Category: News Briefs

In Wednesday’s (2/25) Press-Telegram (Long Beach, California), Al Rudis reports, “The Long Beach Symphony Orchestra will operate without an executive director for the short term following the resignation Tuesday of Nancy James Fox after only five months in the position. Fox explained that she is leaving because she wants more time to herself. She said she had reservations when Bob Stemler, the chairman of the search committee, invited her to apply last year. ‘I had two long stints—22 years and seven years—a total of 29 years of doing something like this on a full-time basis, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again,’ she said in a phone interview Tuesday. … The symphony is taking a wait-and-see approach to a successor. ‘We’re not going to re-ignite the executive director search right now,’ said Roger Goulette, chairman of the symphony association board. … ‘Randy Mizer, who is a former president of the association, has agreed to step in on a temporary interim basis to help manage the business,’ said Goulette. ‘He is not an interim executive director. He is doing it as a volunteer for now.’ ”

In Thursday’s (2/26) Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin reports, “The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts has chosen a sound doctor to fix what ails Verizon Hall. Threshold Acoustics, a Chicago firm founded in 2006 after its partners broke away from renowned acoustician Kirkegaard Associates, will undertake a full range of work that in effect transfers acoustical oversight from Artec Consultants, the hall’s original designer. Kimmel president Anne Ewers said Threshold had been engaged for the project from start to finish. … The Kimmel does not yet have a signed contract with Threshold, but the firm’s partners have already begun listening to performances in Verizon Hall, Ewers said, and will be attending rehearsals and concerts during the 18 to 24 months it will take to complete work. The time frame, she said, would allow the Kimmel to study fund-raising strategies for underwriting the remedial construction. … When it opened in December 2001, the $275 million Kimmel Center aimed to provide for the Philadelphia Orchestra an acoustical antidote to the beloved but dry Academy of Music, its home since its 1900 founding. Yet various critics, instrumentalists, administrators, and even Artec have said that the 2,500-seat Verizon falls short of its potential.” 

In Monday’s (2/23) Guardian (London), Jasper Rees profiles piano technician Ulrich Gerhartz. “In an all but invisible way, Gerhartz is probably the single most important figure in the entire piano world, at least to pianists and to concert halls. He’s just back from Melbourne, where he set up two concert grands in a new venue. Stored in his mobile phone, he has the numbers of just about every top piano player on the planet. ‘And their agents,’ he adds. … To call this man a piano-tuner would be to sell him a tad short. Gerhartz, Steinway’s director of concert and artist services, is a master piano-tuner, maybe even a maestro. And tuning is not nearly as simple as it sounds. U.S. orchestras specifically request a pitch of 440Hz for an A, while European ones generally go for 441. … Depth of touch is all important,” Rees writes. “Some pianists like the piano set up so that all they have to do is tickle the key and a note sounds. Others opt for resistance. … And then each piano has its own personality, which gradually emerges in the first year or two of its performing life. It is Gerhartz’s job to steer a pianist in the direction of the right instrument.”

In Sunday’s (2/22) Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee), Harold Duckett notes how rare it is to hear a Knoxville composer’s work premiered. “But Knoxville composer William Mark Harrell’s ‘Time Like An Ever Flowing Stream,’ commissioned by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, will be heard for the first time on Thursday, Feb. 26 at the Tennessee Theatre. Harrell has played horn in the symphony since 1983, except for a period of advanced horn studies in Boston. … The title of Harrell’s new composition comes from a verse in an old Southern hymn. ‘I adore the hymns of the Southern church,’ he said. ‘But there’s not a quote from the tune in this piece.’ … Born and raised in Lake City in Anderson County and a self-taught composer, Harrell is using pieces of hymns in an opera he is writing about events of the Civil War era.” Portions of that work have been performed by the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra. Thursday’s Knoxville Symphony program, led by music director Lucas Richman, is rounded out by the music of Brahms.

In Sunday’s (2/22) Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), Steven Brown writes, “The Charlotte Symphony hopes to turn challenges into opportunities in its 2009-10 season. The orchestra faces the same recession as the rest of us, on top of financial troubles that began six years ago. The group has yet to hire a conductor to take over after Christof Perick steps down as music director next spring. … But a cost-conscious orchestra can go for promising young soloists and conductors who aren’t as expensive as veterans, executive director Jonathan Martin said.” They include pianist Yuja Wang, violinist Karen Gomyo, and conductor James Feddeck. “The orchestra also will introduce some of its music lovers to a new experience in early October. After producing a couple of special concerts this season with multimedia additions—such as a video montage from the movie On the Waterfront linked to Leonard Bernstein’s music—the orchestra will bring multimedia to the main series for the first time. This time, the fodder will include Bernstein’s On the Town.” A separate article by Brown in the Observer that same day reports that two of the Charlotte Symphony’s candidates for music director—Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer and American James Gaffigan—have withdrawn from the race.

