Category: music

The piano competition is undergoing a “a top to bottom evaluation” of its operations and is temporarily putting on hold all activities, even outreach programs such as “Hammers, Strings & Keys.” The reason, is to “have time to seriously consider the most appropriate sustainable artistic and economic model going forward.”

“If Le Poisson Rouge is cool and Roulette is edgy among New York’s alternative venues, where does that put the crypt at the Church of the Intercession at 155th Street and Broadway? Slightly underground, with a performance area framed by discreet stained glass, dramatically vaulted ceiling and intimate seating capacity for 100, in the inaugural season of The Crypt Sessions.”

The honorees include three singers now at the peak of their careers – Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Elīna Garanča – and two revered veterans, Waltraud Meier and José van Dam.

Kaija Saariaho will be the featured composer: Sellars will stage Only the Sound Remains, her setting of Ezra Pound’s adaptation of two Noh plays, and the chamber version of La Passion de Simone. Also planned are works by Caroline Shaw and Tania León, Tyshawn Sorey’s new Josephine Baker: A Personal Portrait, performances by Egyptian and South Indian classical vocalists, and – for the first time at Ojai – free concerts for families.

“When Gotham Chamber Opera closed this fall, it looked like one of the casualties would be the New York premiere of Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, the ambitious new work it had co-commissioned with Opera Philadelphia …But thanks to fast work by Opera Philadelphia and the Apollo, which teamed up to save the production, New Yorkers will get to hear [the piece] after all.”

“In fiscal 2015, its push to remain viable and relevant paid off in the forms of higher attendance, endowment growth, and record-setting levels of philanthropy. … The surplus came despite the release of thousands of free and steeply discounted tickets. … No longer are youthful crowds just a ‘Fridays@7’ or Family series phenomenon.”

“It looked like the first night of La Scala’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Joan of Arc had gone off without a hitch.” But no. On a backstage audio recording later broadcast on national radio, “‘I’m here, congratulations maestro, really congratulations,’ Leiser can be heard saying in English. After a pause, he then screams ‘asshole’.”

“Kasper Holten, the Royal Opera’s director of opera since 2011, has announced he will leave Covent Garden in 2017 in order to be closer to family in Denmark. … The departure appears to be entirely amicable.”

“I said all of us will perform together or we will leave the hall. Some tried to resolve the problem but eventually they said the women cannot be allowed to perform, so I said we will not perform.”