NY Phil pockets $40 million Dudamel gift
OrchestrasThe orchestra has been given $40 million by its co-chair Oscar L. Tang and his art-historian wife, Agnes Hsu‐Tang (pictured), to support Gustavo Dudamel’s ambitious plans as music director.
It’s the biggest gift in Philharmonic history. Tang, 85, is a Shanghai-born mega-investor who has given away more than $200m to the arts since 2013.
Dudamel said: ‘Their deep belief in the power and importance of art has been self-evident from our first encounter and is something that bonds us closely. I’m certain that we will accomplish extraordinary things and build many beautiful bridges together.’
Here begins the Tang Dynasty of America’s oldest orchestra.
If every major orchestra had a 40-million-dollar “guardian angel”, classical music could finally breathe a collective worldwide sigh of relief. Fat chance!
Maestro Dudamal transformed the Los Angeles musical landscape with his star power utilized to provide music to all children. His Youth Orchestra (LOLA) was extremely popular.
Gustavo, with support, can perform magic.
Zubin Mehta transformed the LA Phil
Tang wants to make the NY Phil great again—he told the New York Times “We like to think of returning the New York Philharmonic back to an age of prominence and leadership, which existed when I came to New York.” And he arrived in New York in 1962, the last year in which its membership was entirely white and male.
Sounds good to me.
Let me guess….that money will fund the orchestra with their strong diversity and inclusion campaign: an entirely black season. Only black composers and black soloists allowed…
Prepare for 200 new commissioned works by ethnically black composers.
The Kanneh Masons will become artists in residence and get 200 gigs with them from this.
Or maybe that money will fund his salary and his commissions. Dudamel commissioned a lot of pieces from South American composers through LA Phil, but you will never hear about them because Alex Ross doesn’t like contemporary South American composers. Since Alex Ross doesn’t talk about them, NY Times doesn’t talk about them either. The critic at LA Times on the other hand is well known as a joke so no one pays him any attention. We will see whether NY Times will ignore them when Dudamel goes to New York.
(If Ross doesn’t like these pieces, he should have panned them. But that doesn’t happen either. He likes to pretend they don’t exist. He probably thinks it’s beneath him to comment.)
The newly commissioned pieces at the LA Phil, from Latin American composers as well as other non-Latin composers, have tended to be godawful. Alex Ross is doing the LA Phil a courtesy by not reviewing them.
The LA Times critic you are presumably referring to is Mark Swed. I would be very surprised if you could produce more than a small number of Times readers to agree with you. Mr. Swed is a highly regarded and abundantly qualified critic who has been the leading Times classical writer for many years. He wrote for the defunct Harold Examiner for years before that. If he was not a first class journalist, you can be sure the Times would have found someone else many years ago. If they were being bombarded with negative comments, he wouldn’t be there. Almost any classical critic in America would leap at the opportunity to be at the LA Times. Many people read Mr. Swed, and do not share your absurd view of him. When he arrived, he was a major improvement on the previous person, New York refugee Martin Bernheimer. More major papers are dropping their classical coverage every year. At least the Times still believes in offering that.
Swed is an improvement over Bernheimer?? Swed is not bombarded with negative comments because “no one pays him any attention”, as I’ve said. I would not be surprised if LA Times axes his position altogether after he leaves.
Observing, you should get observed by a special crew of physicians who can take good care of you and cure your from your existential malaise.
Let us know how the treatment is going.
Erm…why? Nothing wrong with me thanks…it’s the woke industry and the people at the top controlling it by the strings that need the special crew of physicians.
Define “woke”. I will give you 3 sentences………….
Ok.
1) giving people who lack talent a platform to express their artistry simply because they happen to be of a certain ethnicity (or indeed, pronoun)
2) not giving people who genuinely have talent a platform to express their artistry because they happen to be of the ‘wrong ethnicity’ or majority ethnicity (or indeed, pronoun)
Actually did it in two sentences. One less than you asked for. You’re very welcome.
