Gustavo Dudamel is only 26, and won’t yet be 30 when he takes over the music directorship of the LA Philharmonic in 2009. But the Phil has a long history with young conductors, and its collection of music directors has been quite a diverse one by orchestral standards, which seems somehow appropriate for the City of Angels. “Los Angeles and its environs are not one thing culturally — nor two, nor 20, nor even 200. The area is not the sum of its parts — it’s a kind of uber-multicultural metropolis.”
Author: sbergman
LA Phil Musicians Shocked But Pleased
The announcement that Esa-Pekka Salonen will leave the LA Philharmonic in 2009, to be replaced by 26-year-old Venezuelan wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel, caught the vast majority of the orchestra by complete surprise. But after taking a few hours to process the new information, many musicians were quick to praise Dudamel’s energy and skill on the podium, and expressed relief at the unusual double announcement: “The future of the orchestra is secure. We’re not going to flail around with our hat in hand like every other orchestra, saying, ‘Will you please come?'”
New York’s Modern Music Boom
New music has never been hotter than it is right now in New York’s underground club scene, says Alex Ross, and a generation of musicians and composers for whom blurring the lines between concert and club music are largely responsible. “Sometimes the blurring of boundaries leads to overamplified mush. Just as often, though, it generates a new kind of interstitial music–one that makes a virtue of falling between the cracks.”
Is Ohio Sacrificing Art At The Altar Of The 3 ‘R’s’?
“With new academic requirements emphasizing math and science, education advocates worry that arts classes may be pushed out of school curricula or disregarded by harried students who can’t fit them into their heavy course loads… The new Ohio Core curriculum, championed by former Gov. Bob Taft, takes effect in the fall of 2010 and increases the math requirement for high school students from three to four years. Most fine arts classes are not required or can be taken in middle school.”
Sol LeWitt, 78
“Sol LeWitt, whose deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art, died yesterday in New York… LeWitt helped establish Conceptualism and Minimalism as dominant movements of the postwar era. A patron and friend of colleagues young and old, he was the opposite of the artist as celebrity.”
Bell’s Big Busking Bust
Busking just isn’t what it used to be. These days, commuters joined at the ear canal to their cell phones, PDAs, and iPods go rushing right past street musicians without so much as a sideways glance or a thought of tossing a buck into the open case. But surely, if the busker standing outside your local subway station was superstar violinist Joshua Bell, things would be different, right? Um, actually, as it turns out… no.
Is Handel’s Messiah Anti-Semitic Gloating?
Handel’s Messiah is a beloved part of the Christmas tradition all over the world. But the piece was originally intended for Lent, not Christmas, and Handel wrote it “to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For most Christians in Handel’s day, this horrible event was construed as divine retribution on Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as God’s promised Messiah.”
“Stunt Casting” Here To Stay
Actors and critics may decry it as an unconscionable way to cast major stage productions, but Patrick Pacheco says that using reality TV as a way to drum up interest in costly Broadway shows won’t be going away anytime soon. “In some ways, these shows are merely a new wrinkle on stunt casting that has been around at least since impresario David Merrick began tapping performers with little or no stage experience, such as Betty Grable, to keep Hello, Dolly! humming along.”
Those Randy Composers
Discussion of the great composers tends to be reverential, and even character flaws or professional failings are looked at through the lens of a career that resonates even in the present day. So it can be a bit disconcerting to come across a classical music scholar who is deeply interested in, even obsessed with, the sex lives of Brahms and Beethoven.
We Could Start By Not Calling Them “Young Persons”
Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra has stood the test of time rather nicely, but “as children’s entertainment, the Young Person’s Guide… which assumes total and passive concentration from a seated and silent audience, falls pretty short against its audiovisual rivals for a child’s attention.” One UK composer is hoping to build on Britten’s theme with an entirely new introductory orchestra piece designed to appeal to those endlessly multitasking 21st century kids.