Category: music

There are so few African-Americans and Hispanics in the classical music world that almost no one is willing to even talk seriously about the problem, let alone make any real effort to change it. But in Dallas, the Young Strings program, founded by members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra with the aim of providing mentoring and professional training to young minority musicians, is starting to pay dividends. Young Strings alumni are pursuing degrees at Juilliard, Oberlin, and other top conservatories, and the program is still going strong in Texas.

“Recently, there have been signs all over the place that the wall between classical and rock music is finally beginning to crumble. If much of this development is due to the rise of a better class of rockers who have warmed up to Olivier Messiaen, a lot of it is also owed to an eagerness by young classical musicians to get down and lighten up. Not surprisingly, the classical prime movers are two California maestros — [LA Philharmonic conductor Esa-Pekka] Salonen in Los Angeles and his counterpart with the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas—and the Golden State’s unofficial composer in residence, John Adams.”

The hardest part about guiding an orchestra through a fiscal crisis is that the clock does not stop while you do it. In Savannah, where the Savannah Symphony has canceled the remainder of its season, and is trying to regroup in time for the next one, the challenges are myriad, and the leadership is still at a bit of a loss as to how much can be done without some sort of large cash infusion. According to the orchestra’s chairman, it will soon be too late to book soloists and sell tickets for a 2003-04 season. Furthermore, if the ensemble does survive, it will need an entirely new set of leaders, and those type of management saviors don’t exactly grow on trees.

The Paris Opera has been getting bad reviews from critics of the newspaper Le Monde. So the company has pulled its advertising from the paper. “Le Monde appreciates almost none of our productions, with its critics describing the Opera’s current productions as ‘old-fashioned’ and lacking all spirit of innovation. In these conditions it would be inhuman to impose paid advertisements on Le Monde inviting the public to see shows it condemns so forcefully.”

Five years ago the Alabama Symphony was in bankruptcy. And with no executive director currently and a music director preparing to depart, ticket sales and endowment down, the orchestra is working hard to keep things going. “Yet in the face of reports nationwide of unprecedented deficits, curtailed seasons, canceled concerts, layoffs and bankruptcies, ASO is holding up quite nicely, thanks to loyal support from corporate sponsors and dedicated board members and musicians.”

Sony CEO Andy Lack, who succeeded Thomas D. Mottola about three months ago, “plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs in the United States and abroad as part of a broad cost-reduction plan that would try to cut expenses by more than $100 million a year, people close to the company said yesterday.”

It had been 30 years since Roy McDonald had played as an extra in Ottawa’s National Arts Center Orchestra. So when he was asked to audition for an extra role in Symphony Nova Scotia, he was flattered…and a lot nervous. But “I was told the audition would be casual, which I incorrectly interpreted to mean friendly. I pictured me and the conductor in a brightly lit rehearsal hall – introductions would be made, smiles, a couple of handshakes, and then someone would say, ‘OK, Mr. McDonald, let’s hear you take a whack at the Beethoven.’ I had also imagined I would steadfastly avoid falling into the trap of getting nervous: I had nothing to lose.” Boy was he wrong.

Rupert Christiansen ventures to a London club to sample the new phenomenon of “chill” music. “It sounded vile. I hasten to add that I write this without prejudice. I may be the paper’s opera critic, but I am not a musical purist. Some opera bores me rigid, and there’s plenty of rock and pop, from the Beach Boys to Coldplay, that I adore. But, as demonstrated by Anne Dudley and the BBC Concert Orchestra, classical chillout struck me as execrable. The Trades Description Act should be invoked: classical fallout would be a more appropriate and accurate title. Essentially, the two-hour performance consisted of nothing more than a medley of tunes mangled through samplers and synthesisers and then spewed out at a pitch of amplified volume associated with nuclear explosions.”

Striking musicians of the Houston Symphony are voting on a tentative settlement in the 23-day-old strike. The deal was reached Sunday afternoon after “an intense weekend of negotiations” mediated by a representative of Houston Mayor Lee P. Brown.

As good a movie as Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” is, it fails in representing the music, writes David Patrick Stearns. “How could anybody emerge from five horrific years of hard labor and starvation in World War II Warsaw with such clean, crisp, emotionally unclouded renditions of Chopin?” The answer? They couldn’t, and the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose memoir was the basis of the film, was profoundly changed, and with it his performances. “Such performances gain impact because the music’s lack of specificity allows it to be invaded by meaning in unpremeditated ways. Popular music, in contrast, has a verbal element that can serve as a political rallying point, but one that can render the music obsolete.”