think people are catching on. Some of my students complained to the administration. I spend half or more of the lessons on scales and etudes. They want me to play in a university quartet but there is no way. My reading ability is very low. I am starting to have panic attacks and all I do is try to pretend like I know what I am doing.
Please help, I am drowning
Dear Drowning,
This is not good. Not good for you, your health, or your students. When I read your letter, it screams UNHAPPY. You are not drowning, you are trapped in a frightening underwater nightmare, partially made by you, with a healthy dose of help from your current, blind music administration, your inexperienced childhood teacher and lazy college professor.
The one question I have for you is: do you love music? I honestly can see no love from your words, and this is the biggest concern, Drowning. Because without love and desire, music is a never-ending chore.
Is this what you want to do for your life? Or did you fall into it, and can’t find the courage to start a new career? This is the crux of the matter. I advise you to take some serious thought into what you want to do for your life. Mid-30’s is young. You have time to retrain for a new career. Maybe a related career, or an entirely new one. For example, you could even apply for an administrative position (at another music school or your current one), or talk to your school and see if you can transition into teaching classroom. You have weekend income from your wedding quartet, which doesn’t seem to give you any stress, so that income can sustain you partially as you transition into something new.
If you do want to keep teaching lessons, you need to buckle down, start to practice, and train yourself to become a better teacher. You can figure it out, if you have the passion and drive. Look at other schools and online resources to see what repertoire the students are playing in their recitals. Make a short list, and start to learn these pieces. For the current students, make it a priority to start to learn small sections of their pieces that you do not know, so that you can make solid suggestions and even start to demonstrate occasionally. Study recordings for nuance and fingerings. You can use resources such as (if you are a violinist) Simon Fisher’s books, or for cello, Practice Mind by Jensen. You can find a reputable online teacher for yourself, and take summer courses. You can ask your gig quartet to start to learn some Haydn or Mozart quartets. But you have to put in the hours. Lots of them. As much as you can – you have a ton of work to catch up on. But really, I don’t see this as the right choice.
I had a teacher for a summer who was an empty vessel. They gave me bland solo music, endless etudes and scales. I would come to the lesson, and the teacher would be sitting in their chair, with their slippers on, and wait while I unpacked. There was tension, and I didn’t know what to make of it, because I had been lucky to have always had warm, generous, funny teachers who were interested in furthering my interests and encouraged me to play with creativity and honest abandon. For this summer teacher, I would play my assignments, and then the teacher would ask me to play them again. After a second go-around, they would assign the next scale or etude, telling me to read and follow the instructions. There was a lot of material I had to prepare every week, and virtually no feedback or guidance. The teacher never made a move to unpack their instrument, make small talk, ask me how I was or what I needed help on. It felt like I was screaming into a void, like there was no oxygen in that dark, dank room. But maybe he was just scared shitless. Maybe he didn’t have the first idea of what to say, and was just desperately trying to stay above water himself. Maybe he was drowning.
This dark room is no place for you, and no place for your students. You both deserve better. You deserved better when you were a student, and your students now deserve the same courtesy. Release yourself from this whirlpool, let yourself dream of a new direction, and go towards it, no matter that it will take effort, money, and courage to leave this life behind.
Reach your hand up above the water. Someone will take it and help you into a new, better life.
Picture: Facebook Music Teachers page
From the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra:
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of two new Assistant Conductors.
Rita Castro Blanco (below) is one of the most promising Portuguese conductors of her generation and has had debuts with Orquestra Gulbenkian, Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa, Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, Orquestra das Beiras, and Orquestra do Norte. From September 2019 to January 2022 she was Principal Conductor of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra.
Charlotte Corderoy (left) is a London-based conductor and a recent graduate of The Royal Academy of Music, London.
This weirdly unbalanced album opens with a live performance of Beethoven’s first piano concerto in and continues with solo pieces from the bottom drawer, some of which are little higher than kindergarten level in difficulty. No explanation is offered in the glossy booklet.
Disaffected students and former alumni are trying to topple the present leadership of Cleveland Institute of Music.
