Category: News Briefs

In Wednesday’s (3/4) Washington Post, Anne Midgette writes, “Instead of focusing on another country, the major festival at the Kennedy Center next year will focus on another landscape: the terrain inhabited by artists with various disabilities, from deafness to diabetes, around the world. This was a highlight of the 2009-10 season schedule, which the Kennedy Center announced at a news conference yesterday. … The Kennedy Center hasn’t cut back its artistic budget for this season, according to the center’s president, Michael Kaiser, who says the $89 million price tag is in line with other seasons.” Other highlights include the return of the Mariinsky Theatre in a production of Prokofiev’s “War and Peace”; a visit by the Bolshoi Ballet in February; the first Washington performance of Balanchine’s “Nutcracker”; “Golden Age,” a new play commissioned from Terrence McNally; and “the Sydney Theatre Company’s ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ the production directed by Liv Ullmann, with Cate Blanchett as Stella. … The National Symphony Orchestra is offering a similar balance of the new-but-safe and the familiar. The new involves a two-program series conducted by the composer John Adams … There are a string of debuting conductors unknown to many Americans: Juraj Valcuha, Jakub Hrusa and Alexander Vedernikov. There’s also a new piano concerto from the fine composer Jennifer Higdon.”

Posted 3/4/2009

Tuesday (3/3) on the Los Angeles Times’ arts website Culture Monster, Christopher Knight reports, “Time is short for arts organizations to apply for stimulus funds for actual jobs as part of President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The National Endowment for the Arts is fast off the block today with grant guidelines. The deadline for applying is April 2, with grants being awarded as soon as July 1. Among the options is salary support—full or partial—for jobs that have been eliminated (or are in jeopardy) because of the current economic slide but are critical to carry out an organization’s artistic mission.”

Posted 3/4/2009

New York’s Albany Symphony Orchestra has initiated a search for an executive director, following the resignation of Sharon Walsh, who had served as the orchestra’s general manager. Walsh worked with the orchestra for sixteen years, during which time the ASO’s stature in the orchestra community grew; her responsibilities covered all aspects of managing the orchestra. Steven Lobel, the ASO’s board chairman, announced that the orchestra has hired the Catherine French Group—a Washington, D.C.-based executive-search and leadership development organization for arts and nonprofit groups—to direct a national search for an executive director to provide strategic leadership and vision. Under Music Director David Alan Miller, the ASO has gained recognition for its programming of contemporary music; the orchestra also works with public schools in the cities of Albany and Troy, as well as other suburban schools.

In Michigan, winners of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra’s competition for young performers and composers are being spotlighted at ten concerts this month. The orchestra’s 2008-09 youth concerts, performed from March 2 to 6 before nearly 14,000 area schoolchildren, will include performances of winning compositions by sixth-grader Stephanie Truitt, and Samn Johnson, a high school senior. Stephanie Truitt’s Song: Cedar River Waltz was composed for piano but was arranged for orchestra by the KSO’s Harrison Orr. Johnson’s Symphony No. 1 is the first winning composition in the history of the KSO’s Young Composers in Concert program not to require further orchestration. The concerts also feature performances by competition’s winning instrumentalists: violinists Zachary Brandon (5th grade) and Ariele Macadangdang (12th grade), and pianist Marissa Uchimura (9th grade).  The KSO also awarded honorable mentions in performance to high-school seniors Matthew T. Evans (bass trombone), Elizabeth Perry (vocalist), and Abigail Schubkegel (violin). The competition is open to K-12 students from the Michigan counties of Allegan, Barry, Branch, Cass, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, and Van Buren.

The California Symphony’s March 8 and 10 concerts will feature the world premiere of White Lies for Lomax by Mason Bates, the orchestra’s composer in residence. The work for full orchestra—originally conceived as a solo piano work—was composed as a homage to Alan Lomax (1915-2002), the pioneering ethnomusicologist who played a pivotal role in preserving twentieth-century folk music through early recordings, concerts, and radio shows. Bates describes his new work as dreaming up “wisps of distant blues fragments” inspired by blues artists such as Muddy Waters, discovered by Lomax during listening visits to the American South. Though Bates often composes works incorporating electronica and techno elements, White Lies for Lomax is a straight acoustic work. The concerts at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California are billed as “Young and Visionary” and feature the 32-year-old Bates and 22-year-old violinist Stefan Jackiw, who will perform the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto; also on the program is Brahms’s Symphony No. 4.

