Category: music

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra has named 35-year-old conductor Alexander Mickelthwate to be its next music director, beginning this fall. Mickelthwate, currently an assistant conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, replaces Andrey Boreyko, who led the WSO for four seasons.

“One could argue that in this country we do not get the orchestras we deserve: we get far, far better than that. And it is the players who are subsidising us. String players are the rank and file of the orchestra, the infantry. Of the 600 or so orchestral string players in full-time work across the country, few earn more than £25,000 a year. Many are on much less. Orchestral rates of pay in western Europe are high, where a premier-league player can earn up to £50,000. In America, where there is no state funding for the arts and orchestras rely mainly on private sponsorship, the average starting salary is $58,000 (£32,805), more than one and a half times that of British recruits. But it’s not just the money and lack of career advancement that prompts some players to hang up their bows…”

“Classical music is defined, in part, by where it’s played. If it’s at Avery Fisher Hall, it’s probably classical; if it’s at CBGB, it’s probably not.” And while it might take more than a dingy club setting and a fully stocked bar to convince some audiences to give classical a try, an increasing number of young classical performers seem to believe that it really is the forbidding stodginess of concert halls that separates them from rock stars. “The studied formality of the concert hall is increasingly unfamiliar to today’s audience, not to mention ticket prices that can put off even diehard music lovers… In a club setting, people aren’t under the same social constraints as in a recital hall.”

Five years after launching an ambitious mix of online music news, cultural coverage, and digital audio, the web site Andante.com has closed up shop. “The site’s mission was to be no less than the leading classical music site on the Internet—and the leading source for digital classical recordings, a position that was up for grabs in the pre-iTunes era.” Andante was bought by a French record label in 2003, and its demise followed an announcement from the label that it could no longer afford to support the site.

“Opera is the latest joint venture between the NEA and the Department of Defense. The endowment first brought Shakespeare to 18 military bases in 2004. Last year, famous authors helped troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan write their stories. Bringing opera to 39 military bases around the country was even more adventurous, but NEA staff members have been pleased by the response. People had to be turned away from performances at Fort Carson, Colo., and Picatinny Arsenal in Wharton, N.J.”

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra president Katherine Akos has left the orchestra a year before her contract was to expire. Why? “The orchestra matured and so many great things happened at a speed that outpaced the internal infrastructure in the organization. They’re having some growing pains, and it’s unfortunate when people get caught up in it.”

Four years ago, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was “desperately in need of intensive care, after a five-week strike and a series of administrative setbacks put the orchestra (whose current budget is around $7-million) nearly $900,000 in the hole in one season. It had no music director and no great prospects for finding one. The ESO itself is having a pretty good time these days. It has an energetic new leader, ticket sales are hitting record levels, and a string of balanced budgets has tamed a once-fearsome accumulated deficit.”

City elders in Plymouth, England have joined forces to condemn a production of Jerry Springer, The Opera. “The show has been at the centre of a storm of protest since the BBC broadcast a televised version in January last year. The corporation received a record 63,000 complaints. In light of the controversy, the show’s national tour was postponed. Only last week, Springer’s producers blamed continuing protests by Christian groups, and by the British National Party, for poor ticket sales in the run-up to the now-revived tour.”

A teacher in Colorado shows part of a video of Gounod’s Faust from a 33-year-old series titled “Who’s Afraid of Opera?” to about 260 first-, second- and third-graders. That set off a firestorm of controversy that has led to an investigation of the incident by school officials and a demand by some parents that the teacher be fired.

The Louisville Symphony and its musicians have decided to go to mediation over their contract . But management warns that “forestalling bankruptcy would involve ‘a complete rethinking of our relationship with the musicians, as well as the contract and the operating model for the orchestra’.”