Category: News Briefs

“With orchestral commissions hard to come by, few composers are likely to look a gift horse in the mouth,” writes Lara Pellegrinelli in Sunday’s (6/7) New York Times. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t be taken aback. ‘They were pretty much the last people I expected to approach me for a commission,’ Missy Mazzoli said of a recent request from the League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music that she create a work for its 2010-11 concert season. For one thing, the league’s orchestra, for which the piece was requested, has yet to make its debut. … The Orchestra of the League of Composers/I.S.C.M. (as it is known everywhere) will first perform on Wednesday, conducted by Louis Karchin at the Miller Theater. At a time when other arts organizations are struggling to stay afloat and in many cases curtailing their activities, starting an orchestra and handing out commissions may seem counterintuitive, if not perilous. But these bold endeavors show an old, established organization undergoing profound changes to ensure a viable future.” Wednesday’s program includes works by Britten, Carter, Christopher Dietz, Alvin Singleton, Stravinsky, Julia Wolfe, and Charles Wuorinen.

Posted June 8, 2009

“There’s a new baton in town,” writes Scott Cantrell in Saturday’s (6/6) Dallas Morning News. “It belongs to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s new assistant conductor, Rei (pronounced Ray) Hotoda, who’s making her local debut tonight. She doesn’t officially start on the job until September, but she’s opening the DSO’s Casual Classics series of four concerts at the Meyerson Symphony Center. Her first program includes the Shostakovich Festive Overture, a suite from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and, with pianist Joyce Yang, the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. On June 20 she’ll conduct music of Dvorák, Copland, Gershwin and Astor Piazzolla.” Hotoda studied piano at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Southern California, catching the conducting bug in graduate school, she says. “Her interest was encouraged in a workshop for young conductors sponsored by the League of American Orchestras, and she got into a graduate conducting program at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Md. … Since 2006 she has been assistant conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in Canada, and since 2008 also music director of the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra.”

Posted June 8, 2009

In last Thursday’s (5/28) Duluth New Tribune (Minnesota), Christa Lawler wrote, “A shoulder injury sidelined Samuel Martin from playing his violin last fall. When the student in the Hartt School’s 20/20 Chamber Music Program wasn’t able to hold his instrument, Martin instead shouldered the task of organizing a new Duluth music festival that he said he hopes someday becomes an internationally respected event. The result of Martin’s time off—the Three Bridges International Chamber Music Festival—will be held at various locations in Duluth June 7-18. The festival includes master classes for a small group of hand-selected students from around the world, seminars for local musicians and small run-out concerts throughout the community. … The faculty ranges from artistic director Anton Miller, Martin’s violin instructor who teaches at New York University and the Hartt School and was instrumental in bringing the festival to fruition, to Angela Fuller, a violinist who played with the Minnesota Orchestra before she became the concertmaster for the Houston Symphony. … Martin has spent the last few months finding sponsors and students and securing the faculty.”

Posted June 5, 2009

In Tuesday’s (6/2) San Jose Mercury News (California), Brian Babcock writes, “The new Montalvo Arts Center executive director is wasting no time putting her stamp on the nonprofit arts organization. Angela McConnell has spent her first couple of weeks on the job spreading the word that Montalvo wants to be a part of the local community and hopes that the community will embrace it in return. Known in the past as a wedding destination and a place to watch popular artists live in concert, Montalvo took a ‘breather’ for the past few years and mainly focused on its residency program and delved deep into multimedia art. McConnell openly says that there most likely have been people in the community who may have felt alienated by Montalvo’s direction in the past few years … ‘As an arts organization, we have a responsibility to not limit our vision to appeal to just a certain constituency group that is well versed in art.’ … All these changes McConnell wants to put into place come only three years before Montalvo will celebrate its 100th anniversary.”

Posted June 5, 2009

“Robert Schumann only wrote one piano concerto, which he premiered in 1845 with his wife, Clara, on the keys and himself on the conductor’s podium” writes Will Ayers in Friday’s (6/5) Tennessean (Nashville). “When the Nashville Symphony plays the notoriously difficult and rousing piece this weekend, acclaimed pianist Orli Shaham will perform the ivory acrobatics. Also on the program is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fantastic Scheherazade, inspired by the Arabian tales of A Thousand and One Nights and shaped by a globe-spanning tour the composer took as a young man in the Russian Navy. Jennifer Higdon’s 2004 piece Loco, which mimics the clatter and roar of a train at full tilt, opens the show at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center (One Symphony Place). This is the first concert in the symphony’s First Tennessee Summer Series, which continues June 19-20 with a Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, conducted by departing music adviser Leonard Slatkin.”

