Author: Ginger Dolden

The Sphinx Organization has announced its 2023 Sphinx Medals of Excellence Honorees. The medals, recognizing extraordinary Black and Latinx classical musicians, are cellist Thomas Mesa, soprano Aundi Marie Moore, and composer Joel Thompson. Each medal comes with a $50,000 career grant. Cuban-American cellist Thomas Mesa has appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Madison Symphony Orchestra, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In the 2022-23 season, he will premiere and tour Jessie Montgomery’s Divided for solo cello and orchestra; begin a residency at Colburn Conservatory; and curate and perform chamber music programs with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Aundi Marie Moore made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2020 as Strawberry Woman in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess; she has performed at L’Opéra de Monte Carlo, Sarasota Opera, and Amalfi Coast Festival, and is a member of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera. Joel Thompson is composer of the choral/orchestral work Seven Last Words of the Unarmed and composer-in-residence with the Houston Grand Opera and with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. His music has been performed by the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, and Colorado Music Festival.

“On Friday afternoon in St. John’s, Newfoundland, deep blasts of ships’ horns punctuated by sharp wails from a pair of saxophones rose up from the fog blanketing the city’s harbour,” writes Sarah Smellie in Friday’s (7/15) Canadian Press. “It was the first of 10 daily Harbour Symphonies scheduled in conjunction with the city’s biennial Sound Symposium festival.… Typically, the symphonies are played only on the horns of the ships in the St. John’s harbour. But on Friday, it had accompaniment from Ouroboros, a beloved local band that dabbles in everything from klezmer to circus music. To some, the Harbour Symphony is a thunderous mess of boomps, barmps and woomps that make it impossible to carry on a conversation. But to Delf Maria Hohmann, who’s been co-ordinating and composing the symphonies since 2004, it’s a carefully planned and painstakingly timed musical composition played by volunteers and captains aboard ships … He works with the St. John’s Port Authority and the coast guard to take an inventory of which boats are scheduled to be docked on symphony days…. He figures out … what kind of notes they may be able to sustain…. Volunteer ‘players’ … hop onto the boats on symphony day.”

“The Irish rock group U2, actor-filmmaker George Clooney, singers Gladys Knight and Amy Grant, and composer-conductor Tania León will be saluted for their achievements in the arts at the 45th annual Kennedy Center Honors Dec. 4 at the national arts center,” writes Peggy McGlone in Thursday’s (7/21) Washington Post. “Recognized as an ambassador of new music, León is an award-winning composer, conductor and teacher who was one of the founders of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and a lifelong advocate for classical music’s living composers…. León’s grandmother enrolled her in music classes when she was a young child in Cuba. The classically trained pianist left for Miami in 1967 [and] moved to New York… León was new-music adviser to the New York Philharmonic in the 1990s … and launched the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Community Concert Series. She founded Composers Now, an organization that commissions and advocates for living composers and taught generations of students at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center from 1985 until retiring in 2019. Her work ‘Stride’ … commissioned by the New York Philharmonic … was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music.” Said León, “I mold myself, reinvent myself, create myself. It is still ongoing.”

“The soundtracks to the best-selling ‘Final Fantasy’ video-game series have helped give rise to a new kind of orchestral experience,” writes Chris Gray in Monday’s (7/18) Houston Chronicle (TX). “It is, explains conductor Arnie Roth, a truly global audience. ‘We can put on the concert in Singapore or Sydney or New York or Chicago, L.A.,’ he says. ‘We’ve played Houston a few times.’ … Friday and Saturday … Roth and the Houston Symphony—and Houston Symphony Chorus—will revisit ‘Distant Worlds: Music From Final Fantasy,’ one of several orchestral programs spun off the long-running franchise’s sprawling musical scores. (A 16th installment is due next summer.) Roth and his collaborators regularly rotate the selections to accommodate the truly massive amount of music under the ‘Final Fantasy’ umbrella…. The audience is seldom shy about voicing its approval. ‘They’re very beloved musical scores,’ … Roth says… The first public concert, entitled ‘Dear Friends: Music From Final Fantasy,’ was held in early 2005…. Roth says … musicians in the orchestras he’s worked with … come up to him after a ‘Final Fantasy’ concert and remark on how ‘they just could not believe the quality of the scores and the reaction of the audience,’ he says.”

