Category: News Briefs

South Carolina’s Spartanburg Philharmonic has announced details of its six-concert season for 2009-10 at Twichell Auditorium in Spartanburg, under Music Director Sarah Ioannides. The season features an opening-night all-Russian gala program of works by Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Khachaturian, and Tchaikovsky, with pianist Jie Chen; in January film composer Dario Marinelli will guest-conduct the orchestra in his own Atonement Suite; and at a February performance of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale the orchestra will be joined by Ballet Spartanburg and Spartanburg Little Theater. The Philharmonic will spotlight solo musicians from the orchestra in an all-Mozart program featuring concerto movements for bassoon, flute, and harp, and the season ends with a performance of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, Wagner’s symphonic poem Siegfried Idyll, and Mahler’s Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen (arr. Schoenberg), with soprano Rebecca Turner. The orchestra’s Monsterworks, a family event featuring popular children’s tunes, will take place in October at USC-Upstate Performing Arts Center in Spartanburg.

Posted June 19, 2009

In Tuesday’s (6/16) San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman reports, “Betty J. Connors, who oversaw the presentation of performing arts at UC Berkeley for 35 years as director of the Committee for Arts and Lectures—later Cal Performances—died Thursday at her Richmond home of natural causes. She was 92. From 1945 to 1979, Ms. Connors ran the university’s program for presenting music, dance and theatrical events on campus—the first salaried employee responsible for undertaking a job formerly done by a faculty member. … Ms. Connors brought some of the world’s leading cultural figures to the Berkeley campus, including pianists Glenn Gould and Rudolf Serkin, harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Gustav Leonhardt, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, soprano Birgit Nilsson, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, jazz artists Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong, and sitarist Ravi Shankar. Under her auspices, the San Francisco Opera gave regular performances at the Greek Theatre throughout the 1960s.”

Posted June 18, 2009

In Saturday’s (6/13) The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Raymond Gill writes, “WANTED: Women under 50 with an interest in the arts and a desire to ‘give back’ to the community to join the boards of the nation’s arts companies. Oh, and while handing over wads of your cash to said company will be happily accepted, it’s no longer a precondition of your appointment. There’s a generational and gender change slowly sweeping across the boards of Australia’s major arts bodies. … There is a new rigour applied to how boards choose their members for these time-consuming, non-paying positions. … Over at the Malthouse Theatre in Southbank, four of its nine board members are women, with the latest recruit Thea Snow, a 26-year-old lawyer with the Department of Premier and Cabinet. She also happens to be the granddaughter of billionaire retailer Marc Besen, though Malthouse chairman Simon Westcott, 44, stresses that was not a motivation for inviting her on the board. ‘Gender mix is absolutely what we want but it doesn’t need to be exactly 50:50,’ says Westcott. ‘We needed someone with a legal mind but also someone who reflected our audience age more directly. Already she’s made a big difference to our board.’ ”

Posted June 18, 2009

In Thursday’s (6/18) Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein writes, “MusicNOW, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra‘s contemporary music series, has announced the dates and programs for its 2009-10 season. All but one of the four concerts will be given in the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Dr., at Millennium Park. … The season’s centerpiece will be a concert presented as part of the CSO’s monthlong celebration of conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez’s 85th birthday. The French composer and conductor has been a longtime supporter of and participant in the series. [MusicNow Principal Conductor Cliff] Colnot will conduct Boulez’s ‘Messagesquisse,’ ‘Une page d’ephemeride,’ ‘Incises,’ ‘Dialogue de l’ombre double’ and ‘Anthemes II.’ Also featured will be works commissioned for the series from Dai Fujikura and Johannes Boris Borowski. The Jan. 24 event will take place at Orchestra Hall. [Composer Osvaldo] Golijov will curate the season finale March 15 at the Harris Theater. His ‘Patagonia,’ ‘Tekyah’ and a movement from ‘Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind’ will share the bill with works by John Luther Adams.” Works by Richard Rodney Bennett, Gyorgy Kurtag, Frederic Rzewski, and Mark-Anthony Turnage are also included.

Posted June 18, 2009

In Tuesday’s (6/16) Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Zachary Lewis writes, “An ambitious musical project two years in the making comes to fruition this week as the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra embarks on an out-of-state tour. For only the third time in its 23-year history, the Cleveland Orchestra’s farm team takes their show on the road (along with two student soloists), this time for a four-concert series in and around the capital of Massachusetts. ‘We were looking for a place that would be enriching culturally as well as not too far away, and Boston fit the bill,’ said Jayce Ogren, the group’s director and the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, noting the region’s rich past, love for music and dense population. … The tour officially kicks off Thursday with a performance at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, a space listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the ensuing three days, the group plays at the Church of the Covenant in downtown Boston, Sanders Theatre on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge and the National Heritage Museum in Lexington. … The last time COYO went on tour was March 2001, when the group made its debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall.”

