Category: music

“The publicly funded group is lurching into the third major financial crisis in recent history after its biggest-ever donation recently fell apart, leaving it with a massive deficit for the 2013-14 season.”

Kyung Wha Chung made headlines internationally when, during her big London comeback recital, she said to the parents of a coughing child, “Maybe bring her back when she’s older.” She explains herself in a guest column for The Guardian.

“Just two years ago, the future of the eight-decades-old orchestra seemed iffy. Cash-strapped and with its musicians and management at odds over a new contract, the ISO board canceled the first two weeks of the 2012-13 season. … Now, fortunes are rebounding. After three consecutive years of shrinking, ticket sales for 2013-14 rose to $7.5 million from $6.4 million the previous year.”

“The composer usually is first to come aboard, even in the most unconventional operas. However, the appointment of Opera Philadelphia’s now-in-process ANDY: A Popera composer Dan Visconti was only announced this week – for a piece that has already had public workshop performances by the Philadelphia cabaret group the Bearded Ladies.”

“Culture Minister Marianne Jelved said on Tuesday that she has signed a new public-service agreement with broadcaster DR that will see the 42-person orchestra shut down as planned. Jelved said that although a majority of parliament was against the closing of the orchestra, politicians were unable to come up with a realistic alternative for funding it.”

Stephen Jay Carlson, former executive director of the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra in Silicon Valley, faces such a long sentence for a nonviolent offense because of a prior conviction – on a rather lurid charge.

Peter Phillips, director of the Tallis Scholars: “The standard of singing in our liturgical and concert choirs has steadily gone up, to the point where many non-Christian composers now feel able to express themselves fully writing for them. … Sacred choral music has aligned itself with orchestral and operatic composition as an accepted medium for contemporary thought.”

“Traditions, styles, vernaculars—so many new pieces I hear these days pledge allegiance to some form of authenticity, some repertoire, some community. A lot of times, such pieces are the result of a deep engagement with the cited style on the part of composer and performer; a lot of times, it’s simply an expression of momentary curiosity. But much of the listener’s intended satisfaction is to come from the feeling that the experience has been both unfamiliar and authentic. In other words: the ideal tourist experience.”

John Luther Adam’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean and John (Coolidge) Adams’s City Noir are both up for awards, as are the beleaguered Atlanta Symphony, the up-and-coming Seattle Symphony, 86-year-old pianist Leon Fleisher, and Partch (the percussion ensemble, not the late American composer/hobo).