Author: BFC

In Wednesday’s (12/21) ArtsJournal.com, Douglas McLennan writes about an article by Adrian Ellis in the January 2017 issue of Apollo, an arts magazine. McLennan: “What caught my eye is one of the accompanying charts showing what percentage of their budgets New York’s major museums earn in revenue. Even charging $25 admission, the Whitney Museum of American Art only earns eight percent of its budget from admissions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is close behind at 12 percent and Museum of Modern Art is at 17 percent. Compare this to data about symphony orchestras, released a few weeks ago” in the League of American Orchestras’ Orchestra Facts: 2006-2014. “On average, earned income accounts for an average 40 percent of orchestra budgets. … Arts business models are constantly adjusting. The financial mix that was considered healthy 20 years ago is different than what is now considered normal. One key factor is balancing the cost of attending (ticket price) with accessibility. … The point is that they’re all philanthropic models. The only question is how much of a subsidy can be justified or practically raised. And, as earned income declines as a percentage, that is increasingly a political question about who we want our audiences to be.”

Posted December 23, 2016

The Hub will take a break from Monday, December 26 through the end of the year. We look forward to bringing you the latest news about orchestras beginning on Tuesday, January 3, 2017. Happy Holidays!

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December 23, 2016

“Zelda, Mario and Donkey Kong have more in common than their virtual origins,” writes Kaitlyn Krasselt in Wednesday’s (12/21) The Hour (Connecticut). “These and video games like Journey, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy … are the foundation for a new generation of symphony lovers. A new group, the Norwalk Gamer Symphony Orchestra … is modeled after Video Games Live, a nationally recognized and popular concert series, and the Gamer Symphony Orchestra at the University of Maryland…. Video Games Live concerts consist of segments of video game music performed by a live orchestra with video footage and synchronized lighting and effects, as well as interactive segments with the audience…. [Founder Bryan] Doyle played clarinet in the [Gamer Symphony Orchestra] for two years and was a conductor for one year…. [In] Norwalk, he tried to find a similar niche but was unsuccessful. So he made his own … about a year ago [of] 15 musicians from throughout Fairfield County, and ranging in age from 8 years old to adults…. The group practices every two weeks at the Norwalk Public Library. Earlier this month, they hosted their first concert… ‘We had a pretty large turnout and I wasn’t expecting it,’ Doyle said.”

Posted December 23, 2016

“If the music of Dmitri Shostakovich chronicles political repression in Stalinist Russia, that of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, his contemporary and close friend, is a testimony to the horror that swept through Europe in the 20th century,” writes Rebecca Schmid in Wednesday’s (12/21) New York Times. “Since the first full staging of his opera ‘The Passenger’ at the Bregenz Festival in Austria six years ago, the composer has begun to overcome his reputation as a second-rate Shostakovich. … many [Weinberg] compositions deserve to be posthumously enshrined in the 20th-century canon. Now, the International Mieczyslaw Weinberg Society, founded by the conductor Thomas Sanderling and the violinist Linus Roth in the summer of 2015, hopes to create a place for the composer in the standard repertoire. Weinberg, a Warsaw native, escaped to the Soviet Union on foot in 1939, but his parents and younger sister died in the Holocaust….  On Jan. 30, Mr. Sanderling will conduct the German premieres of Weinberg’s Symphony No. 7 and Flute Concerto No. 2 with the Staatskapelle Dresden.” Also planned in 2017 are performances of Symphony No. 21 (“Kaddish”), the world premiere of “the recently discovered one-movement ‘Largo’ for violin and piano,” and the first complete performance of Weinberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2.

Posted December 23, 2016

“Music suffered heavy losses in 2016,” write Tom Huizenga and other NPR producers on Monday (12/19) at National Public Radio. “We bid unexpected farewells to the very brightest stars—David Bowie and Prince—but we also lost masters from every corner of the music world, from classical composers and jazz greats to world music superstars, soul singers, country giants, prog-rock pioneers and record producers.” In the classical field, the writers note the deaths of composer/conductor Pierre Boulez; Jane Little, bassist in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for more than 71 years; composer Peter Maxwell Davies; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor and founder of Concentus Musicus Wien; Sir Neville Marriner, conductor and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields founder; soprano Marni Nixon, who voiced heroines in Hollywood’s West Side Story and The King and I , among others, and was also a contemporary-music specialist; countertenor Russell Oberlin; experimental composer Pauline Oliveros; and Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. Included are a photo gallery and sound clips, and the list also cites victims of 2016’s mass shooting in Orlando in June and the fire in December at the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, California, who died “doing one of the things they enjoyed most—dancing among family, friends and strangers. … The music won’t stop, but neither will the memories, vigilance and love.”

Posted December 23, 2016

An article in Wednesday’s (12/21) Charleston Gazette-Mail (West Virginia) celebrating Charleston’s “unsung arts heroes,” includes an interview with Shiva Shafii, marketing director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Says Shafii, “I have the fun job of trying to get people as excited as I am about orchestral music. This includes all of the WVSO’s social media, publications, publicity, website updates, e-blasts—pretty much any form of mass communication…. I also book the guest artists that perform with the WVSO, so I get to meet and interact with a lot of really incredible musicians…. The [orchestra’s] announcement of a conductor search was such a complex, challenging process to navigate. It led to my idea of creating the campaign of the search centered around puzzle pieces [with] Emoji Listening guides [giving] audience members a visual roadmap to follow along during the concert, with stories told via characters and emojis of where they are in the piece.… Personally, being one of the 30 participants invited nationwide to attend the League of American Orchestra’s Essentials of Orchestra Management seminar in Los Angeles, and getting to learn from some of the most brilliant orchestra executives this summer, was a major highlight for me.”

Posted December 23, 2016

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and flutist Claire Chase are inviting 150 flutists to join them in a performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Il Cerchio Tagliato dei Suoni (Cutting the Circle of Sounds) on February 1, 2017 at the Ordway Concert Hall in downtown Saint Paul. The SPCO is seeking adult amateurs and flute students ages 10 and older, of all skill levels, from local universities, community colleges, and middle school and high school programs to fill the ranks of the flute chorus. For the concert, participating flutists will join Chase plus SPCO flutists Julia Bogorad-Kogan and Alicia McQuerrey and University of Minnesota Associate Flute Professor Immanuel Davis. The Sciarrino piece, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling architecture, places flute soloists in a circle surrounding the audience, with processions of 150 migrating flutists. Flute choir members will be asked to attend rehearsals led by Chase in the week before the performance, and are also invited to participate in flute workshops led by Bogorad-Kogan and McQuerrey. For more information visit thespco.org/flutes.