The Metropolitan Opera has promoted John Upton to principal oboe.
He has been an associate in the section for the past five years.
The Boston Symphony cellist Luis Leguia had a eureka moment while out sailing on his catamaran. Seeing the new fibreglass materials used in making seaworthy vessels, he wondered if they could not be applied to creating a cello that sounded like a Strad.
He made a prototype in 1990. The another. The third one was successful. He started a business.
Leguia, who played 44 years in the Boston Symphhony from 1963 to 2007, gave the Boston premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s Cello Concerto and enjoyed an international solo career alongside his orchestral job.
Leipzigers attended a free premiere on Saturday of one of the recent Mozart discoveries, a 12-minute trio titled Serenate ex C.
It is listed in the new Köchel catalogue as the “Ganz kleine Nachtmusik”, or ‘very little night music’ and catalogued as KV648. Mozart was maybe ten when he wrote it.
The piece was played in a packed foyer of the Leizig Opera and repeated for larger crowds on the steps outside.
Some part of me wishes this was fiction. Or irony.
Press release:
Derrick Gee is the Elbphilharmonie’s new Creator in Residence
Hamburg, 24 September 2024: The new Creator in Residence at the Elbphilharmonie is the well-known Australian content creator, presenter and DJ Derrick Gee. Throughout the 2024/25 season, the social media star is set to take his nearly one million subscribers across various platforms on a musical voyage around the Elbphilharmonie. Describing himself as a »professional music fan«, Derrick Gee has grown an international community of music lovers, primarily on TikTok and Instagram. He shares his knowledge and experiences with them, in humorous and well-informed videos. Whether he is unearthing hidden treasures from the Tokyo jazz, country music or UK garage scenes, taking a closer look at loudspeakers and headphones, or reflecting critically on the impact of streaming platforms on our listening behavior, Derrick Gee has made it his mission to open up the sometimes inaccessible world of music listening to everyone.
Much fuss is being made around Jeanine Tessori’s ‘Grounded’ which launched the Met’s season with a gala premiere last night, the first woman composer to occupy the first-night slot.
The opera is a cut-down version of the work that had a run of six performances at the Kennedy Center a year ago.
About 45 minutes have been cut and ten minutes of new music added. Music director Yannick was unsure of the changes: “I was kind of defending the composer as we would do today if Verdi was alive or Donizetti: ‘The music is perfect as it is. Let’s not cut,’” Nézet-Séguin said. “It was fascinating to see that the composer herself was more like: `No, this needs to be cut because it’s detracting from what I want in the story line.’”
Fellow-Canadian Emily D’Angelo sang the title role.
Reviews to follow.
Kwamé Ryan, music director of the Charlotte Symphony, says he owes it all to Cbeebies:
… Whenever I hear people refer to orchestral music as arcane or incompatible with young ears, it occurs to me that any young person who has enjoyed a Marvel or Star Wars movie has heard a lengthy orchestral performance (of a sort) and might well be amenable to hearing and seeing more, were it presented in a similarly imaginative and relatable context. So, in the summer of 2019, I was thrilled to join the already popular CBeebies Proms for Off to the Moon, an “edutainment spectacle” celebrating 50 years since the first astronauts walked on the moon, with giant video screens, a Saturn V rocket model, a new work by Hans Zimmer, beloved TV hosts as crew, and myself cast as the conducting Mission Commander! Cinematic appropriation? Perhaps, but popular cinema has borrowed some of its most evocative musical vocabulary from the concert world, so it’s only fair that the pedagogical concert world should occasionally poach cinema-style storytelling in return….