None of the agitators has been brave enough to give their name or to cite the precise allegations being made against the head of conducting Carlos Kalmar, all of which have been dismissed by an independent legal inquiry.
This is an ugly situation and it will get uglier still if the CIM board continues to sit on the fence.
Here’s the wording of the petition, which has gained some 400 supporters:
We, as proud alumni, educators and performers, firmly request the distinguished Board of CIM to dismiss President Paul Hogle, Provost Scott Harrison, and Conductor Carlos Kalmar. Their collective abuse of power has been rampant to the extreme detriment of current and recent students. After watching in horror for several years the mishandling and denial of students’ concerns, we can no longer be idle while our beloved institution rots from within.
The unilateral hiring of Mr. Kalmar by Mr. Hogle was against the recommendation of the search committee as well as the majority of orchestral students. The blatant disregard of student concerns regarding Mr. Kalmar’s hostile treatment of them is antithetical to the main purpose of a higher learning institution. They have listened time after time to their own faculty and staff reporting the same abuses, dismissed their concerns, and then…. Nothing happens (other than a “restructuring” and sudden departure of the staff member whose job it was to investigate Title IX complaints).
From our agony aunt:
Dear Alma, I am desperate. I am jealous all of the time, of old friends who get coveted roles, people who get great teaching positions, reviews, basically everything. I am consumed by their success and destroyed by my own meager life. We went to school together, were in the same career circles, but they rise and I just stay the same. It’s not like my lot is bad – I have enough money, a fair amount of recognition, and a steady stream of work. But it’s nothing like seeing them in magazines, recordings. Everywhere. I can’t get away and I am drowning.
Trying to look away
Dear Trying to look away,
Ok. Stop it. Just stop it right there. You are eating yourself alive and probably driving everyone crazy by carrying around that big stinking dark cloud. And it does stink. People can smell it. And it’s not attractive. It’s also not helping your career, by the way.
I would like to feel sorry for you, but you say that your life is good. Money, steady work, and recognition. Can you imagine the small army of people who have their own little dark clouds who are jealously peering into your career, wishing they had half of what you do?
I used to be like you. It’s hard not to, at some point, succumb to the never-ending stream of accolades, appearances, awards that our friends and school chums have racked up. My advice? Break that habit, and break it RIGHT NOW. Next time it rears it’s ugly little head (in like 5 seconds probably) take a deep breath and just turn it off. The more often you do that, the less frequently you will have to deal with it. Just say STOP inside your head. As loudly as you need to. And, also, along the way, how about a break from social media to jump start that process? Talk about a magicians cloud of cultivated success illusions. My oh my.
I can guarantee that the people you are jealous of face the same temptation to be jealous. There is always someone who seems like they are doing better. Except if you are YoYo, I guess. We should ask him. But chances are that it’s a balancing act for them too, all of those successful people. Maybe that role takes them away from their families and friends for three months. I know people who actually missed the birth of their child because they were too afraid to cancel a concert. And that’s just the beginning. Missed birthdays, graduations, before you know it that “successful” person is lonely and alone. Alone on their own birthdays. Alone in sickness. In my book, that’s not a healthy choice. And it’s not successful either.
Recently, I was at a wonderful summer festival. One I had been to before, where I would see old friends and acquaintances, those I wanted to and those I didn’t. And read their gorgeous bios and see how skinny they were.
But guess what? I enjoyed every single second. I jogged by the water. I went to bakeries. I played board games with my kids, who got to come along. I stayed up late with my host, an 85 year old, thrice divorced drinker who opened her amazing house to my family for two weeks. I made dinner for her and her friends. I sometimes skipped the after parties to come back to the house, staying up late after the concerts, drinking on the moon-drenched deck as she told me stories about her ex husbands, her (mis)adventures, her daughter who has premature dementia. She doesn’t know an ounce about music, and she can’t tell from the concerts who is more successful, more talented. It’s just an enjoyable thing to do before a late dinner.
