We have been notified of the death of Howard Crook, a lyric tenor from Rutherford, New Jersey, who became a staple of the early-music scene in Paris.

He appeared in operas by Lully, Rameau, Haydn and Mozart and recorded with such conductors as John Eliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock, Roger Norrington, William Christie and Marc Minkowski.

The 1861 Merklin organ at the church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint-Omer, Northern France, has been completely destroyed in an overnight fire, believed to be the work of arsonists. The fire broke out at 4.30 am on Monday and the bell-tower collapsed very quickly.

One suspect has been detained.

Today’s 200th birthday of Anton Bruckner is being religiously observed in his hometown Linz and nearby villages.

Here’s the schedule:
Midnight at the Mariendom: Bells and imported sounds
4am in the birthplace at Ansfelden: musical performance
5am in the Old Cathedral: organ breakfast…

and more …

7pm: Bruckner’s 4th symphony performed at Ansfelden by the Cleveland Orchestra, conductor Franz Welser-Möst, and broadcast live to the Danube Park, outside the Brucknerhaus.

A session drummer, Joseph Roderick Jr., has filed a $15 million lawsuit in Arizona against the singer-composer Bill Joel for rights in the song You May Be Right, dating back to 1979. Roderick seeks ‘all performance, mechanical royalties, publishing and sales, which includes: television, motion pictures, radio, social media, internet sales, anywhere the song ‘You May Be Right’ has been played, and future royalties as long as the song is being played and performed’.

He says: ‘Hearing the song ‘You May Be Right’ on the radio and elsewhere is not just a slap in the face, but it’s like getting slapped with a semi truck day in and day out’.

Washington National Cathedral has been shaken by the unforseen departure of its British director of music, Michael McCarthy. Mike writes:

Having nearly completed my 21st year at the National Cathedral and having had the benefit of some much-valued time away during this summer, I have decided to leave the Cathedral to pursue new opportunities that have been arising recently.

For many, the COVID pandemic required/provided us much time to evaluate. During the last two years the desire for new horizons and new challenges has grown within. The Cathedral’s music program has undergone significant growth and evolution over the past 20 years, and I am proud of the work that we have done together and the journey we have made to bring sacred music to a broader and more diverse community. As we have evolved, I have also come to realize that the next chapter of the Cathedral’s music program is best served by fresh energy and new leadership. I am excited for what is to come and wish my colleagues in the music program all the very best as they take the music program forward.

To lead Washington National Cathedral’s music program these past years has been a singular honor that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I have been so very fortunate to work with extraordinary singers, musicians, and Cathedral co-workers, all fiercely talented and devoted to their calling. I am especially grateful to the boy and girl choristers and their families for their unparalleled dedication, hard work and talent that has and will continue to provide transformational experiences for so many and for years to come.

Finally, I would like to thank Dean Randy Hollerith for his leadership, friendship, and support. On so many levels the Cathedral is in so much better shape than when I arrived, much of this is due to him.

After a tough year fronting for a disaffected music director and an obdurate board, Robin Freeman has quit the San Francisco Symphony, where she was chief marketing and communications officer.The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have created a new post for her as head of marketing.

Robin says: ‘While it will be hard to say goodbye to Grove Street after so many happy years at San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, I’m extremely excited to be joining the Leadership team and the Marketing, Communications & Visitor Experience teams at FAMSF. I consider it a profound luxury that our city is home to both the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor Museum, and I cannot wait to immerse myself in these iconic spaces.’

Kerstin Holm, a culture editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has written an open letter to the federal government, calling on them to rescind plans to deport composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky back to Russia.

Tarnopolsky, 69, originally from Ukraine, left Moscow after the start of hostilities in March 2022. He has been composing and teaching in Germany ever since, but questions have been raised about the validity of his work permit. Officials have told him to return to Moscow and apply for a new visa. Were he to do so, he would certainly be arrested.

Kerstin Holm writes:
Vladimir Tarnopolsky has been deeply integrated into the artistic and social life of Germany for many years. He is a member of the Association of German Composers, a scholarship holder of the College of Sciences in Berlin, a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts, a laureate of the Paul Hindemith Composer’s Prize and other international awards. In 2023, he was awarded the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Foundation Prize.

Just four days after the attack on Ukraine began, Tarnopolsky gave an anti-war concert at the Boulez Hall in Berlin. During his two years in Germany, he wrote five large, passionately anti-war pieces of music, which were performed in the most famous concert halls of Munich (Prinzregenttentheater), Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie), Frankfurt (Alte Oper), Vienna (Konzerthaus), as well as in Berlin, Freiburg, Dresden, and in cities in Austria, Norway, Italy and America.

He took part in a series of conferences “Art and Responsibility” in several cities in Germany; at the invitation of the Munich and Dresden Music Academies, he led a series of seminars on composition.

Mr. Tarnopolsky is now faced with the option of returning to Russia to apply for another visa — where he and his family members face prosecution solely because of his anti-war sentiments — or seeking asylum with an uncertain outcome, which would leave him unable to create art, as he would be barred from employment and therefore unable to work as a musician.

The BBC has signed easy-listening composer Eric Whitacre are artist in residence with the BBC Singers for the group’s centenary year.

The BBC Singers were narrowly saved from abolition last year amid an unspurge of public support for one of Britain’s most accomplished ensembles for difficult contemporary music.

Whitacre, 54, is immensely popular with singing groups of every ability, even more so with church communities and concert audiences.

But putting him together with the BBC Singers is like slathering caviar with HP Sauce, say the hardline new-music crowd.

Judge for yourselves. They are performing tonight at the Proms.

The independent artists manager Camilla Wehmeyer has joined Intermusica as Associate Director, Vocal & Opera, bringing 11 singers with her.

A survivor of the collapse of Hazard Chase at the start of the pandemic, Wehmeyer had been running her own show for four and a half years, but economic conditions are not getting any easier and Intermusica offered to integrate her entire company. Her artists are:
Sydney Mancasola, soprano
Miah Persson, soprano
Sumi Jo, soprano
Cecelia Hall, mezzo-soprano
Paula Murrihy, mezzo-soprano
Anna Stéphany, mezzo-soprano
James Gilchrist, tenor
Peter Hoare, tenor
Caspar Singh, tenor
Joshua Hopkins, baritone
Edward Nelson, baritone

The Russian-based Greek conductor has been fading from sight since Putin invaded Ukraine. Although Salzburg and Baden-Baden maintain his residencies despite his dependence on Russian funds, Currentzis, 52, has struggled to maintain profile and his recording work on Sony seems to have run dry.

So he has done a deal with the Belgian conglomerate Outhere to start his own label next year. It will be called Theta, after the Greek letter that resembles an egg with a black spot in the middle. So apt.

The London end of AskonasHolt has signed the signature Austrian bass, Günther Groissböck.

He was formerly with Nicola Kamphausen at Hilbert.

Groissböck, 50 this month, warrants a higher global profile that he has obtained so far.

German media follow his every move. The rest of the world says, who?

The windy old house in Lowestoft where Benjamin Britten was born and spent his childhood has been put up for sale at around £800,000. It has served for the past two decades as a seaview hotel.

Estate agents video here.