Category: music

Paul Daniel, who has been mujsic director of the English National Opera for eight years, is quitting. The troubled company has just come through a rocky 18 months. “Mr Daniel has been unhappy at ENO since the mid-2002 resignation of Nicholas Payne, its general director. ‘It’s been hard to square what’s happened over the past 18 months. I’ve been emotionally caught up in this. The change has been pretty distressing.”

“The Annenberg Foundation has given $3.5 million to the Metropolitan Opera to help keep its treasured Saturday afternoon live radio broadcasts on the air next season, the opera company said yesterday. The money, it said, is the largest gift ever made to the Met’s annual-giving fund. The contribution is a response to ChevronTexaco’s decision in May to withdraw its support after the 2003-4 season, ending a 63-year relationship that has been the longest continuous commercial sponsorship in broadcast history… But the Annenberg gift takes the Met only halfway there, and for only one year; the broadcasts cost the Met $7 million a year, so another single corporate sponsor is still being sought to replace ChevronTexaco.”

The Bottom Line, New York’s famous Greenwich Village nightclub, has been ordered to shut its doors by the end of the week, and to pay $190,171 in back rent to New York University. NYU had been seeking to raise the club’s rent by more than 100%, a move which club owners fought in court. Previous reports suggested that NYU may convert the space to classrooms or offices.

Andrew Litton, who has been music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 1994, has announced that he will leave the post when his current contract expires in 2006. In his time in Texas, Litton has hired nearly 1/3 of the DSO’s musicians, and taken the ensemble to national prominence as one of the top American orchestras. Litton says he intends to devote more time to conducting opera and developing children’s television programs about music. He will also continue to hold his current conducting positions in Minneapolis and Bergen, Norway.

Former pop singer Myleene Klass – now trying to make a career in classical music, says classical music has to get hipper, not dumber: “Donning a leather jacket doesn’t just suddenly make you accessible, it is the whole package. I think that’s what the classical world needs to give. Let’s get everything to the same edgy degree that the pop world’s got at, because it looks stronger on the television – none of this soft-focus classical nonsense. Let’s make it edgy, let’s make it current, let’s make it exciting.”

Klezmer is big right now, and becoming more popular. “It is now not only respectable, becoming an academic discipline and the beneficiary of generous Lottery funding through the Millennium Commission, it is also a flourishing part of our new, spiritual age.”

So older people are buying more music. But what are they buying? Nostalgia. “Truth is, I can name at least 25 albums released in 2003 that would please any seasoned rock and pop listener who thinks of music as something more than a soundtrack for dinner with undiscerning guests. But most rock fans my age won’t find it easy to hear them because the major labels have concluded we’re an unadventurous lot and won’t bother to try to reach us. Instead of congratulating themselves on finding ways to sell the same old same old, record execs should realize there are thousands, maybe millions, of us who want it rough, raw and risky, brash, bold and beautiful, as exciting as New Year’s Eve.”

The Banff Centre has announced the appointment of David Hoyt as the new artistic director of its Music & Sound programs. Hoyt’s background is as a musician, and he has most recently been artistic director and resident conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Banff hosts one of North America’s best-known summer music festivals.

If ever there were a sign that the current North American orchestral “crisis” does not signal the inevitable demise of the form, the Nashville Symphony is it. As other mid-sized orchestras around the country file for bankruptcy, issue general panic alerts, and beg the public for short-term emergency cash infusions, Nashville has quietly and competently gone about raising $100 million of the $120 million it needs to build a new concert hall in the city’s vibrant downtown. Construction begins this week, and the hall, which will seat 1,900 and be owned by the orchestra, is expected to be completed by the beginning of the 2006-07 season.

Since the end of major combat in Iraq, the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra has gotten a fair amount of press coverage for its dedication and commitment to continuing to perform, even as the country struggles for the bare essentials of life. Still, while the INSO may be a hard-working bunch, they lack many of the basic necessities of a professional orchestra: most notably, a readable collection of written parts for the players. Hearing of the problem, the orchestral librarians of Dallas and Fort Worth have spent the last few months leading a nationwide movement to supply the Iraqis with sheet music. So far, hundreds of works have been donated, and the librarians aren’t done yet.