Author: Jennifer Melick

“Following the first world war, stability and reassurance, folksong and archaic modality, the refuge of unspoilt rural idylls, had become the prevalent direction of English music,” writes Philip Clark in Wednesday’s (12/11) Guardian (U.K.). “Vaughan Williams deserves respectful understanding. As an ambulance driver during the war, he had witnessed Europe at its most destructive…. But, almost a century later, the instinctive suspicion within the UK’s mainstream classical music culture for central European music feels far less forgivable. On 11 December, the London Philharmonic’s Isle of Noises [festival of British music and] the London Contemporary Music Festival” both presented concerts, “and it’s hard to imagine two more radically divergent perspectives on music made in England. Isle of Noises … has focused on the bucolic tonality of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax and George Butterworth. The LCMF has become noted as a jamboree of composed music, free improvisation, electronics and sound art…. Yes, English music is Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton. But music made in Britain is also … Cornelius Cardew, working for Stockhausen and falling under the spell of John Cage; it is Jonathan Harvey assembling pieces at IRCAM, Pierre Boulez’s electronic music studio in Paris.”

“The emotional resonance of fragile environments, both natural and cultural, is captured in haunting ways in the music of Liang Liang, 47, who this month was honored with the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, one of the most prestigious prizes in contemporary music,” writes Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in Friday’s (12/13) New York Times. “He won for an orchestral work, ‘A Thousand Mountains, a Million Streams,’ inspired by a landscape painting by the Chinese ink-brush master Huang Binhong (1865-1955). Over 30 minutes, the work unfurls a fluid stream of instrumental colors, from shimmering filaments of sound to broad sighing gestures that build with unrelenting momentum into muscular blocks of dark matter. A series of brutal percussive slashes leads to scorched silence. In the end, droplets of sound evoke a fragile rebirth. The work is intended as a reflection on the man-made destruction of both natural landscapes and cultural ecosystems, and highlights the power of art to preserve them—at least in memory. Mr. Liang teaches at the University of California at San Diego and has collaborated with scientists on innovative ways to record the sounds of Pacific Ocean coral reefs and Arctic fauna.” The article includes an interview with the composer.

“It’s said that the Devil gets the best tunes, but John Williams has long proved that that maxim applies to Sith lords, too,” writes Frank Lehman in Sunday’s (12/15) Washington Post. “Within Star Wars’ ever-expanding library of leitmotifs … much of the most insinuating material belongs to the villains…. Listening to these nefarious themes … offers a lesson in the real power of the dark side.… Of all Star Wars’ Dark Siders … Palpatine has the most intriguing musical representation…. Palpatine’s primary leitmotif, introduced in ‘Return of the Jedi,’ is constructed around commonplace minor triads that progress chromatically, in a kind of violation of natural musical law…. When Palpatine finally makes his pitch to Anakin, his music does something most uncharacteristic for a Sith: It gets ecclesiastical. For a brief 15-second span, the violas and cellos state a hushed, reverential hymn in pure, unadulterated C-sharp minor…. For decades Williams has proved himself Hollywood’s master musical manipulator.… With his music for villains like Vader, Kylo Ren and the emperor, Williams invites us to lower our guards. For the Jedi, the seductive power of evil is a constant threat. And … it’s something we can easily hum along to.”

“Pittsburghers have waved [Steelers] Terrible Towels on Mount Everest, at the Great Wall of China and … recently … at the Philharmonie de Paris … at the conclusion of a Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performance,” writes Jeremy Reynolds in Sunday’s (12/15) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This fall, the PSO stormed some of the continent’s best venues, packing halls from Vienna and Hamburg to Amsterdam and Brussels, and earning effusive praise from foreign press…. Orchestras are known as cultural ambassadors, and the visits elevate the reputation of a city.… PSO President and CEO Melia Tourangeau … noted the orchestra’s economic impact on [its home] region. ‘The reputation of the orchestra lifts the reputation of the whole region,’ Ms. Tourangeau said…. In Pittsburgh, there are some quantifiable outcomes, according to the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. Since 2006, two international companies—SYCOR Americas (310 employees) and Mesotech International (112 employees)—have set up U.S. headquarters in Allegheny County in part because of the orchestra’s touring efforts…. The orchestra can also function as a diplomatic emissary…. Ms. Tourangeau … said the PSO’s reputation is rising thanks to touring invitations, recent Grammy nominations and awards and the sheer quality of its concerts in Heinz Hall.”

