Category: music

“I don’t know if I will be singing… who knows how long I will be singing,” he said. But “I think the public likes it and the board likes it. So we will see.”

“Mr. Spano took a step that music directors rarely take, and weighed in on the negotiations. He and Donald Runnicles, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, wrote a letter in which they said, ‘We ask the board and management to acknowledge the sacrifice the musicians have already made, and to examine other ways and areas to establish sustainability.'”

“Though he has a license from the city, he’s received tickets for using public property for storage after putting down his spare clarinet on a sidewalk while he played, and for ‘super noise’ while playing his clarinet without an amp on Michigan Avenue. On multiple occasions he has been to court, where judges throw out the case every time.”

“The resignation, reportedly tendered via letter to Vienna State Opera artistic director Dominique Meyer, was said to be effective immediately and leaves the company without a conductor for several new and revived productions in the 2014-15 season.”

“Once [Jeff] Alexander takes command, he will have his work cut out for him.” Deborah Rutter really is a tough act to follow. But, writes John von Rhein, though Alexander hasn’t (yet) been as high-profile as, say, Rutter or Deborah Borda or Alison Vulgamore, he has plenty of experience that will stand him in good stead.

“Today on The Gist, cellist Maya Beiser tells us how her rebellious streak led her out of the classical concert hall and into the arms of classic rock.” (podcast)

Prominent figures from the classical music world have united to condemn the excision of new music from the televised Proms. Susanna Eastburn, the chief executive of Sound and Music, the national agency for new music, said it was “a policy-by-implication which assumes that audiences won’t like new music, and that it’s not valued by the BBC”.

David Patrick Stearns: “Symphony orchestras draw great cachet from their geographical homes: Any group with Vienna, Berlin, or Amsterdam in its name is going to command immediate attention from audiences … So can an orchestra from Turkey, Iceland, or Lapland hope to be noticed at the world’s busiest orchestra festival, [the BBC Proms]? Actually, it can.”

“Partch’s masterpiece is the bizarre 1960s music drama Delusion of the Fury. It is outlandish and magnificent and … if it is hardly ever staged that’s because it can’t be: it requires its very own orchestra of hand-built instruments, each one specially invented by Partch to play his unique microtonal music.” But Goebbels – who has created a few insane music-theater spectacles of his own in his day – pulled it off.

“We must avoid the residue of discord and acrimony. The concept that stopping the music — whether characterized as lockout or strike — as a reasonable alternative is unfathomable, deeply divisive, and would be a tragic mistake.” – See more at: