Category: music

“Natalia Luis-Bassa, who has worked with the orchestra for seven years, declared that her health was beginning to suffer as certain members increasingly questioned her judgment. She walked out of a rehearsal on Saturday afternoon and did not return,” and she is refusing to return until one of the players is dismissed.

“Though he has been active as a composer since the late ’40s, the unique voice that affirmed his leading place in today’s musical world came after years of development. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1968 but truly found his voice in 1970, with the piece “Black Angels” for electric string quartet.”

The free-lance and regional orchestra community in the New York area “has slowly declined, and in the process of dying.”

“The American Symphony Orchestra is on the verge of completing a contract that would offer its musicians salaried positions for the first time in its 48-year history … The proposal would convert the ASO, a regular presence at venues including Carnegie Hall, into a standing orchestra, meaning its 82 tenured musicians would receive salaries equivalent to their current per-service earnings.”

“Perhaps surprisingly, new music for voice is not only a favorite among certain performers but a hit with audiences as well. The portability of the human voice–not to mention the unique connection listeners feel to singers–means that new vocal music can find itself in of all sorts of venues and reach all sorts of audiences.”

“A robot called Shimon, created by a team at Georgia Institute of Technology,has been designed to play the marimba and interact with humans as it performs. It was recently showcased at the USA Science and Engineering festival in Washington DC.”

“The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra returned to the Arab world for the first time in 42 years with a concert in Abu Dhabi. … The last time the orchestra performed in an Arab country was at the 1968 Baalbek International Festival in Lebanon, where it was conducted by Herbert von Karajan.”

Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata begat Tolstoy’s novella Kreutzer Sonata, which begat Janacek’s string quartet subtitled “Kreutzer Sonata.” Playwright Laura Wade and Australian Chamber Orchestra director Richard Tognetti have teamed up to create a theatrical concert combining the three works.

“The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has canceled three additional weeks of concerts due to the musicians strike, beginning with four classical performances Thursday through Sunday that were to have been conducted by music director Leonard Slatkin.”