At Boston’s Jordan Hall on November 22, the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra performed a program entitled “Sharing Our Humanity” on the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Julius P. Williams, the ensemble’s artistic director, conducted the program, which included Yoko Shimomura’s “Dearly Beloved” from the video game Kingdom Hearts; He Zhanhao and Chen Gang’s Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, with soloist Serena Harnack; Sibelius’s Finlandia; Nkeiru Okoye’s Voices Shouting Out; and Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, with narrator Ron Savage, dean of the Berklee School of Music’s Professional Performance Division. In remarks to the audience, Williams noted, “The students in our orchestra are from fourteen different countries, and we conceived tonight’s program to reflect who we are as global citizens: our different cultures and range of experiences.” The Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra, based at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, performs standard repertoire as well as original compositions by Berklee faculty and students, contemporary music from around the globe, and music from film and video game scores.

“In Washington, politicians are yelling at each other. On cable TV, talking heads spew venom,” writes Howard Reich in Wednesday’s (12/11) Chicago Tribune. “But in our current troubled times, and in periods far worse than this, solace can be found [at] concerts, [which] prize one precious commodity above all, and it’s one in perilously short supply these days: silence. The classical concert hall and the serious jazz club require it as a means for artists to share thought and emotion…. Step into Orchestra Hall or the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, Carnegie Hall or the Village Vanguard in Manhattan … and you are entering sacred spaces where listeners seek something other than noise and sensation. Which is not to say that jazz and classical lack for visceral excitement. Ever hear the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tear through Duke Ellington’s ‘New Orleans Suite’? Or Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra make the house tremble in Verdi’s Requiem? … These are not exactly sedate performances. Yet even at their most tumultuous, they’re built on clarity of sound and articulation of detail. Noise alone will not do…. Everyone in the audience must do something that increasingly is becoming a rarity: keep quiet and listen.”

“The Opera de Paris has lost €2.5 million [$2.79m] in a week due to a rolling strike over its generous pensions system that has led to almost all shows being cancelled,” writes Henry Samuel in Thursday’s (12/12) Telegraph (U.K.). “The Opera de Paris’s pension regime … is costly as ballet dancers are allowed to retire at 42 and technical staff can leave with a full pension in the their 50s. However, their generous regime is one of 42 that are for the chop after President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial shakeup of the French pension system…. Staff at the Opera de Paris … have been on strike along with tens of thousands of other French workers … over the past seven days. As a result, some 15 opera and ballet shows have been cancelled at the institution’s two venues—Opera Bastille and Palais Garnier—since last Thursday, when the first mass demonstration took place. Each performance of Alexandre Borodin’s Prince Igor axed at Bastille cost €358,000 in lost ticket sales…. The Opera de Paris and the Comédie Française, France’s prestigious classical theatre company, are the only two such institutions affected by the pension reform.”

“Kendra Whitlock Ingram has landed in Milwaukee as president and chief executive officer of Marcus Performing Arts Center,” writes Bill Glauber in Thursday’s (12/12) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Ingram, who is currently executive director of the University of Denver’s Newman Center for the Performing Arts, will start in Milwaukee in March.” Ingram is an alumna of the League of American Orchestras’ Orchestra Management Fellowship Program. “Ingram will take over … amid a planned renovation project and the upcoming loss of a key tenant, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, which will move into [the renovated Warner Grand Theatre] in 2020…. Previously, Ingram was vice president of programming and education at the Omaha Performing Arts Center. She also had leadership roles with the Shenandoah Conservatory, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and Tulsa Philharmonic. She is a board member of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals and previously was a member of The Broadway League’s diversity committee. ‘Diversity and inclusion for the arts have always been something that interests me,’ she said. ‘I am a woman of color myself. Particularly in the classical music industry … there’s not a lot of people who look like me. It’s starting to grow.’ ”