Category: News Briefs

In Sunday’s (2/22) Wichita Eagle (Kansas), Chris Shull writes that, despite economic troubles throughout the arts industry, “there’s good news in Wichita. So far, local economic contractions have not translated to rollbacks at the Wichita Symphony Orchestra. The ensemble’s 2009-2010 classics concert season shows no reduction in concerts or radical changes in programming. The next classical concert season will have eight pairs of concerts, the same as in this and past seasons. Programs will feature a mix of symphonies, concertos and overtures by brand-name composers—with a couple of interesting ventures into new and seldom-heard music. … Next season will be [Music Director Andrew] Sewell’s last with the orchestra; he’ll conduct seven of the eight programs. … The new season will begin Oct. 3-4 with Lilya Zilberstein playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. It will conclude April 10-11, 2010, with Sewell conducting Brahms’ A German Requiem. Tracy Silverman will return with his electric violin Jan. 16-17 to play the world premiere of a self-penned work (as yet untitled) commissioned by the Wichita Symphony and also his ‘Anthem 25,’ written for Sewell and the Madison Chamber Orchestra.”

In Sunday’s (2/22) Denver Post, Kyle MacMillan writes about the distribution of the $50 million portion of the federal stimulus package earmarked for the arts. “The day after President Barack Obama signed the bill in Denver last week, representatives of more than 200 arts organizations nationwide took part in a ‘webinar’ organized by Americans for the Arts. But details were scarce. Victoria Hutter, a spokeswoman for the National Endowment for the Arts, which is responsible for distributing the $50 million, said the agency hopes to post funding guidelines in early or mid-March. … What is known so far is that 40 percent of the stimulus money for the arts will go to state arts agencies and the country’s six regional arts agencies, including the Western States Arts Federation. They will then redistribute those allocations via their existing funding channels. … The timeline for money reaching arts organizations is unclear. Robert L. Lynch, president of Americans of the Arts, believes allocations could begin in a few months, because the NEA already has an efficient distribution process in place.”

The Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and the Oriental Music Ensemble of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music-Palestine are both scheduled to perform during the Kennedy Center’s three-week-long “Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World” festival, in Washington, D.C. On February 23, the Qatar orchestra, a new project of the Qatar Foundation (qf.org.qa), was led by New York Philharmonic Music Director Lorin Maazel in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and two works by oud master Marcel Khalifé, Arabian Concerto and Salute. The Oriental Music Ensemble—Suhail Khoury, nay (flute) and clarinet; Ahmad Al-Khatib, oud; Ibrahim Attari, qanoun; Yousef Hbeisch, percussion—will perform a March 12 concert of contemporary and classical Arab music at the festival, following a March 9 performance at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. The New York performance is a joint event with ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid) to benefit the construction of a school of music for the Palestine conservatory’s Bethlehem branch and the reconstruction of a music school destroyed in Gaza.   

The Nashville Symphony’s latest recording is a two-CD Naxos set of works inspired by Abraham Lincoln, scheduled for release on February 24, during Lincoln’s 200th birthday month. Leonard Slatkin leads the orchestra in works by an all-American group of composers: Copland’s Lincoln Portrait; Charles Ives’s Lincoln, the Great Commoner; Vincent Persichetti’s A Lincoln Address; Roy Harris’s Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight; Ernst Bacon’s Ford’s Theatre: A Few Glimpses of Easter Week, 1865; Morton Gould’s Lincoln Legend; George Frederick McKay’s To A Liberator; and Paul Turok’s Variations on an American Song: Aspects of Lincoln and Liberty. Performing on the recording with the orchestra are narrator Barry Scott, mezzo-soprano Sharon Mabry, violinist Mary Kathryn Van Osdale, cellist Anthony LaMarchina, pianist Roger Wiesmeyer, and the Nashville Symphony Chorus. In 2008 the orchestra released recordings of John Corigliano’s Dylan Thomas Trilogy, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and an all-Menotti set including Amahl and the Night Visitors.

Astral Artists, the Philadelphia-based “career bridge” organization for gifted young musicians, has selected eight winners of its 2009 National Auditions, following a four-day audition period in January. Winners are violinist Benjamin Beilman (19), baritone Jonathan Beyer (27), the Biava Quartet, bassoonist Harrison Hollingsworth (22), cellist Hee-Young Lim (21), pianists Alexandra Moutouzkine (28) and Ilya Poletaev (28), and soprano Yulia van Doren (25). Auditions winners receive professional career development guidance; Philadelphia and New York City debuts; auditions for major presenters, managers, and conductors; and the opportunity to perform world premieres of Astral-commissioned works. In addition, Beilman also was named winner of the $5,000 Milka/Astral Violin Prize, financed by the Princeton-based Markow Totevy Foundation; the prize underwrites participation in one or more international competitions, with the remainder set aside for professional career development. Astral, founded in 1992, runs a concert series with the Camden-based orchestra Symphony in C, and its artists perform at a variety of community settings including schools and adult-care facilities.

The Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra has launched a new campaign known as Eight.Eighty, which asks sponsors to fund the cost of one hour of music education, estimated at $8.80. With its programs for 225 Central Florida students, the FSYO calculates that it provides more than 25,000 hours of music education a year through weekly rehearsals and a full concert season. Sponsors receive a letter describing what happened during the hour of education, plus a photo commemorating the donation. The youth orchestra, founded in 1957, is based in Orlando. More information about the campaign is available at the orchestra’s website, fsyo.org.

In Sunday’s (2/22) Kansas City Star, Aaron Barnhart writes, “For Anna Garcia, the opportunity to perform for world-renowned trumpeter Alison Balsom was one she simply could not pass up. … The 22-year-old from St. Louis applied—and was one of three musicians selected—to take part in a master class with Balsom, the British trumpet sensation who is in town next weekend for three performances with the Kansas City Symphony. This is the first season the Symphony has offered public master classes. … Pairing a visiting musician with students, and inviting anyone to come and watch for free, is an ingenious way to combine educational outreach and marketing. Which is probably why several orchestras across the country have begun doing it. … Balsom is the third and final master class of this season; cellist Daniel Mueller-Schott and violinist Midori conducted the first two. … The two other students selected to perform for and be critiqued by Balsom are Kelcey Knoernschild, 18, a senior at Park Hill South High School; and Rachel Sneed, 19, a music education major at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville.”

In Sunday’s (2/22) Los Angeles Times, Jon Burlingame writes about the Pacific Symphony’s annual American Composers Festival, which gets under way Thursday in Costa Mesa. “Previous festivals have been devoted to, among other areas, music of Mexico and the American West. This year’s them is ‘Hollywood’s Golden Age,’ but it does not spotlight the usual pops-concert lineup of chestnuts such as ‘Gone With the Wind’ and ‘Star Wars.’ Instead, the festival will offer a fairly radical program that pairs concert music by the five composers with their more familiar film works.” Milos Rozsa, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Bernard Herrmann represent the “golden age” of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. “Also represented will be living composers James Newton Howard, whose ‘Defiance’ score is up for an Academy Award tonight and who has written a 19-minute orchestral piece that will premiere as part of the festival, and Paul Chihara, a veteran composer who writes both film and concert music. … [Carl] St. Clair, the Pacific Symphony music director, says that he asked his players—many of whom double as studio recording musicians—about film composers ‘with a great feel for the orchestra’ and that Howard’s name kept coming up. He says he finds Howard’s film scores ‘unique, and his sound palette really captivating.’ ”

In Sunday’s (2/22) Boston Globe, Jeremy A. Eichler writes that Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director James Levine just gave his final scheduled performance of the season with the ensemble. “This much-heralded partnership between eminent American conductor and major American orchestra has now reached the mile-marker of five seasons and Levine’s initial contract has recently been extended until 2012, making it a ripe moment to reflect on a basic question: How is it going? Overall, the sonic flourishing of the orchestra under Levine’s baton is unmistakable. Big ensembles are not wholly transformed in five years, nor can any longstanding symphonic legacy be erected so quickly. But Levine and the BSO have grown toward each other, and this venerable ensemble … is clearly changing for the better. … Eighteen new players have joined the orchestra since Levine was named music director designate in 2001, and several have retired. With its renovated sound, its broadening repertoire, and its possession of enough [Elliott] Carter … to take over a whole concert in last summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music, the BSO is now very much Levine’s orchestra. It will be fascinating to see where this partnership goes in the next few years, and whether Levine is able to weave together the various threads of the first five seasons in bold new ways.”

In Sunday’s (2/22) Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Graydon Royce notes the ability modern technology has to link people across the globe in “real time,” listing Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogspot, and Live Journal. “The Minnesota Orchestra, founded when the telegraph was considered instant communication, has harnessed the new technology to keep people abreast of the group’s European tour, which begins Tuesday. Music director Osmo Vänskä will lead the orchestra through eight cities—including über-significant London, Berlin and Vienna—with soloist Joshua Bell. … Twin Citians will have a greater sense of the tour than ever before, as musicians wend through England, Germany, Luxembourg and Austria over 10 days. Technology has increased the capacity of the ‘e-tour,’ which intends to bring Europe and the musicians to your computer. Formerly known as the ‘virtual tour,’ the link will post videos of the orchestra in preparation for concerts, photos of musicians sightseeing and brief dissertations on cultural traditions in the cities where they perform.”