Category: music

The cash-strapped Virginia Symphony Orchestra is breathing a sigh of relief today, after Norfolk officials agreed to provide the ensemble with a $500,000 lifeline. “The terms include repayment with 6 percent interest over five years,” and the VSO says the loan will enable it to make it to the end of the fiscal year without declaring bankruptcy.

“The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra eliminated a five-year-old accumulated deficit, ending the fiscal year with a surplus of $126,000 on a budget of $12.5 million, it reported Wednesday. The SPCO said it achieved the goal by increasing its subscriber base and the size of its annual fund, and by keeping growth in expenses to just 3.2 percent.”

“There are two options: to watch and listen to concerts as they happen, and also to watch and listen to the concert on the BPO’s archive platform. For €9.90 visitors to the Digital Concert Hall [at the BPO website] can either watch a single concert live or for 48-hours afterwards from the archive, or for €149 can have access for the entire season.”

77-year-old Alfred Brendel is taking the stage for the last time this week, playing Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” Piano Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic under Charles Mackerras.

“Universal Edition have published the score of Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’ online. It’s the first symphony the reclusive Estonian has composed in nearly 40 years and it hasn’t even had its premiere yet (Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic will give the first performances next year).”

“The downtown Toronto offices of one of the top youth-orchestra programs in the world were broken into late Monday night or early yesterday morning, and thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment was stolen.”

“Perhaps the strangest thing about the whole holiday music canon is how bizarrely anachronistic it is. No new tune has entered that repertoire since the novelty number Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer became an unlikely yuletide favorite three decades ago.”

Skin Deep, a new operetta about cosmetic surgery, revealing the ugly truth about beauty, is cutting a new line in opera chic.

Director Jay Scheib and composer Anthony Gatto had the brilliant/daring/foolhardy idea to make Stein’s famously inscrutable “Cubist novel,” The Making of Americans, into an opera. Their effort had its world premiere this past weekend at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

“It is advertised as ‘a satirical opera-tion’ and I’m willing to bet that it’s the first time that penis extensions have featured in the opera corpus. But Skin Deep, a new operetta about cosmetic surgery, revealing the ugly truth about beauty, is cutting a new line in opera chic.”