At one of the after-parties, I was sitting around the outside fire pit, drinking a martini which had been made by the host, a retired businessman who had a passion for beekeeping and happened to be a knock-down amateur bartender. I was nestled in a blanket, and sitting next to an older couple, one of which had come out of a terrible year of sickness. On the other side of the pit, a younger performer was loudly listing all of the concerts, then repertoire that they had played that summer, and where. And how they didn’t have to prepare. They just learned it during rehearsals. After the list, this person turned to me and said “tell me what you have been up to”. I said “I took a jog on the beach, I played board games with my kids, I went to the bakery, and I stay up late drinking with my 85 year-old-thrice-divorced hostess”. After a spell, he left the warmth of the circle to find his next audience, and I turned to this older couple. I sat and listened to the story of their year. The illness. How they hadn’t spent this much time together for years. It spun into them reminiscing about their youth, their work schedules which took them away from one another. And how they treasured this time together.
The next morning, I heard that that person was rushed to the emergency room. They are still there, supported in the hospital with a partner who holds their hand 11 hours a day. I will probably never meet this person again. And I probably will meet that other, concert-listing person again. If you had one of those people to be jealous of, who would it be?
I later heard that the person who was listing their summer accomplishments lives in such a small apartment and is having trouble making ends meet. That person is looking for a solid job, in a place that isn’t in a big city. You can never guess a person’s situation from paper or screen or words. I admire the love of the old couple. I admire holding someone’s hand for 11 hours a day. I admire quiet words spoken with truth.
As Yoko Ono once said, “Transform jealousy to admiration, and what you admire will become part of your life.”
Northern Ballet has had to make the difficult decision to enter into negotiations to reassess the amount of live music that accompanies its touring productions from April 2024. The entire arts industry has been heavily impacted by rising costs across the board, with inflation, the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine causing drastic uplifts in the cost of everything from energy bills to set materials to the transportation costs associated with taking a production around the UK.
Due to these mitigating factors we have had to take certain steps – there have been redundancies within the company, and a reduction in touring over the past year – however, it has become clear that we can no longer continue with our traditional touring model and we will need to explore different options if we are to continue to bring world-class narrative ballets to audiences throughout the country. We fully believe in the power and importance of live music and where we can, it will remain an integral part of our productions, but with deep regret we cannot maintain it at every venue.
We are currently in discussion with the musicians, the Musician’s Union and Arts Council England to explore what a new touring model could look like for Northern Ballet. It remains our mission to create world-class new ballets, develop the next generation of talented new voices and share the joy of dance with audiences around the UK and we remain grateful to Arts Council England, Leeds City Council and our supporters for the funding and support that we receive.
I was asked, along with all other media, to give an undertaking not to review the sold-out event (tickets £15-50).
I’m allowed to say it was at the Lightroom in Kings Cross, London, at the David Hockney exhibition.
And that the pianist was Yuja Wang.
More, in due course.
photos: Justin Sutcliffe
There was much rejoicing after the Met’s opening night of Dead Man Walking.
The British Freddie De Tomasso, an incurable golf obsessive, was wheeled out to start the Ryder Cup competition with Nessun Dorma, normally associated with a far more universal sport.
It was decent of him to take the time because he’s getting married tomorrow morning to English National Opera soprano Alex Oomens.
The private, Roman Catholic university founded in 1853, finds itself in such dire straits that music students cannot continue to run an orchestra for lack of competent teaching.
… ‘Things like orchestra are not just social, they’re also learning-based,” said Gwendolyn Toth, director of orchestra. ‘They help the brain, they help if you’ve had a tough day at classes. Orchestra is often the thing that kind of clears your head and revives you to go home and do some more homework.’
Miriam Duncan, senior, secretary of the ensemble board and performing arts scholar, explained to The Quadrangle how these new limitations have changed the ensemble’s day to day rehearsals.
‘It’s been awful, we don’t have the budget to do anything really,’ said Duncan. ‘We used to have instructors come in once a week at rehearsals to help us all improve a little bit. They’re professionals we hired and they can’t come anymore at all. They used to give private lessons, that was part of what you got for taking orchestra as a class. You got three private lessons, overall, your four years. They just cut that off completely because we can’t afford them anymore.’
Any volunteers from the Met orchestra or the NY Phil?