In Tuesday’s (2/24) Philadelphia Inquirer, Christopher Wink writes about the ways Philadelphia arts organizations are deploying online social networking for marketing. “The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page. The Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and just about every other arts organization in the city has a Facebook page. … Among other initiatives to entice young listeners, the Philadelphia Orchestra promotes its EZSeatU, which offers open season tickets to college students for a one-time $25 fee. ‘Social media is the backbone,’ said J. Edward Cambron, the orchestra’s vice president for marketing. The orchestra hosts Facebook nights—$10 rush tickets to those who visit its Facebook page—that draw 50, 60 or more youthful takers. It is tinkering with its podcast—the Podchestra—and has invested in Facebook ads focusing on young Philadelphia college students, Cambron said. … In June, the League of American Orchestras will host its annual conference. While using social media isn’t on the agenda for the Chicago meeting yet, Cambron said his discussions with leaders of other big orchestras in places like New York, Chicago and Cleveland suggest that the trend could become a major theme.”

Tuesday (2/24) on the Los Angeles Times arts website Culture Monster, Mike Boehm and Chris Jones write, “Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters spent the evening of Feb. 6 in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., applauding the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Evidently, it was the first family’s idea of a fun Friday night out. But in a capital where every presidential inflection and turn of phrase is parsed for glimmers of meaning, that front-and-center display of enthusiasm for one of the ‘high’ or ‘classic’ arts boomed like a 21-gun salute. It fed increasing hopes among arts advocates that the Obamas would generate a greater buzz for the arts simply by smiling in theater seats or strolling through museum galleries. … This infusion of the arts into the Obamas’ public rituals and family routines comes after eight years in which George W. Bush seldom was seen in Washington’s halls of culture. … The adult Obama’s arts résumé includes teaming with the Chicago Symphony as narrator for Aaron Copland’s ‘Lincoln Portrait’ during a free concert in 2005.” 

In Monday’s (2/23) New York Times, Anthony Tommasini writes, “Alice Tully Hall, closed for nearly two years, opened its grand, airy and people-friendly new lobby to the public and presented a large roster of fine musicians, ranging from living masters to eager students, who played a program aptly titled ‘First Look.’ In an inspired choice, the first music heard by an actual audience in the extensively renovated auditorium, now called the Starr Theater, was not some brassy fanfare or festive overture, but three mournful, elegiac Sephardic Romances from the 15th century. … The music also was immediately revealing of the question that really matters as Alice Tully Hall returns: what are the new acoustics like? The astonishing early music performer Jordi Savall played a gently melancholic melody on the vièle, an early string instrument. And the quiet sounds—ancient and earthy—carried beautifully in the hall. … I was especially impressed when, after the Sephardic Romances, the pianist Leon Fleisher played a rhapsodic and affecting performance of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. I had never found the hall ideal for piano recitals before. But Mr. Fleisher’s tone, especially in softer passages, had a presence and body that seemed to be evidence of the new acoustical bloom.”

In Tuesday’s (2/24) Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota), Randy A. Salas relates how fellow fans of classical music warned him against using iTunes and the iPod. “Fire up the managing software for the iPod, and the reason becomes clear,” he writes. “iTunes’ default settings are fine-tuned for rock, not Bach. … But with just a few tweaks and some tips, you can turn your iPod and iTunes into classical companions. Here’s how you can better organize your classical collection, find high-quality downloads online, and get music cheaply or even for free. Before you do anything else, add a composer field to your iTunes music listings. (To do this, click on View in the menu bar, then View Options, and check the Composer box.) This will make your listening life immeasurably easier. Once you sync your iPod afterward, you’ll be able to access your music by composer, an essential feature for any classical fan.” Salas also points out that many classical artists are tagged wrongly in the iTunes database, so one should make sure to change these tags when downloading from the iTunes store or ripping from a CD.

Tuesday (2/24) on MusicalAmerica.com, Susan Elliott reports, “Yuri Temirkanov has cancelled all his United States engagements for the remainder of the season, including concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Baltimore Symphony. He also cancelled all of his London concerts last month. His manager, Nicholas Mathias, cited ‘personal reasons.’ Asked about the conductor’s health, Mathias responded: ‘Mr. Temirkanov seems in good shape although having just turned 70 years of age, he is naturally having some health checks and I am sure this is one of the reasons why he has cut down on his guest conducting activities at the present time.’ Temirkanov is music director and principal conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, music director designate Teatro Regio di Parma, principal guest conductor of the Bolshoi Theater and Music Director Emeritus of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.”