Since my journey to the moon at the 2019 Proms, I’ve returned to the Royal Albert Hall for an Ocean Adventure in 2022 and again for this year’s Wildlife Jamboree – not least because paying forward the “power of wow” from the very platform that delivered it to me as a boy has been uniquely fulfilling. At my most recent CBeebies Prom, as I walked on stage, I heard a pre-applause gasp from the audience that perplexed me. Backstage after the show, the director shared with me that this was in fact the moment the kids had excitedly recognised their trusted musical friend and the only conductor they knew, thanks to watching previous Proms on iPlayer. I thought: if this signals the start of a lifelong musical journey for even a handful of them, then the circle is complete. Mission accomplished.
Full article here.
The French conductor got a rude awakening at her season opener from Atlanta critic Mark Gresham:
In Mahler’s first symphony, he writes, ‘we got a performance that was mostly serviceable, but not did not rise to an occasion of greatness. The opening movement should be a continuously unfolding journey with fresh sonic perspectives around every bend in the road, but often it felt like it did not go anywhere in terms of forward motion or architectural development. Lead-ups to climaxes, in both this and the final movement, didn’t seem to grow at a pace to reach their goals in time, but seemed to disjunctively leap into them at the last moment.’
There’s more, much more, here.
The next chief conductor of the Mainz Philharmonic State Orchestra and GMD of the Mainz State Theatre is to be Gabriel Venzago.
Presently with Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, the young Venzago, 34, is the son of Mario Venzago, former music director in Indiannapolis, Berne and Gothenburg.
He takes over in Mainz next year.
The phenomenal saxophonist and composer Benny Golson died this weekend in Manhattan.
He played himself in the Steven Spielberg movie The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks.
His compositions include “I Remember Clifford”, “Blues March”, “Stablemates”, “Whisper Not”, “Along Came Betty” and “Killer Joe”.
The Bolshoi press service has announced the death of baritone Vladislav Verestnikov, one of its long-serving stalwarts.
Originally from Kharkiv, he was married to fellow-Ukrainian soprano Lyudmila Sergienko.
The press statement is unusually succinct: ‘Local 161-710, American Federation of Musicians announced today that the musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) have unanimously voted to authorize a strike against their employer, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.’
They say real-time basic wages for musicians have declined 15 percent over the oast five years.
And they point out that the New York Philharmonic has just granted a 30 percent rise.
“As our national center for the performing arts, the Kennedy Center should be a leader among arts institutions in fairly compensating its artists,” said Ed Malaga, President of the DC Federation of Musicians, Local 161-710, American Federation of Musicians. “Instead, the Kennedy Center has made proposals that are far out of step with other orchestras throughout the country. It is disheartening to see that the Kennedy Center is unwilling to recognize the value of the world-class orchestra these musicians have built and to compensate them in the manner they deserve.”
UPDATE: The Kennedy Center has issued this statement on the state of negotiations:
The compensation package offered to the musicians would increase wages by 12% over a four-year growth contract through 2028. The package also includes significantly expanded healthcare options at reduced costs for the musicians, the addition of paid parental leave, updates to audition and tenure processes, and funding of a third full-time librarian position requested by the musicians.
The 12% wage increase would bring the minimum NSO base salary to $178,840, and the average for most musicians to $209,325. The Kennedy Center was proud to have recently reached a successful negotiation with a comparable wage increase with the other two orchestras operating at the Center—Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and Washington National Opera Orchestra.
Until the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed ion November 1918, the port of Trieste on the Adriatic was its only outlet to the sea.
Now, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra has re-established a post-imperial residency.
Italy’s ambassador to Vienna doesn’t seem to mind: ‘The Politeama Rossetti was the first theatre in which the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performed outside Austria, under the direction of Ferdinand Löwe. It was April 4, 1902 and Trieste was still part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy; so it will be an exciting ‘homecoming’ for the Viennese. And an opportunity for our audience to hear one of the most famous orchestras in the world. The cultural ties between Vienna and Trieste are indissoluble. And with the ‘Vienna Spring’ this ideal bridge will be strengthened even further.’
The British-ruled Irishman James Joyce, who lived in Trieste around that time, would have appreciated the multiple ironies.