Actually you didn’t. But you made your ideas clear enough. As is becoming rather typical, “woke” is thrown around as a general “I don’t like these people/this viewpoint” adjective. “Woke is now defined in this dictionary (Merriam Webster) as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Those are examples, not definitions. Dictionaries are still available.
Well look here, this can go both ways.
Does Norrington deserve his career? Does Currentzis? Nezet-Seguin? Esther Abrami?
If meritocracy is what you’re after, the above shouldn’t have meaningful careers beyond amateur group conducting, given how much crap they’ve put out there that gets lauded as the next best thing by the press.
Please define “woke.” Not examples, a definition.
Woke: the substitution of objective, testable merit with evaluation and judgement based on characteristics of group membership. E.g., race, ethnicity, sex, gender, nationality, etc.
Words can have more than one meaning.
Alas, with the word “woke”, a dictionary is of little help. In actual practice, the word has become a vague, nebulous “catch-all” term which can mean almost whatever someone chooses it to at any given time. It can refer to racial issues, economic justice, environmental problems, “women’s” issues, consumer rights, voting rights, judicial integrity, fair wages, homelessness, you name it. Conservatives will use the term to smear every progressive idea as being radical, socialist, a threat to America’s unquestionable values, and a dark, sinister force. A threat to an idealized past that never existed. It can be a convenient shorthand for demagogues like Trump to create a false image of all Democrats. (The party needs to avoid being misrepresented in this way.) The word cannot really be pinned down to one thing.
Since when was racism out and out racism existential
Follow up to Violinophile on Mark Swed: I meant to also mention that Mark was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2007 and 2021. Not exactly a small honor. Twice!
What’s your problem?
My problem is that in today’s industry, talented people are getting marginalised because of their race (not black), and some less talented people are getting full on promotion (because they’re black). Not all; but some, and quite a few.
This is grossly unfair.
Nah your just a racist
No I’m not. I have logic and reasons to back my argument up, whereas you’re just spewing offensive labels backed by nothing.
Tell us then, in what way is Sheku Kanneh-Mason undeserving of his spotlight?
Well, there are other cellists who are just as good but aren’t getting his level of promotion.
And his sister Isata’s Prokofiev concerto at the proms was an absolute car crash. One of the worst performances technically and musically I’ve heard in my life.
Bet you could not judge that in a blind comparison. Or a colour blind comparison.
If one took the BBC Music Magazine seriously, you’d think most classical music composers and soloists were Black, women, or from some other “marginalized” group.
Pretty sure last time I was a member of an orchestra the person conducting was a white man. The Beethoven was also a sleeper.
No just unfair, but will ultimately damage the business as the less-than-talented damage the product.
One has to REALLY hate Black people to make this sort of comment on an article which doesn’t even mention Black artists.
To Observing – such racist comments by idiots makes one puke.
And Anton Bruckner was a ‘man who had an unhealthy interest in dead bodies and teenage girls’. Funny you should call yourself that.
(It’s true…I quoted word for word from an article in The Guardian.)
Really Norman you want to keep this deeply racist post up?
I am surprised you’re giving them the oxygen of oxygen let alone publicity.
At least Black composers, musicians & conductors authentically represent the US. Dudamel will not be able to circumvent the priority of Black inclusion in order to promote his own agenda: hiring non US musicians & promoting South American conducting talent.
Los Angeles is a Latino city, in case you were unaware. Yes, Duda spotlighted the Americas and Latino conductors, composers, musicians. It is called “vision,” and practical as well.
Yeah he really filled up Disney Hall full with Latinx audiences and patrons!
Ignorant and snarky, a pretty dopey combination.
Actually, he (and the programming and outreach) did increase the Latino audience as well as bringing in younger concertgoers. The LA Phil audience looks vastly different from that of 25 years ago and continues to do so.
