Category: News Briefs

The Florida Orchestra, based in St. Petersburg, will present fourteen programs in its Masterworks Series for 2009-10, beginning on October 9 with a program featuring De Falla’s El Amor Brujo, Arturo Marquez’s Danzón No. 2, and Astor Piazzolla’s Concert for Guitar and Bandoneon, with soloist Manuel Barrueco. Stefan Sanderling, the orchestra’s music director, commented, “This is a difficult time for people in our community, and we want to provide them with an uplifting experience, something that symphonic music does so well. With this in mind, we will be performing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.” Other works during the season include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Dvorák’s New World Symphony, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6, Sibelius’s The Swan of Tuonela, and a new critical edition of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste by Peter Bartók, the composer’s son. Soloists during the season include violinist Elena Urioste, TFO Principal Harpist Anna Kate Mackle, cellist Julie Albers, and pianist Mikhail Rudy. The orchestra performs at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Progress Energy Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, and Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.

The New Haven Symphony Orchestra will perform “Amistad Remembrance,” a concert honoring those who fought slavery, at Woolsey Hall in New Haven on February 26, under Music Director William Boughton. The program will feature Duke Ellington’s The River Suite, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto in G minor, with French violinist Philippe Graffin, and Joseph Schwantner’s New Morning for the New World—Daybreak of Freedom, narrated by WTNH News Channel 8 anchor Keith Kountz. Musicians from the Amistad Academy String Ensemble will perform alongside NHSO musicians in Marsha Chusmir Shapiro’s African Accents. Amistad Academy is a college-preparatory public charter school serving middle school students from New Haven; the 22-member string ensemble of seventh- and eighth-graders is led by Vesna Mehinovic. Since September, the youth ensemble has participated in music workshops led by Boughton and the NHSO string sections.

The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra announced that it has restructured operations by cutting expenses by more than $600,000 and eliminating eight administrative staff positions in order to achieve a balanced budget for this fiscal year. The responsibilities of seven full-time positions and one part-time position will be folded into other areas within the organization, and the ISO will create more opportunities for its volunteer force. The orchestra also has added concert promotions for 2009 to boost attendance, such as offering, for the period from January 11 to 20, remaining seats for the 2008-09 season for $25 or less, resulting in 4,700 tickets sold for $116,000 in revenue. As of December 31, 2008, the ISO’s endowment value was approximately $84 million, down 21 percent from August 31, 2008. Contributed income to the ISO’s Annual Fund is currently down by 5 percent and corporate donations and support is down by 3 percent. “We will combat these economic challenges by operating as efficiently as possible without compromising our high artistic standards,” said Simon Crookall, ISO’s president and CEO.

In Thursday’s (2/12) Columbus Business First (Ohio), Adrian Burns reports that the “Columbus Symphony Orchestra is expected to disclose Thursday that the three-year contract of Executive Director Tony Beadle won’t be renewed, Columbus Business First has learned. Beadle, 56, came to the symphony from the Boston Pops in June 2006 with high hopes for turning around the perennially money-losing organization. He would not comment. … Beadle’s departure represents the latest step in a continuing shake-up at the organization, which suspended operations for several months last year during a contract impasse with its musicians. … The two sides reached a three-year deal in September, with the 53 full-time musicians agreeing to salary and benefit cuts that would save the symphony about $1.3 million a year.” Music Director Junichi Hirokami left the orchestra last fall.

In Wednesday’s (2/11) New York Times, Vivien Schweitzer writes, “The 83-year-old composer Gunther Schuller has long been affiliated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which has introduced many of his works. ‘Where the Word Ends,’ a 125th-anniversary commission from the orchestra, received its world premiere last week in Boston and its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on Monday, conducted by the orchestra’s music director, James Levine. … ‘Where the Word Ends,’ a 25-minute work divided in four sections played without pause, opens with a gentle shimmering trill in the strings before rapid figurations are played over bold statements from the lower strings and brass. The colorful, theatrical score builds in intensity to a riotous conclusion before an introspective Adagio with lush string melodies. The lower strings provided a steady ostinato pattern in the Scherzo, over which a flurry of dialogue ensued among brass and percussion and other instruments. The hints of jazz reflect Mr. Schuller’s significant experience as a jazz performer and composer. (He coined the term ‘Third Stream’ to represent music blending jazz and classical music.)”

In Wednesday’s (2/11) New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin reports, “The Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday announced a 2009-10 season notable for shrunken ambitions in a time of economic crisis for the house, for the arts and for the nation. At the same time the company managed to plan for eight new productions, including four operas never seen on the Met stage and several major conducting debuts at the house. Among the highlights announced at a news conference, Angela Gheorghiu will sing Carmen for the first time onstage in a new production of Bizet’s opera; Paulo Szot, who won a Tony for the Lincoln Center Theater production of ‘South Pacific,’ will perform in a new production of Shostakovich’s opera ‘The Nose,’ directed and designed by the artist William Kentridge; and Rolando Villazón and Anna Netrebko will star in a new production of Offenbach’s ‘Contes d’Hoffmann,’ directed by Bartlett Sher. Pierre Boulez will conduct the Met Orchestra for the first time in a concert at Carnegie Hall.” Previously announced highlights “include Rossini’s ‘Armida’ with Renée Fleming in the title role and Verdi’s ‘Attila’ with Riccardo Muti making his Met conducting debut. … Other new productions include Janacek’s ‘From the House of the Dead,’ with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting in his Met debut, and Puccini’s ‘Tosca,’ with Karita Mattila singing the title role for the first time outside her native Finland.”

In Wednesday’s (2/11) Guardian (London), Mark Pemberton, the director of the Association of British Orchestras, responds to a February 4 article about the low quality of music education in British schools, which, he writes, “failed to acknowledge the work of professional orchestras with schools across Britain. … Nurturing talent and broadening access to classical music is a key focus for our association, which represents the interests of more than 65 professional orchestras and ensembles. … Our professional orchestras are already doing excellent work in partnership with schools—from musicians working directly in the classroom to the provision of concerts for schoolchildren.” About the February 4 article, Pemberton writes “that ‘the report is based on inspectors’ visits to 84 primary and 95 secondary schools’. It seems highly unlikely that none of these schools are benefiting from collaboration with professional music groups. Our orchestras currently reach more than 300,000 children a year. … Engaging with professional orchestras and other arts organisations is a key part of effective music education—one that should be recognised and celebrated.”

In Tuesday’s (2/10) Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker writes about a little-known nominee at this year’s Grammy Awards. “It was John McLaughlin Williams, a 51-year-old native of North Carolina, who lives in Livonia [Michigan] with his wife and daughter. Don’t feel bad about not recognizing him. He’s also unknown among the classical music elite—in spite of recording 10 CDs, winning a Grammy in 2007 for a performance by French modernist Olivier Messiaen and earning ringing endorsements from producers, musicians and critics. … How can a conductor as obviously talented as Williams remain hidden in plain sight? The answer has to do with his relatively late start and the circuitous path he took to the podium, the unusual repertoire he has chosen to champion and the vagaries of a business in which the best musicians don’t always get the best gigs. … Williams speaks in an even pitch that picks up steam as he latches onto his favorite subject: unjustly neglected composers, especially Americans. … Williams’ Grammy nomination Sunday was in the soloist and orchestra category. The CD, issued on the small domestic label Artek, contains 20th-Century violin concertos by Benjamin Lees and Ernest Bloch, with soloist Elmar Oliveira. It was recorded with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in Kiev.” Williams lost to Esa-Pekka Salonen and Hilary Hahn for their recording of the Sibelius and Schoenberg violin concertos.