“Tubas are typically found near the rear of an orchestra,” writes Mike Crowley in Wednesday’s (7/20) Meadville Tribune (Meadville, PA). “But on Friday in Diamond Park, a very special tuba will emerge … to take center stage at long last. The occasion … is the Erie Philharmonic performance of ‘Tubby the Tuba,’ the much-loved family classic popularized by comedian Danny Kaye in the mid-20th century…. The performance will mark the second year in a row that the Erie Philharmonic gives a free performance in Diamond Park…. ‘We had such a good time last year,’ said Steve Weiser, the orchestra’s executive director…. The family-friendly ‘Tubby the Tuba’ is aimed directly at the youngsters likely to be in the audience… Also on the playlist is the overture from Gioachino Rossini’s 1816 comic opera ‘The Barber of Seville’ … Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and a short symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart…. Where funding for the Philharmonic’s 2021 visit was supported by federal coronavirus grants, this year … donations to support the performance were received from more than a dozen businesses, organizations and individuals.” The concert is part of the Erie Philharmonic’s free summer series throughout the Erie region.

The Santa Barbara Symphony in California has announced seven 2022-23 subscription concerts, beginning in October with Orff’s Carmina Burana in a performance led by Music Director Nir Kabaretti and featuring State Street Ballet. Also planned during the season are three world premieres: local composer and preservationist Cody Westheimer’s Wisdom of the Sky, Water, Earth, a orchestral and visual homage to the region’s Chumash heritage; Jonathan Leshnoff’s Concerto Grosso, commissioned for orchestra’s 60th anniversary; and Ted Nash’s Transformation. In addition to standard repertoire, the season will include Elmer Bernstein’s Toccata for Toy Trains concert suite (arr. Peter Bernstein); a multimedia tribute to composer John Williams; Miguel Del Aguila’s Concerto for Violin El; and Ella Milch-Sheriff’s Beethoven-themed monodrama The Eternal Stranger in a staging by Jonathan Fox, on a program also featuring Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 and Symphony No. 4.

“For the last 50 years, David Harrington, the founder and artistic director of San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet, has been playing what he calls ‘pretty athletic music’ on a violin made in 1721,” writes Rebecca Solnit in Thursday’s (7/7) Guardian (U.K.). “The instrument made by Carlo Giuseppe Testore in Milan has survived three centuries, providing music for countless audiences, and can be heard on more than 60 Kronos albums…. This violin is from before … James Watt made the steam engine a voracious, ubiquitous device devouring coal and wood and then oil…. Before we began gouging out the Earth so frantically to feed those steam engines and then those internal combustion engines…. Before human impact exploded into a destructive force with the power to change the acidity of the oceans and the content of the atmosphere. The sheer thrift of an instrument lasting so long said to me that maybe you could have magnificent culture with material modesty, that the world before all our fossil fuel extraction and burning could be plenty elegant, and maybe that the world we need to make in response to climate change can feel like one of abundance, not austerity.”

“The Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra is tuning up for its 97th season, kicking off this September,” writes Katie Shane in Saturday’s (7/9) Tribune-Star (Terre Haute, IN). “The only orchestra in West Central Indiana, the THSO features local and regional musicians, along with performances from world-class guests under the direction of Artistic Director and Conductor David Bowden and Executive Director and Principal Clarinet, Samantha Johnson-Helms…. Audience members have multiple chances to catch the THSO throughout the 2022-23 season whether at its home at Tilson Auditorium on the Indiana State University campus, to smaller, more intimate performances including Solly, Brent & Brews at the Terre Haute Brewing Company this month. ‘I programmed this year to feature our own brilliant musicians in spectacular works that are filled with catchy rhythms, beautiful melodies, and infectious joy,’ Bowden explains. ‘It’s music everyone will enjoy.’ ” Included are Q&As in which four musicians speak about living and performing in Terre Haute: Principal Piano Tim Stephenson; vocalist Caroline Goodwin; Principal Tuba Glen Dimick; and Concertmaster Elina Rubio.

Houston Symphony Assistant Conductor Yue Bao “calls herself a ‘go with the flow’ kind of person,” writes Chris Gray in last Monday’s (7/4) Houston Chronicle. “Conductors are take-charge, bossy types—or so she thought. ‘The more I learned, the more I realized I had the wrong perspective,’ Bao says. ‘It’s really about collaboration. And then I found I really enjoyed collaborating with musicians to make music together.’ [The Shanghai native earned] degrees … from Shanghai Conservatory of Music … the New School’s Mannes School of Music [and] the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she spent a two-year fellowship studying under …Yannick Nézet-Séguin…. ‘He makes the whole rehearsal very positive and very inspiring,’ she reflects. ‘He’s patient. He knows how to work with people, how to fix problems.’ … As she was getting ready to graduate from Curtis, Bao [auditioned for] an opening in Houston…. She felt an instant kinship with the orchestra…. ‘It’s just very positive, welcoming, warm—a big family,’ [she said].… Already she’s twice met with incoming music director Juraj Valcuha…. Offstage, Bao is a gifted visual artist…. She’s also … preparing for a true Houston rite of passage next month: taking her driver’s test.”