Tag: 01.30.03

Ray Charles Won’t Cross Springs Picket Line

Legendary bluesman Ray Charles has cancelled an appearance in Colorado Springs this weekend, citing the presence of the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra, which was sponsoring the event, on the “Unfair List” of the musicians’ union. Charles is a longtime union stalwart who appeared on the cover of a recent issue of the national union’s monthly newspaper. The CSSO is in the midst of an acrimonious dispute with its musicians over the future of the organization. The two sides are hoping to agree to third-party mediation in the near future.

The New Castrati?

There are, of course, no more castrati, male singers castrated in their youth so as to preserve their high, immature voices. And while no one would ever suggest a return to the barbaric practice, music historians have long lamented the loss of the unique sound such performers produced. In the last century, the parts originally written for castrati have been largely sung by countertenors, men singing in highly developed falsetto. But many of the most difficult Baroque castrato operas have been all but abandoned for lack of skilled enough performers in the countertenor range. Until now.

Pakistani Police Hassle Musicians

Pakistani musicians near the Afghanistan border say police are harrassing musicians. “Several artists in Peshawar, North West Frontier Province, said they have been arrested and treated unfairly by police on the request of hardline Islamic parties. They claim it is part of a move to crack down on the arts by a six-party alliance of religious parties.”

Tulsa Phil To Shutter

Another small American orchestra is expected to shut its doors forever in the next few weeks. The Tulsa Philharmonic, the only full-time professional orchestra in Oklahoma, is struggling under a $1 million accumulated debt, and is not planning to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The orchestra has been playing concerts for 54 years.

The Rembrandt Behind The Paint

Researchers have discovered a Rembrandt self-portrait that was altered by an assistant 300 years ago. “The original portrait from 1634, painted when Rembrandt was 28, was later painted over, apparently by a student in Rembrandt’s studio. The student added earrings, a goatee, shoulder-length hair and a velvet cap to make it appear to be a Russian aristocrat. The restored portrait shows the Dutch master with medium-length curly hair, a slightly upturned mustache and a beret. In it, Rembrandt’s portrait has the familiar round chin and gentle eyes of many other self studies.”

Inside Nureyev

Robert Tracy was Nureyev’s lover for seven year before Nureyev’s death, and for the past 10 years has refused to talk about his friend. Now he is. “He heard Nureyev talk in private about his anxieties over his fading youthfulness, about the women he had slept with, about his longing to have fathered a son. On January 6 1993, Nureyev died at the age of 53 from Aids, a diagnosis which was kept secret until the morning after his death. Tracy has never accepted this diagnosis. He believes his friend, like other gays, was the victim of poisoning by governments.”

New Music – Reluctance To Take Risks

In the next six months in London there are only eight premieres by British composers. “That’s eight out of roughly 500 works being performed by the country’s symphony orchestras until the end of the season (not including repeat performances on tour). A minuscule proportion – about 1.6% of performed works, if you want to be pedantic about it. Why is new work so thinly represented? Largely, it is because orchestras are reluctant to take risks. Programming new work is expensive. You have to pay the composer…”

Okri: UK Writers Need More Respect…

Why is Britain sliding into “imaginative impotence”? Novelist Ben Okri says its because the country’s writers have little status at home. “Our novelists and poets are unappreciated in their own land, beaten down with defeatism and saddled with an inferiority complex in comparison to their lionised American counterparts, the Nigerian-born author of The Famished Road claimed. ‘It is all very well celebrating the dead, but we are deaf to what living writers are saying, particularly about the war situation we now find ourselves in’.”

Georges Sand In The Pantheon?

In France there’s a campaign to get writer Georges Sand reburied in the Pantheon on the 200th anniversary of her birth. “If Sand joins this Gallic dead white men’s club – one that nevertheless includes a couple of men of color – she would only be the second woman among the 70-odd people buried there to be admitted ‘on her own merits.’ The first was the physicist Marie Curie (1867-1934) who was ‘panthéonized’ in 1995 with her scientist husband Pierre.”