The Pasadena Symphony Association, which in November cancelled many of its 2008-09 classical and pops concerts as the result of a financial crisis, has restored more events in its comeback season. The Pasadena POPS will host a March 21 concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium featuring the Celtic-music group Cherish the Ladies. The Pasadena Symphony returned to the concert stage in January and continues its 2008-09 concerts in March and April with two programs highlighting the theme of “new life,” with works including Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony and Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). The reinstatement of concerts in the Pasadena Symphony Association’s season came after the organization brought in Paul Jan Zdunek, first as a crisis-management consultant and then as its chief executive officer. Zdunek left his position as president and CEO of the Modesto Symphony to take his current position in Pasadena. Zdunek’s tenure at Modesto, from 2003 to 2008, included guiding that orchestra through a difficult budget period. The Pasadena organization will no longer be known as “The Orchestras of Pasadena”; it has returned to its original name, the Pasadena Symphony Association (or Pasadena Symphony / Pasadena POPS). 

Photo of Paul Jan Zdunek courtesy of Pasadena Symphony Association

In Monday’s (3/2) Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), Travis Rivers writes, “With Michael Daugherty’s ‘Letters From Lincoln’ at The Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox on Saturday, the audience found itself in the presence of a moving tribute to our 16th president. ‘Letters From Lincoln’ was commissioned by the Spokane Symphony with money from the Bruce Ferden Fund for New Music. The performance was recorded by E1 Music for release later this season. The work will be performed this fall in Italy at Milan’s ‘SettembreMusica’ festival and by the Elgin (Ill.) Symphony, which also supported the commission. Unlike Aaron Copland’s widely performed ‘Lincoln Portrait,’ Daugherty’s ‘Letters From Lincoln’ sets only Lincoln’s own words as a song cycle for baritone, not for a narrator. And unlike Copland, Daugherty attempts to show the various facets of Lincoln, the man, rather than painting an ‘official (musical) portrait.’ … Spokane can be proud of Daugherty’s fine new work performed so beautifully by [vocalist Thomas] Hampson, conductor Eckart Preu and the orchestra. Saturday’s audience gave the work and its performers a prolonged standing ovation.”

In Sunday’s (3/1) St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sarah Bryan Miller previews an upcoming offering by David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra at Powell Hall: “two programs of six compositions that incorporate dancers from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, sharing the stage with the players. (A Family Concert on Sunday afternoon will use elements from both evening performances.) Robertson and Hubbard Street executive director Jim Vincent are dedicated to collaborating with other artists, in frequently unexpected ways. Hubbard Street’s style is highly athletic and surprisingly balletic. Its dances have a layer of humor, making this a good choice for someone who’s not totally certain about modern dance. … Robertson says that he likes the dancers’ ‘real feeling for music. (When) you integrate them with musicians on the stage, it’s not like two entities. One feeds on the other; you begin to interpret the musicians’ gestures as dancelike, and the dancers’ as musical.’ Friday night’s program will include dances set to music of J.S. Bach, Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. March 7 has Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and the premiere of a dance to Benjamin Britten’s ‘Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge.’ ”

In Monday’s (3/2) Boston Globe, Michael Levenson writes about the increasing interest the Boston Symphony Orchestra has in attracting new audiences. “For generations, the orchestra could count on a seemingly endless supply of new concertgoers, raised to love live classical music by music classes in the schools, nationwide radio broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic, and homes where the great composers dominated the rotation on the living room record player. But as those institutions—the schools, the media, the home—have faded in their focus on classical music, the BSO is now trying harder than ever to attract new listeners and patrons. After seasons of offering discounts to college students and hosting preconcert social events, the orchestra this season is trying to throw open its doors even wider, selling $20 tickets to anyone under the age of 40. … Next season, the orchestra is considering repeating the $20 deal, and is drumming up other ideas to appeal to the young, such as interactive media displays about classical music. … The orchestra also hosts cocktail receptions for young people and offers 25 concerts to college students who pay a total of $25. This season, 5,200 of the $20 tickets—which typically cost $29 to $115—have sold, smashing expectations that only 4,000 would go.”

In Tuesday’s (3/3) San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman and Jesse Hamlin report, “The San Francisco Symphony’s 2009-10 season will include six commissioned world premieres and inaugurate Project San Francisco, a new initiative featuring two-week residencies by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and composer George Benjamin. The new season, the 15th under Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, will begin Sept. 9 with a gala concert starring pianist Lang Lang before shifting into a three-week Mahler festival with appearances by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and baritone Thomas Hampson. The season concludes June 23-26 with performances of Berlioz’s ‘dramatic symphony,’ ‘Roméo et Juliette.’ … Although the Symphony has seen its endowment income drop 25 percent and trimmed its administrative costs last year, the organization is holding steady in terms of ticket sales and fundraising and has no plans to scale back programming, Symphony President John Goldman said Monday at a Davies Hall news conference. … The orchestra also announced the ratification of a new four-year contract between Symphony management and musicians that will extend past the 2011-12 centennial season. … Thomas described the Project San Francisco residencies as similar to the two-week residency by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina that concluded last week.”