Category: music

Marketer and former tenor Daniel Frost Hernandez has founded the New York-based company Opera Hispanica to perform and promote both Hispanic singers and the growing number of music-dramas written in Spanish.

“Organisers have chosen the Sydney Opera House for the next stage of the project. Musicians selected from an online audition will travel to Sydney in March next year for a week of rehearsals ahead of a performance by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.”

“The Minnesota Orchestra is launching a new series of weeklong festivals around the state. The first in the series, called ‘Common Chords,’ will be held in Grand Rapids in October 2011.”

“Like a latter-day Erik Satie, the 58-year-old Japanese composer sits reflectively at the piano, sounding chords that ripple like pebbles dropped in still water, warranting contemplation but just as content to be simply enjoyed. Is it ambient music? New Age? Classical?”

“The last four (straight- or wavy-haired) music directors of the last half century — Zubin Mehta, Carlo Maria Giulini, André Previn and Esa-Pekka Salonen — are the ones who molded the modern L.A. Philharmonic.”

“Eight Virginia Opera board members and other supporters staged a news conference Monday to protest that longtime Artistic Director Peter Mark is being ‘secretly’ forced out of his job, but the board’s president-elect later disputed that the action was being done in secret.”

“Malaysia’s Islamist opposition party on Monday demanded that authorities cancel a planned concert by U.S. glam rocker Adam Lambert.” Said a party spokesman, “Adam Lambert’s shows … are outrageous, with lewd dancing and a gay performance that includes kissing male dancers, this is not good for people in our country.”

“But the idea of first-rate classical music in an informal, neighborhood setting has both the performers and the public buzzing con brio. Why? Because it’s just so different, at a time when many classical organizations are seeking out new models, and it’s working.”

“Violinist Sarah Chang has canceled her Monday recital at Orchestra Hall after receiving a firestorm of criticism from striking musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and their supporters. Some of the e-mails Chang told DSO management she received … crossed the line from expressing displeasure to physical threats and career intimidation.”

“The premiere of one of the greatest operas of all time was given by a part-time orchestra, which had barely had time to learn the music, and a cast of singers barely out of their teens who decorated their arias and improvised at will, while the majority of the audience happily ignored the entire event.”