Category: music

The orchestra had bought land for an amphitheatre. When the plan fell through, the orchestra decided to sell the land. “Last summer, the orchestra officially transferred the land to MOA Property Co. On that same day, property records indicate, MOA sold the land to Target for several million dollars more than what it paid the orchestra. While the orchestra’s board chairman said that an opportunity to make money may have been lost, he had no regrets.”

The Kirov Opera is touring – wait for it – Wagner’s “Ring.” “The Kirov is playing for very high stakes. Touring any opera is a complex and challenging business. The Ring, with its vast scale, huge technical demands and immense musical difficulties, represents a company going for broke. Still more remarkably, the Kirov, following its traditions, is casting entirely from its own ranks. This is an opera company with great confidence.”

“For every superstar castrato who graced Europe’s opera houses between about 1600 and 1828 (when Giovanni Battista Velluti became the last eunuch to appear on stage, in a crusader epic by Meyerbeer), there were hundreds whose ordinariness or unpleasantness of voice condemned them to a life in B-grade church choirs, or on the streets as beggars or prostitutes. And those were the ones who survived the operation…”

The orchestra is flexible in its numbers and its management. “This flexibility — borne of necessity — has become a great asset, enabling us to sustain a financially viable model with no deficit. As the orchestra world grapples with top-heavy, inflexible, deficit-ridden organizations — many of which no longer respond to the changing needs of their communities — we believe the distinctive structure we have created could end up being a model for the orchestra of the 21st century.”

Keeping a chamber orchestra alive, even in a city known for its vibrant cultural scene, is a tough assignment, and this week’s announcement that Seattle’s Northwest Chamber Orchestra would fold came as a harsh dose of reality, but not a big surprise. “There was a time when the loss of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra would have been grieved much more by the music community. The impact is less now, not only because its audiences were in a downward spiral, but because there are more opportunities to hear chamber orchestra repertory now.”

Christopher Wilkens, music director of the Orlando Symphony and formerly of the San Antonio Symphony, has been appointed to lead the Akron Symphony in Ohio as well. “Wilkins’ audition concert caused a stir in the audience because of how Wilkins helped the orchestra overcome the famously dry acoustics of E.J. Thomas Hall to achieve a large, resonant sound.”

Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster David Kim’s appearance was to be the highlight of the year for California’s El Camino Youth Symphony, but this week, as Kim prepared to leave for Silicon Valley, one of his assistant principals in Philadelphia was in a car accident, another went into labor, and he was forced to stay behind lest the orchestra go leaderless. Nonetheless, after a few phone calls, Kim was able to rustle up a passable replacement soloist for the El Camino kids – his good friend Robert Chen, concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony.

In the wake of the bitter, months-long battle that preceded the Louisville Orchestra’s contract settlement with its musicians this week, the orchestra knows it has some public fences to mend. So with its April performances back on (the board had threatened to cancel them,) the orchestra is offering free tickets to several shows, and giving subscribers who exchanged out of the April shows extra passes.

The Detroit Symphony has created a new annual prize to recognize female composers. “The Elaine Lebenbom Award will be open to an international field and reward the winner with a $10,000 check and the world premiere performances of the selected work on the orchestra’s classical subscription series.”

Why did Seattle’s Northwest Chamber Orchestra have to close? “A confluence of events forced the 33-year-old musical institution to draw its curtain. Chief among them, a decline in public funding of the arts and increased competition from other musical offerings. But the lion’s share of the blame lies with the orchestra’s history of dysfunctional leadership.”