Category: music

Sophie Hunter, an opera director and actor who happens to be married to Benedict Cumberbatch, “sees no real distinction between her niche work in opera and the kind of commercial success that her husband enjoys in films such as The Imitation Game or in next month’s production of Hamlet at the Barbican, for which all but ‘on the day’ tickets sold out quickly. ‘My job now is to make work, to tell stories,’ Hunter said.”

“Awadagin Pratt has been relieved of his position of artistic director of the Cincinnati World Piano Competition. The leadership shakeup also includes three board members – including the chairman – who have resigned.”

“His departure comes after a difficult year for the increasingly beleaguered ENO. A 29% cut to its public funding was announced in July 2014. In January this year, the company’s chairman, Martyn Rose, stood down after writing, in a subsequently leaked letter, that the artistic director was part of the problem not the solution. Weeks later executive director Henriette Götz also resigned after disagreements with Berry.”

“Those who squarely blame him for the company’s current organisational meltdown will be heartily glad to see him go when he quits his post at the end of next week, but there is no doubt that he has shown bravado and imagination in his programming and pulled off some tremendous coups.”

“The RCM’s research is important in backing up the hunch that many of us will have always had about how music can make you feel better in some circumstances. But that’s not the main reason it matters, and it shouldn’t become a central plank of the ongoing arguments around its cultural importance and value.”

“The economics of festivals are finely poised. These events wobble on a knife-edge between glorious success and ignominious bankruptcy, and looking at where the money goes is a sobering undertaking.”

“So now that three decades have passed since this alleged attempt by Satan to infiltrate young brains via eardrum-shattering sounds, how are those headbangers doing? Did their punishingly loud and intense music send them spiraling into lives of despair?”

Ekaterina Bakanova was already in the house rehearsing her upcoming debut (as Musetta) and she’d been planning to attend Traviata that night anyway. Then her colleague Sonya Yoncheva became ill.

“On one hand, times are relatively good for American composers. Gifted, young contemporary ensembles are hungry for the music of gifted, young—and not so young—American composers, and they’re playing it in concert halls, churches, and cafés all over the world. But there’s a lost generation or two or three at the heart of 20th-century American classical music, and that loss feels particularly grievous as July 4, 2015, rolls around.”