Category: music

Says board of directors vice chairman Tony Bucci, “Last year, right, wrong, agree, disagree, ugly or nice, we confronted our problems.”

Kim Noltemy joins a small but growing group of female symphony CEOs, including the ones who run the orchestras in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit. But she also brings another possibly major change to the symphony. In her 21-year career with the BSO, Noltemy comes out of marketing and digital marketing in particular

“From time to time when driving in the High Sierra I’ll see amateur gold miners, panning in a river that 150 years ago gave up the best of its treasure to the first prospectors,” says the composer, “and I’ll be tempted to wonder if the image of these latter-day panners, hoping only for a tiny nugget, isn’t an illustration of my own predicament as a composer.”

The music director of the Vancouver Symphony (from which he departs next year) and popular guest conductor will succeed Keith Lockhart at the podium of the BBC Concert Orchestra this coming January. “Tovey’s new role will see him work with the orchestra for five years, including a Radio 3 concert at Watford Colosseum in February 2018, before leading performances in the BBC orchestra’s 2018-19 season at Southbank Centre.”

“Hiring a young composer for the summer to write a new work for this concert is an effective way to support new talent and emphasizes the need to nurture emerging creative voices for the future of concert music in Canada.”

ECM, which cared very much about sound quality, “was long a holdout against streaming services that have to contend with bandwidth limits and non-optimal soundcards in computers and phones, as well as deals that minimize the value of music.” Sadly, or perhaps luckily, it’s given in.

Not only that, but the classes slashed were taught by part-time faculty – and the chair of the music department resigned in disgust. “A former part-time faculty member himself, Toner said he feels especially bad for the adjunct music faculty who arranged their schedules to accommodate spring classes. As musicians trying to make a living in the small state of Vermont, Toner said many count on their salary of $1,900 per class credit to augment their incomes.”

Why hasn’t her music been appreciated before? Well, it’s kind of like John Lennon and Yoko Ono: “Her talents weren’t hugely appreciated in the 1960s. This was partly due to the man with whom she fell in love in 1963. John Coltrane became her husband two years later and asked her to step into his band – which coincided with the saxophonist’s move into freer, more atonal music.”

Thomas Morris, who has been artistic director of the California festival since 2004, has changed and – The New York Times adds – broadened the reach of Ojai, which has a different music director every year.