Category: music

North Carolina’s Asheville Symphony is looking for a new music director for the first time in 22 years, and it has narrowed its search to three candidates. Nothing unusual there, but the orchestra’s method of evaluating the finalists is something quite different from the usual behind-closed-doors insider review. “After their performances, the conductors will each be rated by the 12-member search committee and an informal board of consultants of about two dozen people in the community who are reasonably knowledgeable about music and the symphony.” In other words, the audience gets a quantifiable voice in the hiring process.

According to a new documentary, Mozart may have suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome. Researchers believe that the composer “self-medicated” his condition with his music, able to control his tics so long as he was absorbed in his art. The documentary highlights Mozart’s “inability to rein in impulses, the sudden boredom, his sense of mischief and his scatalogical obsession, which all point to Tourette’s.”

The English National Opera will take the unusual step of launching its 2005-06 season with a potentially controversial new opera by Irish composer Gerald Barry. The work, entitled The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, concerns “lesbian love, passion and jealousy set against the backdrop of a fashion studio,” and will feature an all-female cast. The ENO’s new artistic director, Seán Doran, has made it clear that he intends to put his own stamp on the troubled company, and plans to mount at least two new works each season.

Twenty-five years in the making, “German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s epic Licht cycle is to be staged in its entirety for the first time. The European Centre for the Arts Hellerau in Dresden will stage the 29-hour piece in 2008 to coincide with Stockhausen’s 80th birthday.”

“Educators and others agree that early and regular exposure is the key to developing a child’s true appreciation for music. … The music appreciation process should be fun, too, experts say. But whatever form of music you seek to promote with your children, there are time-tested rules: expose them to the music early and often; make music a recurring positive experience; and be creative.”

With its Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts due to open in fall 2006, Toronto is heading toward a richer operatic future, more like that of another opera-mad North American city. “What made San Franciscans so susceptible to the plight of consumptive sopranos and murdered tenors? Sheer exposure has had a great deal to do with it. Since the War Memorial Opera House threw open its many doors in 1932, the city of the Golden Gate has possessed what most cities on this continent still lack, a house specifically designed to accommodate the stage works of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner.”

Lip-synching is back in the news, thanks to a recent Elton John tirade against Madonna’s acceptance of an award for “best live act.” But as pop stars continue to protest that they would never think of miming their songs, a consensus is building that, for the most part, it doesn’t actually matter whether the biggest stars sing or not. After all, in today’s world of high-gloss glitter pop, no one is really buying a ticket because of the vocal talents of the performers. A Britney Spears (or Madonna, or Christina, or Ashlee, or whomever) show isn’t about music – it’s about selling an image, and the singing is well and truly secondary.

A rescue effort is underway for the beleagured Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, led by veteran record producer Andrew Cornall, who has been named the orchestra’s executive director and given wide-ranging power to make changes in the organization. The appointment is seen as a move away from a structure which placed responsibility for programming largely in the hands of the music director. The Phil’s current MD, Gerard Schwarz, was recently informed that his contract would not be renewed.