Category: News Briefs

California’s Santa Barbara Symphony has announced details of its 2009-10 season, which opens on September 5 with an all-Beethoven concert featuring Chinese pianist Lang Lang. The orchestra reports that the pianist donated his fee for the performance at the recently restored Granada Theatre, where he will play Piano Concerto Nos. 2 and 3 on the orchestra’s new Steinway concert grand piano. Executive Director John Robisnon reports that the orchestra has planned twice its normal rehearsal time with Lang Lang to ensure that performances “are not only spectacular, but also nuanced and refined.” Later in the season, the orchestra will perform symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Franck; it will also spotlight its principal players in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-Flat Major and Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor (BWV 1043). Other repertoire for 2009-10 includes Haydn’s Paukenmesse with the Santa Barbara Choral Society, Joseph Schwantner’s Chasing Light…, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Ausencia for cello and strings, with soloist Joshua Roman.

Posted June 26, 2009

Photo of Lang Lang by Detlev Schneider / DG 

North Carolina’s Brevard Music Center announced that enrollment for its 2009 summer music program for young musicians is the largest in its history. For the past five years, enrollment has hovered around 395 students; this year the number is 425. Beginning last November, interest and students applications were up, which according to Brevard is partly the result of scheduling adjustments and partly because repertoire choices requiring more players. In response to the economic downturn, Bruce Murray, Brevard’s dean, said that the summer music institute has been able to increase its budget for student financial aid. Despite the challenging economic environment, Murray reports that Brevard has “done the right thing” by not cutting faculty or curriculum. Brevard Music Center, established in 1936, includes the summer institute along with a festival featuring guest artists, who perform alongside students. The institute and festival take place this year from June 26 to August 9.

Posted June 26, 2009

Meet The Composer has announced its NAACP Centennial Commissioning Project, which will result in world-premiere performances at the NAACP Centennial Convention in New York City this summer. The project is a joint effort of Meet The Composer and Dr. Rae Alexander-Minter, an educator and arts activist. One piece will be a musical setting by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., of a poem by U.S. poet laureate Elizabeth Alexander, who read her own “Praise Song for the Day” at President Obama’s inauguration; there will also be a live remix of music, voices, and imagery by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), based on “Go Down Moses.” Ramsey, author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (2003), is a professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania. The works will be performed at the opening session of the NAACP’s Centennial Convention, on July 12 at the Hilton Hotel Ballroom in New York City. Scheduled speakers at the convention, which celebrates the NAACP’s 100th anniversary, include Princeton professor Cornel West, Attorney General Eric Holder, and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond. Meet The Composer supports the creation of new musical work and the engagement of new work with people and communities throughout the United States.

Posted June 26, 2009 

The Orchestra of Southern Utah has launched a project known as “Baby Ears,” through which it provides CDs to new mothers through the Valley View Medical Center in Cedar City, Utah. Recordings will also be donated through the program to public libraries in Cedar City and Enoch, Utah. The orchestra says it decided to take on the project as a response to research indicating classical music’s benefits to brain development by babies and young children, as well as research on premature babies showing greater weight gain and lower blood pressure in response to being exposed to classical music. The orchestra’s recording includes performances of the Largo from Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony, the “Jupiter” movement from Holst’s The Planets, and two movements from the Spanish Trail Suite by Marshall McDonald and Steven Sharp Nelson. The orchestra so far has donated 170 CDs to the program; it expects to give approximately 600 CDs per year to new mothers, based on birth rates for Cedar City. 

Posted June 26, 2009 

Stanford Thompson, a trumpet player and graduate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Talent Development Program and The Curtis Institute of Music, will perform and narrate a special “Concert for Kenya” with pianist Sharon Berenson on June 28 to spread the word about a new educational program in Kenya. The concert, at Emory University’s Schwartz Center, will cover details of the program: the Kenya Instrumental Music Project through the Kenya Urithi Education Fund. Thompson leaves on June 30 for Meru, Kenya, where will spend eight weeks writing a music curriculum for the Bishop Lawi Imathiu Secondary School (BLISS) and developing a community-music program at three primary schools. The BLISS program was started two years ago by Larry Dittmar, a retired music teacher from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who gathered more than 80 donated instruments to deliver to Meru in February 2009. The BLISS school currently has 257 students, who participate in music courses as part of the curriculum. During his eight weeks in Meru, Thompson will observe the existing program, assess needs, and plan a summer music camp. A native of Decatur, Georgia, Thompson is founding artistic director of the Reading (Pennsylvania) Summer Music Institute for winds, brass, and percussion; he also serves as director of operations for the Atlanta Trumpet Festival and teaches at Atlanta Academy of Music and Symphony in C Summer Camp.

