Author: Jennifer Melick

Florida’s Palm Beach Symphony opened its 2019-20 season, the first under Music Director Gerard Schwarz, on December 8 at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach with an all-Beethoven program. The concert featured pianist Horacio Gutiérrez in the Piano Concerto No. 4, and the Ninth Symphony with vocal soloists and the Palm Beach Atlantic University Oratorio Chorus, Choral Society of the Palm Beaches, and Masterworks Chorus of the Palm Beaches. Repertoire on the remaining four 2019-20 masterworks concerts in January, February, March, and April will feature repertoire including Augusta Read Thomas’s A Plea for Peace, the Overture to Los esclavos felices by Juan Crisotomo Arriaga (1806-1826), Paul Creston’s Accordion Concerto with soloist Hanzhi Wang, David Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra, HyeKyung Lee’s Climbing Tomorrow, and music by Copland, Gershwin, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. The orchestra also performs a chamber music series at the Norton Museum of Art on Wednesdays in January, February and March. New this season are five “lunch and learn” events with Gerard Schwarz and other guests, at Table 260 Palm Beach.

“The Los Angeles Philharmonic created a pair of programs in [conductor/composer Oliver Knussen’s] memory at Walt Disney Concert Hall—an orchestral salute that occupied the first half of the LA Phil subscription program Dec. 7 and a Green Umbrella concert Dec. 10 featuring music by Knussen and four of his British colleagues,” writes Richard Ginell in Sunday’s (12/15) Classical Voice North America. “Knussen’s Flourish with Fireworks (1988) [is] a smashing curtain-raiser that ought to be done everywhere, and on Dec. 7, Susanna Mälkki, the LA Phil’s principal guest conductor, led a direct, splashy rendition in which the details were beautifully lit. Leila Josefowicz then knocked out Knussen’s Violin Concerto, a relatively late work (2001-02)…. Josefowicz has become the foremost advocate of the piece…. Mälkki and Josefowicz co-curated the Green Umbrella concert … opening with Knussen’s celebratory Two Organa as Mälkki reveled in the glistening orchestrations for 21 diverse instruments, with a Nord synthesizer simulating the missing harmonium.” Also on the December 10 program were Huw Watkins’ Piano Quartet, Knussen’s Ophelia Dances Book I, Helen Grime’s A Cold Spring, Jonathan Harvey’s Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, Knussen’s Reflection for violin and piano, and Colin Matthews’ Hidden Variables for 15 players.

“Organists, and those who love the natural, visceral sound of mighty pipe organs, have long lamented that both of New York’s premier concert halls, Carnegie Hall and Geffen, got rid of their old pipe organs decades ago and went electric,” writes Michael Cooper in Sunday’s (12/15) New York Times. “They see the coming renovation of Geffen Hall as a chance to right a historical wrong, especially at a time when many of the world’s most glamorous new halls—including Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Philharmonie in Paris and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg—have installed mammoth new pipe organs. But the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center must weigh the desires of organ aficionados against other competing needs.… No decision has yet been made, said Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive officer of the Philharmonic…. The Philharmonic used to have [a] floor-shaking, 45,000-pound Aeolian-Skinner organ … built for it when it moved to Lincoln Center in 1962…. But the organ was removed during a renovation of the hall in 1976, in part to free up space backstage … The design team for the new Geffen Hall is weighing its options … to rebuild the auditorium while staying within its existing footprint.”

“The League of American Orchestras and OPERA America have informed their memberships and supporters of the latest plans by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which would severely curtail foreign artists from coming to the U.S.,” writes Susan Elliott in Tuesday’s (12/17) Musical America (subscription required). “Specifically, DHS has proposed a huge raise in visa fees including … artist visas applications filed by orchestras and other arts presenters. No date has been set as yet, and DHS is inviting public comments…. The deadline for comments is December 30…. Among the proposed changes, as per the League’s information: Filing fees for regularly-processed O visa petitions would increase from $460 to as much as $715 per petition. Filing fees for regularly-processed P visa petitions would increase from $460 to as much as $705 per petition. The total number of individuals on a single petition would be capped at 25…. For example, an orchestra comprising 110 musicians plus a handful of accompanying support staff would require 6 visa petitions rather than 2. The Premium Processing Service, an additional cost of $1,440, would take longer if USCIS were to be allowed 15 federal working days to complete processing, compared to the current 15 calendar day timeline.”

Information about visa changes can be found at the League of American Orchestras website.

“Paul Helfrich, president and CEO of the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, announced his resignation effective February 2020,” writes Elizabeth Kyle in Wednesday’s (12/218) Dayton Business Journal (OH). “He will be taking on his next role in Florida, becoming the executive director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in mid-February. Helfrich joined the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, serving as president of the organization. He became the president and CEO four years later, when the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance formed its merger to include the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Dayton Ballet and Dayton Opera…. The Dayton Performing Arts Alliance merger was the first of its kind in the nation [combining] a professional dance company, opera company and philharmonic orchestra as one operating entity…. As president and CEO, he led the organization to have a new, blended organizational culture. The organization is one of only five institutions to receive the ‘Music Alive’ grant in 2014 from New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras…. The board will immediately begin a national search to identify Helfrich’s successor. The group is the second-largest performing arts organization in the Dayton region with an annual budget of $8 million and 27 full-time employees.”

Bang on a Can, the new-music organization founded in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, has announced a three-day festival to take place in May 2020 in Brooklyn. The May 1-3 festival, entitled LONG PLAY, will feature concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Roulette, Public Records, ShapeShifter Lab, Littlefield, and Brooklyn Music School, among other sites. Music highlights will include: Steve Reich’s 2×5 for two rock bands and Electric Counterpoint for fourteen electric guitars; Art Ensemble of Chicago in a program entitled “Great Black Music—Ancient to the Future”; Meredith Monk’s Memory Game; Galina Ustvolskaya’s six piano sonatas, performed by Jenny Lin; John Luther Adams’s Strange and Sacred Noise, performed by Left Edge Percussion and the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble; and Michael Gordon’s Timber, performed by Mantra Percussion. Performers will range from Estonia’s Vox Clamantis choir and cellist/composer Zoë Keating to Attacca Quartet, the Mediaqueer duo (composer/performers Darian Donovan Thomas and Phong Tran), Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and Asphalt Orchestra.

“The Paris Conservatory—Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris—has named it first woman director,” writes Susan Elliott in Monday’s (12/16) Musical America (subscription required). “Émilie Delorme, current director of the Academy at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, is to succeed composer Bruno Mantovani, who … is scheduled to become music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in January. Anne-Marie Le Guével has been serving as interim at the Conservatory. The 44-year-old Delorme, from Lyon, makes history by stepping into the role; the prestigious conservatory was founded in 1795…. At Aix, where she has been since 2007, Delorme has been directing the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, the ENOA (for European Network of Opera Academies), and the Medinea (Mediterranean Incubator for Emerging Artists—Incubator), which enrolls up to 300 young artists from five continents annually. After earning a diploma in civil engineering, she worked for three years in finance and completed a postgraduate course in management of cultural institutions while working for IMG Artists Paris. She joined the Aix-en-Provence Festival in September 2000 and was hired at the Théâtre royal de la Monnaie in Brussels three years later to work on artistic planning. She returned to the Festival d’Aix in 2007.”