“Inaugurating a program to appoint a succession of female principal guest conductors, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has named New Zealander Gemma New the first woman to hold the revived title.” New, aged 31, is currently music director of the Hamilton (Ontario) Philharmonic and resident conductor of the St. Louis Symphony.
Category: music
Hiroshima Memorial Vandalized With Soccer Graffiti By Two Bulgarian Opera Staffers
During a visit to Hiroshima as part of the Sofia Opera and Ballet’s current tour of Japan, two backstage workers painted graffiti tags, including the name of a Sofia soccer team, on the memorial to the victims of the 1945 nuclear bombing. The offenders have been fired, and both the company and the Bulgarian government have apologized to the Japanese nation.
Chicago Symphony: Ticket Revenue Up, Subscribers Up, But A $900k Deficit
This marked the organization’s eighth consecutive deficit, but it was “an improvement of more than ($500,000)” over the previous fiscal year, according to a CSOA statement summarizing the institution’s annual report.
The Gender Gap In Top Orchestras Is Still Too Wide
“Quartz at Work examined the instruments played by the musicians of the world’s 20 greatest orchestras, as ranked by the UK’s Gramophone magazine [in 2008], to understand how gender shapes their composition.” The findings? Not only are the musician ranks as a whole predominantly male (69%), but with some instruments, the divide is much larger.
Trying To Give Kids The Opera Bug Really, Really Young
“Welcome to London’s Royal Opera House, where Opera Dots, a workshop for toddlers, aims to build a future fan base, one hop at a time. Beneath an elegant iron-and-glass ceiling, a group of young guests giggle on a multi-colored play mat as they mimic a costumed performer singing and dancing her way through Hansel and Gretel. Some of the children do boisterous impressions of a scary witch, luring the innocent pair into her house of sweets.”
‘Automation Divine’: Early Computer Music And The Selling Of The Cold War
“Matthew Guerrieri dives deep into something particular about the early days of computer music in the United States. It got its start, quite literally, in the off-hour downtime of the military-industrial complex.”
How Do You Make Music Accessible? This LA Phil Violinist Has Some Ideas
“It was our audiences in these spaces who would raise their hands and say ‘Well what was the composer feeling when they wrote that because I heard this.’ And then they would tell us a story or anecdote of their life that exactly reflected where the composer or where we as performers exactly were in our emotional life. So this was actually one of the most astute and emphatic and engaged audiences that we’d encountered in our lives.”
Lyric Opera Of Chicago Orchestra Strike Is Over — What Did The Strikers Get Out Of It?
Not that much. “In two major respects — fewer weeks of work and a smaller permanent orchestra — the agreement was in line with what management had been seeking. But the musicians noted that … further cancellations would be destructive for everyone involved; and that a long strike would hurt their colleagues in the company’s other unions, which had already agreed to new labor deals when the orchestra walked out.”
Small UK Music Venues Are Shutting Down. Is It Because Of Robots?
“Music has become very open source. The channels in which you discover new artists have changed drastically. We can’t have our culture curated by robots; it has to be people who know what they’re talking about. We need cultural wayfinders who are willing to take risks.”
Music That Explores What Gentrification “Sounds” Like
With an ensemble of six vocalists and 18 instrumentalists, the 80-minute “Place” obliquely yet obsessively mulls gentrification; displacement; the powers and limitations of white male privilege; and the intersection of shifts in communities and families, including the birth of Mr. Hearne’s children and the breakup of his marriage.