Category: News Briefs

In Sunday’s (2/8) Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), Steven Brown writes about the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra’s music director search, highlighting two candidates who particularly impressed him. “With Andrew Grams, who got a jump on the contest as a last-minute substitute in April 2007, the orchestra delivered a ringing and polished all-Tchaikovsky program that transcended its sonic limitations. When Grams returned for his tryout in October, he again generated zesty performances. Rossen Milanov, the last candidate, also spurred the orchestra to the unprecedented: in his case, brooding Rachmaninoff and scintillating Debussy. If only the choice were as simple as deciding who can lead the orchestra to musical heights. Helping dig it out of a financial hole will also be part of the new music director’s job.” These candidates are also actively auditioning for other posts, however. “By the end of this season, Grams will have guest-conducted four more orchestras seeking leaders: the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in Indiana; the San Antonio Symphony in Texas; the New Jersey Symphony; and in May, the Utah Symphony. Milanov hits New Jersey in March and San Antonio in May.” Andrew Grams is a former League of American Orchestras American Conducting Fellow.

In an opinion piece Monday (2/9) in the Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones writes, “In the recent debate over the Barack Obama administration’s economic recovery bill, proposals to spend government money on the arts have become poster children for pork. … In the Senate, an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) lumped museums, theaters and arts centers (a terrifyingly vague term) with such frippery as casinos, golf courses and swimming pools as recipients who must be stopped from getting any of this funding. The amendment passed 73-24 on Friday, with many Democrats voting in the majority. … The argument that the labor-intensive arts are not job-creation engines is patently absurd; they just fuel different kinds of struggling workers, workers unaccustomed to bonuses. Their role in generating billions of dollars in ancillary economic activity for stores, restaurants and the travel business has been proven in bucketloads of surveys and analyses.” The arts, Jones writes, must use such information to make their case for better support. “Economic stimulus is dependent on the human spirit. The arts create confidence and self-worth, and those qualities in turn foster fiscal activity. The arts build neighborhoods and can help stem the decline in property values. The current recession is most devastating in inner cities, precisely where the arts are at their best.”

In Saturday’s (2/7) Indianapolis Star, Jay Harvey writes, “A new profile for the virtuoso solo concerto with orchestra was etched with distinction here Friday night. Jennifer Higdon, an American composer in prolific midcareer, cheered with the rest of a hearteningly large Hilbert Circle Theatre audience after her Violin Concerto received its world premiere by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Hilary Hahn.” Harvey writes that Higdon steers clear of the traditional “heroic” role for the violin. “The piece begins with the fragility of harmonics in the violin, colored by mallet percussion struck with knitting needles. The concertmaster soon takes over the soloist’s material, as the latter plays a more firmly grounded line in the lower middle register. The soloist seems to be forging an identity out of a volatile environment, and it’s unlikely any concert violinist going could steer as steady and resplendent a course through such challenges as Hahn did.” The work was commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony. Works by Weber and Schumann formed the rest of the program.

“Classical music is returning to the AM radio dial, right where K-Mozart used to be,” writes Lee Margulies on a Los Angeles Times blog Saturday (2/7). “Starting Feb. 15, KGIL-AM (1260) will devote a four-hour block every Sunday to the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony. The orchestras’ broadcasts will air back to back from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. And beginning Feb. 16, there will also be a classical music interlude from 8 to 9 on weeknights: ‘Exploring Music With Bill McGlaughlin.’ ” The station, featured all-classical music programming before changing to talk in October 2007, along with it’s call letters, originally KMZT-AM. “Now some classical fare is returning. In a news release issued late Friday afternoon, KGIL described its decision as a response to “popular demand,” noting also that the two orchestras would supplement the blocks of Great American Songbook programming that is already part of the Sunday schedule.”

In Sunday’s (2/8) Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin reports, “With philanthropy down, endowment performance flagging, and ticket sales in important categories hurting, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is trimming its operating budget. In an attempt to stave off a deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30, the Kimmel has reduced its expected operating budget by about $3.4 million, to $36 million. The cuts are coming in the form of nips and tucks for now. A hiring freeze will keep seven positions unfilled. Musicians performing at the center are agreeing to lower fees. Cost-saving moves are being explored through sharing services among the center’s eight resident companies. … No cuts in programming, operating hours, existing staff or salaries are being instituted, said Anne Ewers, president and chief executive officer. … Rather than planning three or four months in advance, the center has put in place a monthly financial analysis to make changes as needed.” The Kimmel Center is the primary home of The Philadelphia Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

