Category: music

“Unable to find sponsorship, the Philadelphia Orchestra has canceled its 2009 European festivals tour. Such a cancellation is highly unusual, and this one is doubly painful. The concerts in Lucerne, Paris, at the London Proms and the Edinburgh Festival starting in August would have brought the orchestra incalculable artistic credibility with audiences and within the classical industry.”

“Daylight will cascade into [Boston’s] Symphony Hall this fall for the first time for audiences since the 1940s, splashing from 14 half-moon windows that had been covered since the air raid scares of World War II… The work is part of an $800,000 lighting project that will also illuminate the 16 statues of Demosthenes and other Greek luminaries that stand sentry over the ornate, 62-foot-high hall.”

Orchestra musicians are generally known to despise most of the so-called “pops” concerts they play, believing the music to be less than serious. But conductor Sarah Hicks says that the quality of the music doesn’t have to be lowered, and that pops is “a category of orchestral music-making that should be well-produced and of high quality.”

Cellist Steven Isserlis is well-known as an advocate of music education, and a performer who goes out of his way to work with kids. He also has some strong opinions on the right and wrong way to win new fans for classical music. “You have to bring them in gently. You can’t bring in a child and plonk him down in front of a Bruckner symphony”

While loyal fans of the shuttered Columbus Symphony mourn the cancellation of its fall season, other Ohio orchestras are waiting to assess the fallout. No other orchestras in the region are planning to hold concerts in Columbus in 2008-09, mindful of the tackiness of taking advantage of another organization’s collapse.

“Making it up as you go along might work well in the worlds of experimental theatre, freeform jazz, or when you’re caught pilfering biros, but in the world of classical music improvising went the way of Beethoven at around the same time Beethoven went… [Now,] most soloists prefer the security of jotting down a few bars before they put a shoe on stage. Not so Gabriela Montero, the 38-year-old Venezuelan concert pianist who is reviving this neglected art.”

For the first time in its history, the Minnesota Orchestra has appointed an artistic director for jazz. New Orleans-based trumpeter Irvin Mayfield will oversee an expanded jazz series at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, and will be charged with overseeing “a five-concert jazz series and participate in education programs.”

“A moment of silence, please, for arena rock. OK, it’s not quite dead yet. But the days of the big rock ‘n’ roll concert would seem to be numbered.”

“Hollywood and Bollywood have been flirting with new partnerships, from deals with Reliance Big Entertainment, an Indian production company, to Sylvester Stallone’s scheduled appearance in a Bollywood movie.” But is India ready for Snoop Dogg and the world of American hip-hop?

“Swastika banners unfurl over the stage, Nazi SS officers goose step in formation. It has been awhile since Bayreuth looked like this. Scattered boos from the audience augment the score of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. A new era is dawning at Bayreuth’s annual Wagner festival. And parts of it look unnervingly like the old one.”