Category: music

The Australian Pops Orchestra is going out of business after failing to find a sponsor. “The orchestra, which also performs as the Australian Philharmonic Orchestra, will play its final concert on New Year’s Eve. It has a long line of credits, having played behind Jose Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. Managing director Kel McMillan says it is a big disappointment ahead of the orchestra’s 25th anniversary year.”

Musicians protest the “virtual orchestra. “It produces sounds amazingly similar to orchestral voices. But is it an instrument or merely a fancy mechanical substitute? Musicians who claim to be put out of work by the thing sneeringly call it a machine.” But the device’s inventors call it an instrument, not a substitute for musicians. “You could say that a flute is a machine, because it is a device that must be operated by a person in order to do its job. But we call flutes – and violins and trombones – musical instruments.”

Matthew Epstein’s departure from his job as artistic director of Chicago Lyric Opera was a surprise. Does it signal a change of direction for the company? “Clashing personalities may be a factor in Epstein’s departure. Artistic differences certainly play their part. Without a doubt, he could once again set himself up as a powerhouse consultant to opera companies and artists. We can hope that his longtime friends and new clients won’t boycott Lyric out of some sense of personal loyalty. With or without Epstein, it remains one of the world’s great opera houses. Whether it remains one of its most exciting only time will tell.”

Lawrence Johnson has a complaint against a growing practice at concerts he attends of concert organizers getting up and giving speeches. “This kind of superfluous chatter is, at a minimum, distracting and annoying, and frequently crosses the line to being crass and provincial.”

The new six-volume “Oxford History of Western Music” was 13 years in the making. Despite its bulk, it may seem to pale in comparison with, say, the 29-volume second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, of 2001, but that represented the work of more than 2,500 writers. This is the work of one, Richard Taruskin, a music historian at the University of California at Berkeley, who has been an occasional contributor to Arts & Leisure and other publications.

When RCA decided to end its contract with the Boston Pops, the orchestra decided to go into the recording business itself. “That means there’s no big record company to pick up the tab for studio time, promotion, and even pressing new CDs. Instead, the Pops have gone into the recording business, laying out money normally provided by a label. This is the new business model, and it’s risky. It’s why conductor Keith Lockhart is being trotted out for 18 signings this holiday season.”

“Even after a contract extension, Pittsburgh Opera artistic director Christopher Hahn continues to be talked about as a top candidate to succeed Pamela Rosenberg as general director of the San Francisco Opera.” Neither Hahn nor the San Francisco company are talking publicly about the rumors, but with Chicago Lyric Opera also now seeking a new artistic director, SFO may want to move quickly to secure Hahn’s services.

Conductor Jeffrey Kahane will have some big shoes to fill when he takes over as musid director of the Colorado Symphony next fall. For better or for worse, the CSO has been identified for a decade as Marin Alsop’s orchestra, due in large part to Alsop’s blossoming international reputation over those years. Kahane may not be as outsized a personality as Alsop, but he has some definite ideas about where his new orchestra needs to go. “One thing is the way in which the orchestra is central to the life of a community. That the orchestra is not just there to entertain, although that’s part of what we do, but to provide a sort of spiritual core to the cultural life of the community.”

A scathing internal report on the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s purchase of more than two dozen rare string instruments from now-imprisoned philanthropist Herbert Axelrod has concluded that the orchestra ignored warning signs that the collection was not worth what Axelrod claimed, fast-tracked the purchase in order to meet a deadline that did not exist, and deliberately misled the public and its own trustees throughout the process. The report singles out NJSO president Lawrence Tamburri, who has since jumped to the Pittsburgh Symphony, saying that he kept reports of Axelrod’s legal troubles to himself, and ignored serious questions of authenticity raised by experts engaged by the orchestra.

Beijing’s controversial National Theatre is under construction but facing budget problems. “Shaped like a tear drop, the silvery theater — made of glass and titanium — once sparked controversy on whether such an modern design was appropriate for the center of Beijing. The project met numerous obstacles before finally gaining approval — now it faces budget troubles.”