Category: music

“[S]mall-scale commissions by individuals are becoming increasingly popular as new types of networks link composers with potential patrons. While many of these commissions arise out of private occasions, the resulting music is set to revitalize the concert repertoire for generations to come.”

“Though the SLSO performed the same number of concerts at Powell Hall as it did in 2007-’08 – 109 – this season it reported a 15 percent increase in revenue: $5.57 million, up from $4.84 million. In addition, total attendance rose … [by] 7.8 percent. Between January and May, the orchestra played to seven near-capacity or sold-out houses.”

“United Arts of Central Florida Board of Directors voted to earmark $200,000 for a proposal to keep opera alive in Central Florida” – with a semi-staged opera-in-concert presented by the Orlando Philharmonic next year – “following the Orlando Opera Company’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in early June. […] The [ultimate] goal is for a new opera company to be in place when the $425 million Dr. P. Phillips Orlando Performing Arts Center opens.”

Allan Kozinn: “I hate the new Tully Hall. To me it is everything Lincoln Center and its enthusiasts insist it is not. I find it corporate, sterile, claustrophobic and as acoustically arid a hall as I’ve ever heard. Similarly, everything now being said about the old Tully rings false to me.”

That newspaper ad last month offering the musicians’ services “at weddings, funerals, baptisms, birthdays, divorces and saints’ days”? The orchestra’s music director says, “This was our way of drawing the attention of a broader public to the problems of the Philharmonic, to somehow present our financial problems in an absurd, Monty Python way.” And it worked: “Within 36 hours a Facebook support group had sprung up with several thousand members … [and] the advertisement attracted a surge of support from new, younger music fans.”

“William Theisen, recently ousted as artistic director of the Skylight Opera Theatre, has agreed to return to direct ‘The Barber of Seville,’ ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and ‘Forever Plaid'” as well as one other show there next season. “Theisen said his decision to direct for the company in no way endorses his firing, carried out by the executive committee of the board of directors and managing director Eric Dillner.”

“[Lyndon] Terracini is expected to bring stability to the national company and wants to mend bridges. He is keen to see OA’s former music director Simone Young return as a guest conductor when he programs his first season in 2012. He also plans to introduce Wagner’s Ring cycle into the repertory, commission new Australian work, forge closer ties with arts festivals and develop ‘a family’ of young composers.”

“The Zurich Opera has named noted Italian conductor Fabio Luisi as its next general music director starting in 2012. Luisi, the current director of Dresden’s Semperoper, on Tuesday welcomed his appointment at a ‘wonderful house with an exceptional orchestra.'” He succeeds Franz Welser-Möst, the Cleveland Orchestra’s music director, who leaves Zurich for the Vienna State Opera in 2010.

“The Metropolitan Opera and stagehands’ union Local One have struck a deal, postponing a promised salary increase this summer in exchange for an extra year on the current contract, with the raise to come a year from now.”

The soul/hip-hop equivalent of Rolling Stone revealed its demise without warning on Tuesday. “In a memo to staff members announcing the closure, Steve Aaron, chief of the Vibe Media Group, wrote that for months, the company tried in vain to either find new investors or ‘to restructure the huge debt on our small company.'”