“I don’t like the whole system, the way American symphonies are organized,” he said last week, speaking by Skype from Berlin, where he and his family (he has two young sons) are now largely based. He has made no secret of his views, telling interviewers that orchestras have to change or risk dying out. The rest of the world, increasingly, is hailing him as a visionary.
Category: music
We Thought We’d Never Hear Górecki’s Fourth Symphony. Now We Can – And It’s A Knockout
Everyone had thought that the Polish composer – whose Third Symphony actually hit the pop charts in 1992, 15 years after it was written – hadn’t completed the Fourth when he died in 2010. Turns out he did – and Mark Swed says it’s “a major symphony and possibly a great one.”
Florida Grand Opera’s Ft. Lauderdale Season May Be Saved
Two weeks ago the company announced that, due to a sharp drop in support there in recent years, it was no longer viable to travel from Miami to perform at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Now an anonymous donor’s matching grant may make the difference.
Wait, Someone’s Launching A New Radio Show All About The Nitty-Gritty Details Of Jazz?
Yep: “What instantly sets ‘MusicHeads’ apart from other jazz shows is the format: Barber converses with fellow musicians before asking them to perform musical examples solo and alongside her. In effect, we in the radio audience are eavesdropping on a dialogue among peers.”
As An Orchestra Turns More Professional In Tennessee, A Patron Laments The Loss Of Local Talent
After a patron writes a letter (which you can read here) calling West Tennessee’s Jackson Symphony “random good musicians hired from all over” and lamenting a lack of local music teachers on stage at the concerts, the Symphony responds with a letter that involves donors, standards, and football.
Los Angeles Hosts A Hyperlocal, Modern ‘Figaro’
“Sung in English and Spanish, which are intertwined to create clever rhymes, ‘¡Figaro! (90210)’ finds the titular hero working in Beverly Hills as an undocumented gardener. The basic plot remains the same–a lecherous boss tries to seduce his employee’s fiancée on the eve of her wedding–but Guerriero has reimagined the characters as distinct L.A. archetypes.”
City Opera Bidders Are Getting Ready To Lay It All On The Line
“In one corner is Roy Niederhoffer, a former City Opera board member backing a plan to reboot the company under the direction of Michael Capasso, the head of a small Manhattan opera company in the process of being wound down. In the other is Gene Kaufman, an architect who has also expressed interest in restarting City Opera but whose prior proposals have failed to win favor with the defunct company’s board.”
Is The Oscar-Nominated Film ‘Whiplash’ Good Or Bad For Musician Mentorship?
“The reactions to the movie seem to occupy the extremes, and it sparks healthy debate among my peers. Where is the fine line between motivating someone and abusing them? Will this movie make young jazz musicians think that all you need to do to become the next Bird is work really hard, get yelled at, and practice till you bleed? Is this portrayal of the teacher-student dynamic helpful or harmful?”
Alabama Symphony Chooses New Music Director
Carlos Izcaray, a Venezuelan-born conductor, 37, “has been announced as the new music director of the 53-member orchestra, taking over the baton from previous director Justin Brown. Izcaray, who lives in Germany, will move to Alabama with his family later this year and begin his official tenure as maestro in September.”
So How Are The Acoustics At Paris’s New Concert Hall?
Tom Service: “If the other 2,399 seats are as good as the one I was sitting in, I think that the Philharmonie could be one of the most dynamic and exciting places to hear orchestral music in the world – as well as the most fun simply to sit in, thanks to the combination of intimacy and imagination of the interior.”