Norm, “freedom of speech” notwithstanding, the deliberately vehement and caustically racist repeated rants by “Observing” in this commentary space are totally inappropriate and thoroughly degrading of a highly cultured site like Slippedisc! Since all comments are supposedly “reviewed” before they appear here, in this case especially, Norm, shame on you for stooping to this new inflammatory LOW just for the sake of site-publicity! I double-dog-dare-you to print this!!!
Zarathusa, what mindless babble you spew. I’m just telling the truth, and the vast majority of normal people would agree.
Norman – thank you for allowing us to have a platform to share truths and ideas. Please ignore Zarathusa’s insults against you – he is a clear irrational side effect of today’s woke culture. What you have is a very valuable space, and people need to hear the truths and hypocrisy buried within the dreaded music circle, which yourself is very good at exposing often, thank goodness.
Please give 2-3 examples of black artists being given resources; e.g., concert bookings, contracts, grants, etc, at the expense of white artists.
I bet he can’t even name the white artists at whose expense the black ones made their careers!
Let’s see…Isata Kanneh Mason, Randall Goosby and some other singer bloke on this website a few days ago.
All highly overrated, mediocre musicians. I can think of more than a dozen musicians who can do better than them to replace EACH of them, who happen not to be black (eg Asian, white, etc).
“Highly cultured”might be pushing things a little………
You’re well at home in the woke Democrat Party censorship regime of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of that gang of thieves.
oh god, no, not “the woke Democrat Party!”
In any case, it’s called the Democratic Party, as I’m sure you know perfectly well. It’s pathetic that people think misnaming it signals their virtue and anti-wokeness, which are the same thing to those who use “Democrat Party” as some sad little attempt at a slur.
You’re clearly well at home in the treasonous, terrorist Nazi-like regime of Trump and fellow Republicans.
As a businessman, Trump declared bankruptcy I think it was at least 18 times. That means each of those times he was allowed to stiff his employees and the other businesses and banks he was dealing with. He has a long history of not paying people. How does that not make him truly a world class thief and con artist? By contrast, Biden has no such history of any kind, so what precisely are you talking about? Or are facts just not important when it comes to Trump?
Zarathustra is 100% correct. No poster spewing the racist garbage of @Observing should be permitted to continue posting on this site. They are a disgrace to what used to be a series of interesting and intelligent discourses on classical music. Too many posts are now virtually irrelevant – e.g. Bernstein’s cake! – and the moderation of posts is sadly all but non-existent. Serious posts are increasingly being replaced by virtual childish nonsense. The site should have rules which posters should be requested to stick to. Rubbish posts and attacks on individuals should be banned!
What an inane post.
They’ll also have to recruit the “diverse” audience to listen to this drivel.
I think I once spotted them at the Musikverein in Vienna.
Now we know why it’s not worth actually working for your money in Paris.
Bravo to them for their generosity!
At least Asians are still interested in dead old white people’s music. I thought Lincoln center was about to switch to all woke programming.
“All woke programming?” Meaning?
They’re American citizens, I don’t think their origins have any role in their support.
Wow, so blatantly racist. Get off my internet.
Tremendous. Thank you from this New Yorker!
+1
The Phil has been given a great gift. We should all be grateful. And those dismissible idiots who bring up the word “woke” just reveal how myopic they are. Oy!
I echo Zarathusa’s comment. Why can’t major UK orchestras find fairy godmothers like this guy. If the players start whingeing about pay, someone should take out a contract on the lot of them!
Because UK musicians don’t actually whinge about pay. Take it from someone who operates within the UK classical music industry, the culture here is so insular that they have no IDEA what they’re missing out on, and full-heartedly believe the myth that the work here is still plentiful and great. If only they could get a glimpse of a US rank and file violinist’s payslip..
Tang’s father was a philanthropist and rewarded an Order of the British Empire. Hope is not lost.
Confiscatory tax rates takes the sails out of the rich in “Great” Britain, so little leftover wealth to spread around on the arts.
Buddy, the British INVENTED tax evasion. Don’t start this argument with me, you’ll lose.