Posted June 5, 2009

In Friday’s (6/5) New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin writes, “A scheduling mishap left the New York Philharmonic in a pickle last month. With the players onstage and audience members shifting in their seats, there was no one in the first clarinet chair for Shostakovich‘s Violin Concerto No. 1. Stanley Drucker, the orchestra’s principal clarinetist, was not scheduled to play. When word of the problem reached him, he rushed from the players’ lounge, took his place and quickly flipped through the technically demanding part as the conductor, David Zinman, and the soloist, Christian Tetzlaff, walked onstage. Though he hadn’t performed the work since the 1950s, Mr. Drucker nailed it, colleagues later recounted, throwing out Shostakovich’s skittering, manic lines with aplomb. ‘I think I did a pretty good job,’ Mr. Drucker said. ‘I guess it’ll go into the folklore of “jumping in.” ‘ Mr. Drucker, 80, will soon enter something bigger than folklore. Legend maybe? History? He is retiring from the Philharmonic after 60 years, the longest tenure of any player in the orchestra’s existence. … On Saturday and Tuesday, Mr. Drucker is to give his final solo performances with the orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, playing Aaron Copland‘s Concerto.”

Posted June 5, 2009

Photo credit: Michael DiVito

In Friday’s (6/5) Baltimore Sun, Tim Smith reports, “Marin Alsop, the dynamic American conductor who became the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 12th music director in September 2007, will remain in that post until 2015 under the terms of a five-year contract announced Thursday. That contract will begin when her initial three-year deal ends in September 2010. … BSO president and CEO Paul Meecham called the contract ‘a statement of our belief in Marin’s leadership of the organization. She is a visionary for the direction orchestras need to be headed in,’ he said, ‘if they are to have greater relevance to a broader number of people in the community.’ Alsop’s interest in outreach led to the creation of OrchKids, an ambitious after-school music training program launched last year at a West Baltimore elementary school. … During Alsop’s first two seasons, the orchestra has resumed making commercial CDs after a nearly decade-long hiatus. Programming has been enlivened by the inclusion of works by such contemporary composers as Philip Glass, John Adams and Thomas Ades, and a presentation last fall of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Mass,’ performed to considerable acclaim in New York and Washington, as well as Baltimore. A recording of ‘Mass’ is due for release in August.”

Posted June 5, 2009

Photo credit: Grant Leighton

Andrea Laguni, executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, was recently decorated with the Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity (Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella della Solidarità Italiana). Laguni received the honor from Nicola Faganello, the Consul General of Italy in Los Angeles, at a ceremony held at UCLA’s Royce Hall on June 2. The annual award, established in 1947, is bestowed upon individuals whose work in the fields of literature, community service, or philanthropy reflects their commitment to Italian culture. Diego Brasioli, the former Consul General of Italy in Los Angeles, who recommended Laguni for the award, said, “Andrea has made the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra one of the premier orchestras in the world through his support of young talent and new works, while continuing to highlight Italy’s great composers, such as Vivaldi.” Laguni, born and raised in Florence, Italy, joined LACO in 1995 and became executive director in 2007; he also previously worked at the opera companies of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Posted June 5, 2009

Small photo of Andrea Laguni by Michael Burke

Large photo of Andrea Laguni (right), with Nicola Faganello and Italian men’s chorus (at rear), courtesy of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra 

The New York Philharmonic will embark on an eleven-concert tour of Asia this October that marks the orchestra’s first performances in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Details of the tour were announced at a June 2 press conference in Tokyo given by Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert and President and Executive Director Zarin Mehta. The October 8-24 tour, “Asian Horizons: Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic,” also encompasses performances in Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, Korea; and Singapore. The orchestra’s two performances in Vietnam will take place at the Hanoi Opera House; plans are underway for a large-screen simulcast of the concerts on the plaza adjacent to the opera house. The two concerts in Abu Dhabi, at the Emirates Palace Auditorium, will mark the opening of the 2009-10 season of Abu Dhabi Classics, described as the first year-round performing arts series in the Arab world. During the tour the orchestra will perform works of Barber, Beethoven, Berlioz, Mahler, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, as well as a new commission by Magnus Lindberg, the Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence beginning in September 2009. The Lindberg piece will have its world premiere in New York at the Philharmonic’s opening-night gala in September, prior to the tour.

Posted June 5, 2009 

This spring, the Seattle Opera has been holding a contest to choose the host for a new video project, “Confessions of a First-Time Operagoer.” The contest was launched a few months before the company’s upcoming Ring cycle performances, and is envisioned as a way for young people with limited operagoing experience to become involved with the opera. Applicants must never have previously seen Wagner’s Ring cycle. The winner of the contest will make a documentary this summer about his or her first Ring cycle experience. The company received 49 applications over the past several weeks, which were submitted through Facebook and by mail; there was also a live casting call held on May 15. The five finalists’ audition videos have been posted at Seattle Opera’s website, where visitors viewed them and voted for a favorite. The winner will be announced on June 6, the day the company begins its online pre-sale for single tickets to the Ring cycle performances. Earlier this spring, the Chicago Opera Theater’s “Why Do You Deserve Free Tickets to COT?” YouTube contest allowed people to compete for 2009 COT spring festival tickets by uploading videos with their own answer to the contest question. Four winners in that contest received two COT subscriptions; the cost was underwritten by the company’s board of trustees.

Posted June 5, 2009