Category: music

Guest conductor and artistic adviser Peter Oundjian is having a profound impact on the Detroit Symphony, an orchestra still in search of its next music director. “His sparkling appearances reveal a growing rapport with the DSO, and his willingness to dig into the gritty details of the orchestra’s everyday life is providing a stabilizing rudder during a challenging transition.”

A Boston program which aims to correct the glaring lack of blacks and Latinos in the classical music world is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. “Project STEP has graduated only 30 high school seniors because of its high selectivity and the natural attrition of the long training. [But] the program receives huge support from the BSO and the New England Conservatory, which help provide facilities and training.”

As Marin Alsop prepares to officially take the reins of the Baltimore Symphony this fall, Peter Dobrin takes the measure of her style and work with the orchestra thus far. “A conductor’s work basically falls into two categories: the time in rehearsals resolving ensemble problems such as balance, intonation, the length of notes; and the visual inspiration and tempo manipulations in performance that bring the craft worked out in rehearsal to a level of art. [There is] more work to be done in both areas.”

London’s three top orchestras are all undergoing lead conductor changes at the same time, making for an exciting, if uncertain, period in one of Europe’s musical capitals. More than just standard turnover, the successions represent a generational passing of the torch – all three orchestras are exchanging maestros close to their 80th birthday for young stars ranging in age from 35 to 54.

“Barbra Streisand is touring Europe with a 58-piece orchestra composed mostly of the cream of New York’s freelance musicians. It’s a sweet gig for the players. But beyond that, the tour has created a mild economic boom for the pool of musicians left behind.”

“Every year pianists and other instrumentalists gather at New England Conservatory under the direction of pianist Stephen Drury to sink their teeth into some of the most enigmatic, esoteric, and downright weird music the 20th and 21st centuries have to offer.” The event is known to participants as Sick Puppy, and it has attracted some of the top living composers in the world to serve as composers-in-residence.

A lot of eyebrows were raised when Valery Gergiev was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony, not because Gergiev isn’t qualified for the post (he obviously is,) but because he is already known as one of the hardest working conductors in the business, and wouldn’t seem to have time to spend more than ten weeks a year in London. Anthony Tommassini says that his first few months on the job have done nothing to assuage fears that Gergiev is simply too busy for his (and his orchestras’) own good.

At the beginning of the 2006-07 season, the Charleston Symphony announced that it might not make it to season’s end without $500,000 in new funding from private donors. But the deathwatch was premature – the half million dollar goal will likely be exceeded by the end of the month, and the CSO will finish its year entirely in the black. “Symphony officials say the group also has improved its strategic planning efforts and is working on long-range plans that will help it maintain more solid financial footing in the future.”

Months after naming Manfred Honeck as its next music director, the Pittsburgh Symphony has chosen outgoing National Symphony director Leonard Slatkin as principal guest conductor, beginning this fall. Slatkin replaces Yan Pascal Tortelier in the role.

Supporters of the Dallas Symphony rallied around their band in a year-end fundraising campaign that turned a projected $700,000 deficit into the orchestra’s fourth balanced budget in a row. The DSO worked hard for the money, even making unusual appeals from the stage for donations near the end of the season.