@Observing, Sheku-Kanneh Mason is a bonafide concert artist, talented musician & cello wizard. Yes, he is also black. Yes, there are other black musicians with less merit/talent who have attained or are gaining notoriety, but this can be applied to other ethnic/demographics. Is that fair? Did you not pass the 1st round at the LA Phil audition because of such a person? This article mentions nothing about race. DEI is not the solution to combatting racism. In fact, it is reverse racism, which is simply another ‘color’ of racial prejudice & discrimination. Perfect example is the demise of Mostly Mozart in NY. Sensible people know this. DEI may become the downfall of all industries (ie. Bud Light, Disney, American military, Boy Scouts, girls athletics, etc.). Currently, it’s a cultural cancer, and people are noticing its symptoms and realizing the sham. However, your cynical attitude towards black musicians/composers is blatantly racist. If anything, Dudamel may likely commission Latin composers whether anyone likes it or not, but isn’t that an MD’s prerogative? Yes, there are under represented composers who may have been deliberately suppressed by hateful motives. Let’s hear/play their music. Many world premieres often do not get second performances. There’s a reason why there’s always a Beethoven cycle going on somewhere on the planet. Great music will stand the test of time, regardless of race. While Philly & SF are going on strike, Ukrainian musicians sufferring under Putin’s tyranny, many arts organizations vanishing during Covid, this article about the generous support of Mr. & Mrs. Tang is a welcome breath of fresh air for classical music. Assuming you’re not black, don’t complain that you can’t enter the Sphinx competition, but instead, I challenge you to befriend a black musician. Why not take it a step further and befriend a Hispanic musician and Asian, Jewish, Arabic, etc. Hopefully then, you’ll realize we’re all human underneath our skin, share the same love for Bach & Mozart and have similar struggles & frustrations.
Please…the orchestra doesn’t need that much money. Dudamel has already made millions in LA, why not respectfully request that he donate his future salary in NY towards the betterment of the orchestra? Why would they even need so much money, for touring? For commissions?
anon: “One has to REALLY hate Black people to make this sort of comment on an article which doesn’t even mention Black artists.”
——–
Race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, etc, have become so politicized, that people can hold two opposing viewpoints all at the same time. Or because one admires the politics of a person, he/she/noun is acceptable. Or because one dislikes the politics of that same person, he/she/noun suddenly becomes unacceptable.
Ideological whiplash.
So, if the definition of “woke” is “giving people who lack talent a platform to express their artistry simply because they happen to be of a certain ethnicity”, what about all the mediocre white musicians who historically might have been chosen ahead of more talented black musicians purely on the basis of colour? Is that equally as bad as what you say is happening now?
Dean Dixon anyone? Couldn’t make a career in the US but just go on YT and listen to his Liszt Les Preludes……….
Better use if this money went to hospital doctors
And nurses.
First, no one knows yet how wisely or in what proportions this will be used. It’s just cynical speculation. We DO know the arts tend to be the last and least priorities for philanthropy most of the time. So just be grateful and stop complaining already. Bill Gates alone probably gives more to health causes than this, every day.
Better use if this money went to hospital doctors
And nurses.
So the Weill-Cornell Medical Center can build yet another marble shrine on York Avenue. No thank you.
Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Tang, for your thoughtful gift. to the NY Philharmonic.
Thank you for your super support of the arts. We need more people like this couple!
Thank you for your generous donation to the NY Phil and I look forward to enjoying the fruits of your continuing support of fine arts Mr & Mrs Tang.
Good for them. Now if only someone would donate a similar amount of funds for the purchase, design, and installation of a pipe organ in Geffen Hall!
A 40 million dollar organ? I guess you want to be sure they can hear it clearly in Philly and Boston! (Don’t you think 1 or 2 mil would do?)
As ever increasing dollars flow to the 1%, we need more and more of them to step up and support the arts. You can’t take it with you! Kudos to the Tangs for doing so. Who will follow?