Category: music

Seeking stability after several seasons of fiscal uncertainty and internal dissension, the Louisville Orchestra has turned to a familiar face for leadership, naming Jorge Mester as music director. Mester, who also holds conducting positions in Florida and California, previously served as Louisville’s music director from 1967 to 1979, and his re-appointment comes as a big surprise, since the orchestra reportedly had a number of up-and-coming young conductors on its shortlist.

The Velvet Lounge, a Chicago jazz club that closed last year to make way for a condo building, has reopened in a new location around the corner, and jazz fans in the Second City couldn’t be happier. “the new Velvet conveys a mood and sensibility of its own and, as such, instantly emerges as one of the most appealing jazz rooms in the city.”

Great performances of Wagner’s music can be found all over the world these days. Furthermore, the famed Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, Germany, has been frequently marred by familial strife and controversy in recent years. And yet, still, Bayreuth is arguably the toughest ticket in classical music, with a waiting list of seven years to buy a seat. So what is it about Bayreuth? The performance space certainly has something to do with it: “Wagner’s opera house, the Theater on the Green Hill, as it has long been called, is truly one of the glories of the opera world.”

The Louisville Symphony seems to be in a near-permanent state of fiscal crisis these days, and clashes between musicians desperate to hold onto what they have and managers intent on cutting costs pop up nearly every year. But Andrew Adler wonders if the success that other orchestras have enjoyed could be replicated in Louisville if the ensemble could somehow scrape together the money to build a shiny new concert hall where it is the primary tenant.

The Edinburgh Festival is a beloved institution in Scotland, and visitors from throughout the world descend on the city every summer to experience it. But Robert Dawson Scott wonders whether the festival is really necessary anymore: “Obviously it is nice for central Scotland to have a glimpse of the international art world once a year. But does anyone else, apart from the attention-seeking adolescents who underpin the Edinburgh Fringe, really need to go there any more?”

New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival is departing from tradition to introduce a massive piece of digital installation art outside its Lincoln Center home. The artwork “uses artificial intelligence in a visual and aural play of the composer’s last symphony — the ‘Jupiter’… In the interplay between sound and image, Mozart’s music is taken apart, with computers searching for the right sequence of notes that was recorded by real musicians — before reconstructing the final, perfect end to the masterwork.”

Germany’s Bayreuth Festival may be the world’s most insular musical gathering, and the global move towards casual dress and informal style is still a hard sell amongst the Bavarian Wagner faithful. But it’s the adherence to tradition that makes Bayreuth such a unique experience, says Anthony Tommasini.

Ever since Toronto’s new opera house was completed earlier this summer, critic William Littler has been scanning the globe for cities that make the best use of their performing arts facilities, and could serve as a model for Toronto. In Munich, he may have found the ideal comparative. “Munich itself is considerably smaller than Toronto, and yet its principal opera house (there are three others) routinely maintains an average attendance of upwards of 90 per cent… Will the Four Seasons Centre have as powerful a catalytic effect in Toronto? If it does, there is room to hope that the Canadian Opera Company can expand beyond its usual seven productions.”

Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony’s summer home in the Berkshires, is jumping on the trend of lowering ticket prices to generate better sales. For twelve days in August, concertgoers will get into the famed Koussevitsky Music Shed for as little as $20. And if that doesn’t seem like all that impressive a bargain, keep in mind that Tanglewood tickets ordinarily go for as much as $83.

Sure, Mozart opera is fine, but you know what would really improve it? Puppets. Seriously. “Most opera singers pick up their skills in physical acting on the fly, but a marionette in the hands of a skilled puppeteer is a dramatic creature par excellence. They have nothing to do but move, and… puppets move with a sense of character and drama that you would be hard pressed to find among any human cast.”