“In an interview with The Washington Post, principal oboe player Katherine Needleman said that Jonathan Carney, the orchestra’s concertmaster, approached her for sex when the orchestra was on tour in 2005 and, since she rejected him, has engaged in a consistent pattern of retaliation: ‘daily hostility and efforts to undermine [my] work and authority,’ she said, ‘combined with physical intimidation and threats.'”
Category: music
Toronto Symphony Selects Its Next Music Director
“Starting with the 2020-21 season — the orchestra’s 99th — the new music director will be Gustavo Gimeno, a 42-year-old native of Valencia, Spain, who has been serving as music director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015. His TSO contract will be for five years. Sir Andrew Davis, who was music director from 1975 to 1988, is acting as interim artistic director.”
Sony Claims It “Owns” Music By JS Bach
Last week, James Rhodes recorded a short video of himself playing a portion of Bach’s first Partita and posted it to Facebook. Bach died in 1750, so the music is obviously in the public domain. But that didn’t stop Sony from claiming the rights to the audio in Partita’s video. “Your video matches 47 seconds of audio owned by Sony Music Entertainment,” said a notice Rhodes received on Facebook. Facebook responded by muting the audio in Rhodes’ video.
American Orchestras Discover Women Composers
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, and a growing consensus that the creators of the 21st century’s cultural artifacts cannot exclusively be white males, some of America’s most prominent ensembles are programming more works by women than ever before.
How Old Is Too Old For Orchestra Musicians?
“We should expect to see an age-related decline in performance after the age of 40,” the study says. “This is borne out by the answers given by the musicians surveyed. On average, 41 percent of orchestral musicians have noticed at least once that their performance has declined due to age-related factors.”
British Musician Lily Allen Details Assault By Record Industry Executive, And Says It’s ‘Rife’ In The Music Industry
Allen is frustrated “that she did not confront or report the man’s behaviour, and carried on working with him, explaining that she felt silenced because he had more power and money than her, and that she feared being labelled ‘hysterical’ and a ‘difficult woman.'” And she says she’s far from alone.
The New York Phil Dismisses Two Players For ‘Misconduct’
The dismissal of its principal oboist, Liang Wang, and associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, is on hold while the union investigates, but the musicians are on unpaid leave. “The orchestra said in a terse statement only that after it had received reports that the two players had ‘engaged in misconduct,’ it retained Barbara S. Jones, an attorney at Bracewell and a former federal judge, to investigate. An orchestra official said the investigation took five months.”
Does Technology Make For Far, Far Better Piano Lessons?
Online lessons have changed the way many students learn the piano, especially jazz – and maybe made learning better and faster. Perhaps there is “something about the peculiar intimacy of the online lesson — the way it permits a student to scrutinize a teacher’s subtlest movements — that has transformed the learning process.”
The Cleveland Orchestra Suspends Another Player, Its Principal Trombonist, For Harassment
The trombonist, Massimo La Rosa, has filed his own lawsuit “accusing two people of defamation for alleging that he ‘had committed and was criminally culpable for multiple sexual assaults on numerous college campuses [where La Rosa] had been invited to serve as a guest instructor.’ The orchestra did not specify whether the current suspension was related to the same or similar allegations.”
It’s The End, Or Beginning, Of An Era: The Met Will Perform On Sundays
Whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Yep: “The unions representing the Met’s orchestra, chorus and several other groups finished ratifying a new contract this week that will pave the way to a change, as the company, facing a worrisome decline in attendance, has realized that audiences find it increasingly difficult to squeeze in lengthy operas on weeknights.”