Posted June 26, 2009 

In Thursday’s (6/25) Globe and Mail (Toronto), James Bradshaw writes, “Measha Brueggergosman, beloved Canadian soprano and international operatic star, is recovering from emergency open-heart surgery, looking forward to a return to the stage and basking in the glow of a second life. Doctors have told Ms. Brueggergosman she has every chance of making a full recovery from an emergency procedure to repair a dissected aorta, a rare and often fatal affliction. … Ms. Brueggergosman, a Juno Award-winning native of Fredericton who turns 32 on Sunday, has built a substantial concert career alongside her operatic endeavours. She is known as much for her charisma and fiery personality as for her powerfully pure voice. … The ordeal forced Ms. Brueggergosman to cancel three concerts of Strauss and Bartók with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra earlier this month.”

Posted June 25, 2009

An Associated Press article published in Thursday’s (6/25) New York Times states, “From major theaters such as Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival to small companies such as the Barnstormers Theatre in bucolic Tamworth, N.H., uncertain economic times have forced theaters across North America not only to re-examine what they are putting on stage this summer—and beyond—but how to sell these plays and musicals as well. At the 2009 conference of Theatre Communications Group, the national association for nonprofit professional theaters, the mood was upbeat, according to Teresa Eyring, TCG’s executive director. The conference was held in early June in Baltimore. ‘But nobody knows what will happen from month to month,’ Eyring says. ‘I would describe theaters as “optimistic,” but with clear eyes about the realities of the situation.’” The article mentions financial initiatives in programming, production, marketing, and ticket sales at a variety of theaters.

Posted June 25, 2009

In Thursday’s (6/25) Boston Globe, Tracy Jan writes, “College students, many of whom spend the little extra cash they have on pizza and laundry, don’t fit the typical profile of a wealthy benefactor. But in a growing national movement, students enrolled in newly created philanthropy courses are steering thousands of dollars to local charities. At Tufts University, students decided this spring to give $1,500 to expand English courses to immigrant parents in Medford. Northeastern University students donated about $2,500 to a Boston after-school program promoting cross-cultural tolerance through cooking. And students at Boston University distributed $7,500 to help local at-risk teens land jobs in the financial sector. At least 10 New England colleges, including Brandeis, Holy Cross, Boston College, Wheelock, and Lesley, will offer similar courses next school year, using seed money donated by corporate and family foundations. In the classes, students draw up mission statements for makeshift foundations, research nonprofits in their communities, and decide how to allocate the pot of money. … In addition to just giving money away, the classes have inspired some students to choose careers in the nonprofit sector. At Tufts, where classes have disbursed $30,000 in the past three years, students learn to be grant writers and discerning grant makers.”

Posted June 25, 2009

In Thursday’s (6/25) Saginaw News (Michigan), Sue White writes, “The Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra’s state-of-the-symphony address delivered beautiful music to the ears of its supporters Wednesday during its annual meeting at the Temple Theatre.” Executive Director Dan McGee noted that the sudden death of Music Director Patrick Flynn was a struggle, as was the economic downturn, but that the orchestra finished the season with balanced financial books. “And McGee says the next season includes an ‘outstanding’ trio of finalists in the orchestra’s search for a director. Steven Jarvi, assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, will pick up the baton Saturday, Oct. 24; Brett Mitchell, the assistant conductor of the Houston Symphony and Orchestre National de France, on Saturday, Feb. 13, and Piotr Gajewski, conductor of the National Philharmonic in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 27. … On the financial front, McGee said, the orchestra has scrambled to replace some larger sponsors and to cut back on expenses. Already, he said, new season subscriptions are selling faster than last year, though renewals are slow. But then, he added, the season brochure only recently was completed and made available at Wednesday’s meeting, which could account for the delays.”

Photo of music director candidate Steven Jarvi courtesy of the Saginaw Bay Symphony

Wednesday (6/24) on the Boston Globe blog Exhibitionist, Thomasine Berg writes, “The Boston Symphony Orchestra confirmed today that 10 employees are being laid off, from departments including development and public relations. The orchestra and support staff are in transition this week from Boston to Tanglewood, their summer home in the Berkshires, and officials were not available for comment though a statement was issued by BSO managing director Mark Volpe: ‘Like other cultural institutions nationwide, the BSO is facing serious challenges due to this past year’s economic downturn, including a substantial decline in the value of the orchestra’s endowment. In the course of confronting these challenges, the BSO found it necessary to reduce its full time work force by 5.3%. The BSO remains committed to maintaining its financial equilibrium, while pursuing its mission as one of the leading orchestras in the world.’ The layoffs follow a staff hiring freeze instituted in December 2008 and the cancellation in April of a European tour the BSO had scheduled for 2010.”

Photo: James Levine with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Credit: Michael Lutch

Posted June 25, 2009