Author: Jennifer Melick

On Friday, July 22 at 7:30 pm the Boston Symphony Orchestra will present “Tanglewood in the City,” a free event that includes in-person and video performances at the Pittsfield Common in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The video presentation will feature a BSO concert led by Music Director Andris Nelsons, on a program to include Carlos Simon’s Motherboxx Connection, Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with soprano Nicole Cabell, Duke Ellington’s New World A-Coming with pianist Aaron Diehl, and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Pre-video live performances will feature the Pittsfield-based Eagles Trombone Ensemble and musicians from Kids 4 Harmony, a free music-education program for young people in Berkshire County. The event is presented in partnership with Mill Town Foundation, a community investment group based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which is approximately seven miles from the BSO’s summer home at Tanglewood in Lenox. More information at https://www.bso.org/events/tanglewood-in-the-city.

“The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra wants to be in tune with diversity on its governing board, on stage and among its audience members,” writes Nell Luter Floyd in Wednesday’s (7/21) Northside Sun (Jackson, MS). “About a year ago, leaders of the orchestra … established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee to advance such efforts. The commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion came in the wake of the League of American Orchestras’ acknowledgment of and responsibility for systemic discrimination in 2020 and its promise to advance work in diversity, equity and inclusion and anti-racism efforts…. Said Delores Bolden-Stamps, a member of the MSO Board of Directors and chair of the MSO DEI Committee, ‘The League of American Orchestras took a bold stand on the issues with encouragement to move the needle.’… Because the Mississippi Symphony is ‘strong fiscally’ … and has a talented leadership team at both the board level and management level, it is able to respond to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, [Music Director Crafton] Beck said… ‘We’re in this for the long haul,’ Bolden-Stamps said…. In January, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra plans to perform ‘Black American Symphony’ by Nicholas Payton … on the same program as [Dvořák’s] ‘New World Symphony.”

“The Modesto Symphony Orchestra recently announced the appointment of Ryan Murray as the Symphony’s next Principal Pops Conductor,” reads an unsigned article in Tuesday’s (7/19) Escalon Times (Oakdale, CA). “The MSO continues to search for the Symphony’s next Music Director…. Murray will be the primary conductor for the Pops Series and create the programming for those concerts and Picnic at the Pops. ‘Ryan Murray has been the MSO’s Associate Conductor since 2013 and has conducted our Holiday Pops! and film concerts for the past several years,’ said [MSO President and CEO] Caroline Nickel…. ‘We’re excited to collaborate with him in his new role.’… Murray is [also] currently the Artistic Director and Conductor of Music in the Mountains in Grass Valley. He is also the Director of Symphony Orchestra & Opera at California State University, Sacramento … and currently the Music Director of Opera Modesto…. Murray will lead the MSO and kick off the 92nd Season in September as Picnic at the Pops! returns for the first time since 2019. Murray holds degrees … in Bassoon Performance and Voice Performance from California State University, Sacramento and … a master’s degree … in Music Business from the Berklee College of Music.”

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, “who will turn 70 this year, [has created] some of the most colorful, dreamlike and arresting compositions to be heard over the past four decades,” writes Tom Huizenga in Thursday’s (7/21) National Public Radio. “Her operas are staged in the most prestigious houses, her orchestral and chamber music is heard worldwide…. Saariaho [spoke] about the challenges along her path to success … and the profound love of sound that drives her desire to compose…. Q: You’ve told stories about some professors at the Sibelius Academy … who … said you were a pretty woman who would soon be married and they didn’t want to waste their time on you…. Saariaho: It was a very normal thing [at] that time…. It’s a pity, but that’s how that period was. At some point I thought … ‘I’m going to write my music and I will find my way.’ The most important person was Paavo Heininen, and he never talked about me being a woman. His objective was to teach me to compose…. He really encouraged us…. I always wrote the music that I needed to write…. I was not the rebel, in that sense.”

Composers Avner Dorman and Paul Frucht “plan to be in the Eastern Music Festival audience Saturday night when the faculty orchestra performs their works, one with [Jason Vieaux] a renowned guitarist playing its world premiere,” writes Dawn Kane in Wednesday’s (7/20) Greensboro News and Record (NC). The world premiere of Dorman’s How to Love will feature the orchestra and “guitarist Jason Vieaux as soloist. Vieaux teaches students in EMF’s classical guitar summit. The orchestra also will perform Frucht’s [2013 work] ’Dawn,’ dedicated to the memory of school principal Dawn Hochsprung and 25 others who lost their lives in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and their families. EMF Music Director Gerard Schwarz will conduct the concert, which will conclude with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. This summer, EMF altogether will present the world premieres of four works…. Dorman’s intricate and soulful, 20-minute piece, ‘How to Love,’ … is named after a book by Thich Nhat Hanh…. ‘ “How to Love” speaks to the essentials of mindfulness and how to love—how to love oneself, how to listen and understand, be happy, and even disagree,’ Dorman said.”

The Boston Landmarks Orchestra has received $100,000 from the Cummings Foundation to support the orchestra’s Music and Memory program of performances in assisted living centers that specialize in care for patients with memory loss and dementia. “This grant is truly transformational for our Music and Memory program and we can’t wait to start working with additional communities,” said Mary Deissler, Boston Landmark’s co-executive director. The Cummings $25 million grant program supports Massachusetts nonprofits based in and primarily serving Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk counties. The Cummings Foundation is the philanthropic affiliate of Cummings Properties, a commercial real estate firm based in Woburn, Massachusetts. The orchestra is one of 140 nonprofits to receive grants through the program; it will receive $100,000 over three years. This year’s grant recipients represent a wide variety of causes, including food insecurity, immigrant and refugee services, social justice, education, and mental health services. The Boston Landmarks Orchestra’s annual free Wednesday evening concert series at Boston’s Hatch Shell on the Esplanade this year takes place from July 20 to August 24.

“In this weekend’s Sunday Telegraph, Stephen Pollard criticized the BBC Proms, saying that the recent broadening of its repertory has betrayed its purpose as a series of classical music concerts. I cannot agree,” writes Nicholas Kenyon in Tuesday’s (7/19) Daily Telegraph (UK). “Proms … premieres of [music by] Debussy, Mahler and Schoenberg, all unfamiliar composers in their day … challenged conventional ideas of great music—like this year’s [Aug. 1] concert of music for computer games…. I was director of the Proms from 1996 to 2007, and my predecessors had only quite recently considered Leonard Bernstein’s music classical enough to appear…. There was also a fuss when Bob Marley’s songs featured in a late-night concert by the King’s Singers, but the audience recognized quality…. Pollard was dismissive of this year’s concert devoted to gaming, but the fact is that the music of the gaming industry can be a springboard for a new generation to learn about classical music…. The Prom will introduce gamers to a live orchestra, which, at a time when arts education is chronically under-invested, feels deeply important. It will also help support the creativity of a new range of composers…. It is all a question of balance.”