Category: music

The board of the tiny La Crosse (Wisconsin) Symphony Orchestra has thought better of its decision to terminate conductor Amy Mills, after some board members complained that the process which led to the vote ousting Mills was underhanded and unfair. Mills’s current contract runs through next season, which will be her tenth with the ensemble, and the board’s reversal opens the door for her to negotiate a new deal, despite artistic conflicts with some of the ensemble’s musicians.

When composer Harrison Birtwistle put out the call for a “gloomy poet” to write the libretto for his next opera, Stephen Plaice, who prefers to think of himself as “lyrical and ironic,” found himself with the job. Over the ensuing three years, a story emerged which blends Greek myth with disturbing sexual undertones and a complex relationship which ended before the opera begins. It’s a process that few opera lovers ever think about, but a successful relationship between librettist and composer can mean the difference between success and failure.

The Jacksonville Symphony, which has been running massive deficits in recent years, rode an 18% rise in single ticket sales and a 23% uptick in donations to a break-even season for 2003-04. The orchestra’s endowment also performed better than expected, allowing the organization to begin digging out from under the multi-million dollar debt it had amassed.

Buffalo Philharmonic CEO Larry Ribits has apparently been fired, only days before the conclusion of the orchestra’s season. Official word from the Philharmonic’s board chairman is that the abrupt departure was Ribits’s own decision, but the head of the musicians’ union is publicly questioning that stance, and is also pointing out that no musicians, even those who serve on the board, were informed of the decision until Wednesday morning. Ribits’s fate may have been decided this past weekend, while he and the BPO were in New York City for a concert at Carnegie Hall.

“The music industry is scared out of its mind. The mass sharing of music files that exploded on the internet could transfer to mobile networks. The advent of high-speed 3G networks and mobile phones with complex operating systems, Bluetooth and massive storage capacity, could create another “perfect storm”, hurting profits further.”

“The BBC will transmit 16 performances on television over the next four years, backed by documentaries such as an Imagine special on the ROH’s music director, Antonio Pappano, while Radio 3 will broadcast 48 productions. It is a significant commitment for the BBC, not just in terms of airtime but also logistics: for each opera and ballet the BBC records, they talk to the director, choreographer and designer, then rehearse one or two performances before recording a third.”

“Bayreuth is again in the news, thanks to the withdrawal of iconoclastic Danish film-maker Lars von Trier from the 2006 Ring. Von Trier’s Ring would have been a splashy event, making headlines well beyond the opera world. He had already worked on the project for two years. Stage mock-ups were to have begun this month. But The Ring has defeated him. This week he was forced to admit he couldn’t realise his ideas within the limitations of a theatre. Given Von Trier’s evocations on film of psychological awareness and the tangled webs of family (Dogville, The Idiots), he was an inspired choice – but an extremely risky one. He said he preferred David Bowie to Wagner. He had no record in theatre or opera.”

Cellist Matt Haimovitz on playing classical music in pop music clubs: “There’s a certain kind of music that, for me, belongs in an intimate space. There’s something authentic about playing Bach in a club. We’re always talking about authentic performances, but for me there’s something wrong with putting baroque music in a place like Roy Thomson Hall. It’s much more appropriate in a smaller setting — in something like the coffeehouses Bach was familiar with.”

A growing chorus of critics is demanding that Scottish Opera boss Duncan McGhie resign, after the company was told of a draconian plan to downsize. Critics “accuse the management of repeatedly failing to steer Scottish Opera out of financial trouble and running up a £4.5 million debt that forced first the Scottish Arts Council and then the Executive to step in.”

“A German orchestra was threatened with dismissal after instrumentalists mutinied over having to play the communist anthem, the Internationale, for an audience of blue-collar car-assembly workers”