Posted June 18, 2009

Tuesday (6/16) on the Atlanta-based artscricitATL.com blog, Catherine Fox and Pierre Ruhe write, “At first blush, the Woodruff Art Center’s master plan—revealed this afternoon at a press briefing—make good common and creative sense. Commissioned by the arts center in fall 2008 from Boston-based Sasaki Associates, it builds on the conceit that architect/planner Renzo Piano introduced in the 2005 expansion: a village for the arts. Ultimately, most of the original Memorial Arts Building, costing $8 million when it opened in 1968 and showing its wear, will be dismantled or razed. … Phase I involves building a new [Atlanta Symphony Orchestra] Symphony Center at the high-profile Peachtree and 15th-street corner. This continues the effort to give each division its own presence and identity, which began when the High Museum moved out of the Memorial Art Building in 1983. … Phase I answers the ASO’s demands to get a performance space that’s up to national standards.” In Thursday’s (6/18) Atlanta Journal Constitution, Howard Pausner reports, “Late Wednesday afternoon, the Woodruff’s executive committee unanimously approved this ‘road map for the future.’ ”

Posted June 18, 2009

In the Saturday (6/13) Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Kim Ode interviews Jorja Fleezanis on the eve of her final bow as concertmaster with the Minnesota Orchestra, who departs “after 20 years, longer than anyone has sat in that chair. Tonight’s performance, Beethoven’s moving Missa Solemnis, will be her last notes with her colleagues. Then she’s off to help create a new culture of orchestra training at Indiana University, where a position of professor of music was created for her to delve deeply into the teaching she’s always loved. Then there is her husband’s illness. Early in 2006, Michael Steinberg”—the musicologist, writer, and lecturer—“learned that he has colon cancer….  They have been quite private about his illness, but were candid with Indiana when the university wanted him to teach two classes, one on writing about music, another on 19th-century symphonies.” In his Saturday (6/13) Star Tribune review of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Missa Solemnis, William Randall Beard writes, “How fitting that in her final appearances as concertmaster, Jorja Fleezanis would have the opportunity to play a moving solo. This passage in the Sanctus found her at her most expressive and eloquent. She ended her two-decade tenure on a real high.”

Posted June 17, 2009

Photo of Jorja Fleezanis courtesy Minnesota Orchestra

In an article in Tuesday’s (6/16) Wichita Eagle (Kansas), Chris Shull writes, “The Wichita Symphony Orchestra has named its new conductor. Daniel Hege, who has close ties to Kansas and led the Wichita Symphony in its season-ending performances in April, will become the orchestra’s music director and conductor beginning in the 2010-2011 season. Andrew Sewell, the orchestra’s current music director, will continue to conduct the orchestra next season. Sewell last year announced his intention to step aside. His farewell performance with the orchestra as its music director will be in April 2010. He began his tenure in the fall of 2000. … Hege, 43, is music director of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra in New York, a position he has held since 1999.” The article describes Hege’s appointment as a homecoming, citing his regular attendance at Wichita Symphony concerts while in college, his long association with the Newton Mid-Kansas Symphony Orchestra, and previous appearances with the Wichita Symphony, in addition to his other work with orchestras nationwide. “His initial contract with the orchestra runs  … through the 2012-2013 season… Hege will become the Wichita Symphony’s seventh music director in its 67-year history.”

Posted June 17, 2009

A news item posted 6/16 on counton2.com (WCBD-TV/DT, Charleston, South Carolina) reports that Kathleen G. Wilson has been named interim executive director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra’s principal harpist for the last 22 seasons, Wilson has represented District 12 on the Charleston City Council since 2006 and was selected for a Liberty Fellowship, “a highly competitive program that seeks to inspire outstanding leadership in South Carolina.” The unbylined story also notes that Wilson is “an elite international marathon swimmer who has completed the swimming  triple crown (English Channel, Manhattan Island, San Pedro Channel)… ‘Kathleen has a deep knowledge of the CSO, a passion for the mission of the orchestra, proven performance as a community leader, and the proven ability to get things done,’ said Ted Legasey, President of the CSO.”

Posted June 17, 2009

In the Monday (6/15) edition of the Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell reviews the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s June 13 Latino Festival Concert, conducted by Alondra de la Parra. “She supplied clear and meaningful stick technique, and, apart from over-egging the brass, a very musical feeling for energy, shape and proportion. The most interesting piece on the program was Piazzolla’s Tangazo, mixing contrapuntal mystery, dreamy passages (David Heyde and Haley Hoops contributing beautiful horn solos) and toe-tapping dances. The Suite No. 2 from Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat got a performance alternatively seductive and dazzling. [Brazilian composer Camargo] Guarnieri’s Dansa brasileira was a cheerfully chugging overture, and Gismonti’s two-guitars-and-orchestra Sete Aneis, performed with the Brasil Guitar Duo (Joao Luiz and Douglas Lora), suggested some influence from minimalism.” Also on the program were Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and pieces by Egberto Gismonti and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Posted June 17, 2009