In today’s (2/9) Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed reports on the 2009 Grammy Awards, which were announced on Sunday (2/8) at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. “Gloria Cheng, one of L.A.’s leading pianists, won instrumental soloist (without orchestra) for her CD of contemporary scores, including ones by Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen and consulting composer for new music, Steven Stucky. Salonen’s name showed up again, this time as conductor (of the Swedish Radio Symphony) for violinist Hilary Hahn, in concertos by Schoenberg and Sibelius, winner of best instrumental soloist with orchestra.” Swed takes issue with some of the nominations, which he describes as “inexplicably selected. In the orchestra performance category, for instance, the great Chicago Symphony was twice nominated. Its competitors were the considerably less impressive Iceland Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Hollywood Studio Symphony (whatever that is). The Chicago orchestra won—for Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4, conducted by Bernard Haitink.” Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany featuring conductor James Conlon, the Los Angeles Opera chorus, and Los Angeles Opera Orchestra won the award for Best Classical album. Hila Plitmann, accompanied by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, won Best Classical Vocal Performance for Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan.

Photo of Esa-Pekka Salonen: Mathew Imaging 

Thursday (2/5) on PlaybillArts.com, Jennifer Flaster writes about the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, an amateur group based in New York with “an admired sound that is attracting notice among music aficionados throughout the city. … Since 1999 when David Bernard founded PACS, as it is known, the orchestra has established its musical presence and successfully attracted the best amateur players in the city. Over time, Bernard has carefully cultivated a musical sensitivity among the players that heightens their collective awareness of the sound they are creating. … Bernard sets high expectations for PACS by design. His philosophy is that an orchestra, or any group for that matter, will only be as good as it is expected to be. … According to [horn player David] Schulze, ‘what helps differentiate PACS from an amateur orchestra is that each member is treated as a professional musician.’ That respect commands loyalty and commitment from its members. … In addition to scheduled performances at Carnegie Hall and the NYU Skirball Center for the Arts, the orchestra was selected by the Friends of the Arts (FOTA) to be featured in the Grand Finale of its annual Beethoven Festival on Long Island in May.”

In today’s (2/6) Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns writes about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s current tour in the Canary Islands and Europe. “Ticket sales for the three-week, 14-concert tour of the Canary Islands, Iberia and Central Europe so far have been excellent. Although other U.S. orchestra are forgoing overseas tours (and lack of sponsorship forced Philadelphia to cancel this summer’s round of European festivals), Orquesta de Filadelfia touched down in the picture-postcard Canaries on Jan. 28 for the tour’s first leg, which by all accounts bordered on the sublime. … Audiences are giving tour violin soloist Leonidas Kavakos rock-star ovations. And though the famous Philadelphia sound has been compromised by some acoustically questionable auditoriums, there was plenty of it to go around even in the worst of them, such as Lisbon’s cavernous, circular Coliseu dos Recreios, where Holiday on Ice has been a more comfortable visitor. … Audience response in the packed 3,000-seat Coliseu was extravagant.”

Chicago’s Symphony Center will mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth on February 13 with a performance of We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, a rarely performed 1960 work about the civil rights struggle in Africa and the United States by jazz composer Max Roach and singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr. The performance will feature vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and drummer Lewis Nash, as well as two musicians from the original Freedom Now Suite recording from the 1960s—trombonist Julian Priester and percussionist Ray Mantilla—plus trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, who frequently performed with Max Roach. The evening also includes songs performed by Maggie Brown, the daughter of Oscar Brown Jr., as well as a pre-concert discussion with Lewis Nash, Maxine Roach (daughter of Max Roach), and former Village Voice critic Nat Hentoff (via teleconference). The following week, James Earl Jones will narrate Copland’s Lincoln Portrait  at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Lincoln bicentennial tribute at Symphony Center; the February 21 CSO concert will also include Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 6 (“Gettysburg”) and selections from Robert Russell Bennett’s Abraham Lincoln (“A Symphonic Portrait”).

Fidelity Investments and the North Carolina Symphony kicked off Fidelity FutureStage, a new music education initiative, by providing four local public schools with 40 instruments, including string instruments, clarinets, saxophones, turbanos, steel drums, timpani, choir chimes, and xylophones. The schools—two elementary schools in Raleigh, one elementary school in Durham, and a middle school in Siler City—were chosen with the help of Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, the national nonprofit that works to provide instruments to underserved children. During spring of 2009 and the 2009-10 school year, members of the North Carolina Symphony will visit school classrooms to provide individual and group instruction as well as master classes. As part of the program, students will also travel to the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh for rehearsals and concerts by the orchestra. Other Fidelity FutureStage music programs are underway in Boston, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles.