The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs is inspired by the life and creative spirit of Steve Jobs and does not purport to depict actual events as they occurred or statements, beliefs or opinions of the persons depicted. It has not been authorized or endorsed by Apple Inc., the Estate or Family of Steve Jobs or by any persons depicted.
The Brandeis University Department of Music has issued the following statement after learning that the university's administration has decided to close down the graduate programs in music.
Response to the Proposed Closures of the PhD Programs in Music
On Thursday, culminating a laborious and costly PhD review process whose findings were ultimately disregarded, Brandeis Provost Carol Fierke announced the administration’s plans to end both PhD programs in the Department of Music. The Provost’s letter describing the proposed closures made no reference to the outcomes-based criteria by which the PhD review team had claimed that programs would be evaluated. Rather, in meetings this week, Provost Fierke indicated that the PhD review process had found both of Music’s doctoral programs to be excellent – but that they would be cut anyway as part of a “strategic decision” to “lean into the sciences.”
To justify their actions, the administration insinuated without evidence – in the pages of The Boston Globe, no less – that Music’s undergraduate program is not up to the standard of those at elite liberal arts colleges, and that cutting our doctoral programs would somehow ameliorate the situation.
These statements are as staggeringly untrue as they are staggeringly impolitic (we sincerely hope the administration has girded its loins for a barrage of angry calls from the parents of music majors, demanding their tuition dollars back). How bizarre for us to have to remind the Brandeis administration that undergraduate and graduate programs do not exist in a zero-sum relationship, and that the administration’s own “Framework for the Future” identifies “vertical connectivity” between undergrads, doctoral students, and faculty members as the bedrock “Academic Value Proposition” of a Brandeis education. By the Framework’s logic, eliminating a department’s doctoral programs would worsen the academic experience for undergraduates, to the point of making it un-Brandeisian. Beyond this: Music’s last two tenure-line hires came to Brandeis directly from faculty positions at Amherst and Swarthmore. They are far better positioned than any administrator to know just how well the Brandeis undergraduate music program stacks up.
No: the administration’s proposed cuts are not about the performance of any music department program, undergraduate or graduate. To establish conclusively the excellence of our doctoral programs – as well as the futility of the PhD review process – we attach an appendix below with data produced by the PhD review, demonstrating that Music ranks at or very near the top of all Brandeis PhD-granting departments by many metrics. Our academic job placement rate (71%) and low attrition rate (8%) rank first in the entire university; we rank third in matriculation rate and fourth in graduation rate. Our renown extends far beyond the Brandeis campus, as a recent article in Nature ranked Music’s graduate programs ninth in the nation. Moreover, we have achieved this success despite teaching more undergraduates per tenure-line faculty member than any other PhD-granting department outside of the sciences. The PhD review thus proved that Music offers an extraordinary, perhaps unparalleled, bang for the university’s buck. Clearly, we are being cut not because of numbers, but because of values. The Brandeis administration does not believe that the creative arts are worthy of study at the graduate level.
We contend that – amid a 75th birthday celebration and an expensive “national branding” campaign – the Brandeis administration has chosen a course of action that betrays the university’s very identity. One of the most famous founding principles of our university was a commitment to the liberal arts, as exemplified by the founders’ decision to place the arts at the core of the curriculum. Brandeis’ founding President, Abram Sachar, wrote proudly in A Host at Last: “we were one of the few colleges to include [the creative arts] in its requirements. In most established universities, the arts were still struggling to attain respectability as an academic discipline.” By cutting the PhD programs in Musicology and Composition – the last two PhD programs remaining in the Division of Creative Arts – Brandeis will announce to the world the abrogation of its hallowed values. Shorn entirely of their graduate programs, the arts will no longer be equal partners to the sciences, social sciences, and humanities (who, let’s face it, are next on the chopping block once there are no more arts to cut). From here on, the arts will be mere accessories at a university that once provided a home to so many great Jewish artists, who helped to establish Brandeis as a world-class place for the advanced study of the creative arts.
This decision also puts Brandeis squarely at odds with intellectual currents in the broader world.The administration’s move to “lean into the sciences” by cutting the arts smacks of the techno-utopianism of fifteen years ago, before Silicon Valley realized the need to grapple with the moral and historical issues in which artists and humanists are expert, before ChatGPT and generative AI pushed questions about the nature of human creation to the front page of every newspaper. It is so clear what a liberal arts university like Brandeis has to offer such an environment: a place in which scientists, social scientists, humanists, and artists can speak to each other at the highest levels. Why should we aim to become a second-rate MIT when the world so desperately needs a first-rate Brandeis? We have a chance to position ourselves at the cutting edge of the world’s most critical conversations, rather than offering a “Framework for the Future” that is already a vision of the past.
We urge the Brandeis University administration to find the courage to reverse this hasty, short-sighted, and self-defeating decision.
The Brandeis Department of Music
The data appended to the letter are difficult to post because the tabular format in the PDF doesn't format correctly when I copy/paste. Please let me know if you'd like me to email you the PDF.
Here's the most predictable cast change announcement since Bryan Hymel's run of cancellations around 2015-2019. The article title is because I told several people that I would eat an article of clothing if Anita Rachvelishvili sang these performances. I had even perused the schedules of a few prominent mezzos in June or July, but Semenchuk's wasn't one of them. She is a tremendous singer and was superb in the 2019 Paris Les Troyens, so I am happy.
Mezzo-Soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk to Sing Azucena in All Performances, Replacing Anita Rachvelishvili
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (August 23, 2023) — San Francisco Opera announced today a cast change for Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, which opens Tuesday, September 12 and is the first opera of the Company’s 101st season. Mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk will perform the role of Azucena in all performances, replacing Anita Rachvelishvili who has withdrawn for personal reasons.
Semenchuk made her San Francisco Opera debut on the opening night of the 2015–16 Season as Federica in Verdi’s Luisa Miller, returning the following season as Amneris in a new production of the composer’s Aida. Her most recent appearance with the Company was as Santuzza in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, which opened the 2018-19 Season as part of a double bill with Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The San Francisco Chronicle said of her Santuzza: “Semenchuk has been a vibrant presence in her two prior San Francisco appearances (Luisa Miller in 2015, Aida the following year), and to the vocal power and sheen of those performances she now added a vein of impeccably controlled wildness that contributed to the portrait of a woman on the verge of despair.”
Among today’s leading mezzo-sopranos, Semenchuk’s portrayals of Verdi heroines, including Lady Macbeth, Amneris, Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera and Azucena have won acclaim at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the Arena di Verona, the Bavarian State Opera and, in this country, with San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and LA Opera. Semenchuk joins San Francisco Opera’s international cast for Il Trovatore, headed by Angel Blue as Leonora, Arturo Chacón-Cruz as Manrico and George Petean as Count di Luna under the baton of San Francisco Opera’s Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim in the acclaimed production by Sir David McVicar.
The six performances of Il Trovatore are scheduled for September 12 (7:30 p.m.), 17 (2 p.m.), 20 (7:30 p.m.), 23 (7:30 p.m.), 29 (7:30 p.m.); October 1 (2 p.m.), 2023. The third performance, on September 20 at 7:30 p.m., will be available as a livestream.
If you're not sure who Meredith Clark is, but you're a regular San Francisco Symphony audience member, rest assured that you've heard her beautiful playing in the last 18 months. She was guest principal harp in a large number of SFS programs following the retirement of longtime principal harp Douglas Rioth at the end of December, 2021.
She has a new job: principal harp of the Royal Swedish Opera! So exciting and so richly earned, though of course it would have been great to have her stay in the Bay Area. I really regret missing a San Francisco Contemporary Music Players concert she was in this past spring.
For a number of years, San Francisco Opera has had a poll of audience members to determine the "emerging star of the year," who is chosen from younger singers who've appeared at the company in the previous year. I am always skeptical about polls such as this, I never vote in them, and the nominees and winners have sometimes included singers who have appeared at multiple major companies over a period of up to 13 years. Yeah, that year's winner had emerged...years ago.
BUT this past year had an amazing number of terrific singers, to the extent that even if I voted in these polls, I would have had no idea for whom to vote. The voters spoke, in any event, and chose Yaritza Veliz, the Chilean soprano who was an absolute firecracker in Gabriela Frank's El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego.
She was fabulous, and while I have very little interest in L'Elisir d'amore, not to mention even less interest in seeing it twice in one year, I do plan to see Santa Fe Opera's production of it next season because she's in it and Roberto Kalb, who did a terrific job with Frida y Diego, is conducting.
Renée Fleming’s Cities that Sing: Paris, comes to theatres one-day-only on August 26. Step onto the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet alongside superstar soprano Renée Fleming. Tenor Piotr Beczała and performers Axelle Fanyo and Alexandre Duhamel join an exquisite cinematic journey into the sights, sounds, and history of the City of Lights.Renée Fleming’s Cities that Sing: Venice, the second of two immersive opera experiences Filmed for IMAX in theatres one-day-only on September 16. A journey through the music and culture of Venice, follow the American Soprano on a guided tour of Venice as seen through the lens of opera history, with musical performances at the legendary Teatro La Fenice by Fleming, Francesco Meli, Mattia Olivieri, Paola Gardina, with Orchestra Del Teatro La Fenice conducted by Riccardo Frizza.
Tickets for both Renée Fleming’s Cities That Sing: Paris and Veniceare on sale now at Imax.com/ReneeFleming .
Also COVID-19 edition. Received from the BSO:
With great regret, after testing positive for COVID-19, cellist Yo-Yo Ma must withdraw from this week’s scheduled Tanglewood appearances: today’s 2 p.m. Open Cello Workshop at Ozawa Hall as well as the open rehearsal and concert with the Boston Symphony in the Shed on Saturday, August 12, and Sunday, August 13, respectively.
Soprano Renée Fleming has graciously agreed to step in to join the BSO on Sunday, performing songs by Richard Strauss in place of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 that was originally scheduled to be performed with Mr. Ma. The remainder of the program, under the direction of BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons, is unchanged. Saturday’s 10:30 a.m. open rehearsal will proceed with Ms. Fleming, Maestro Nelsons, and the BSO.
Click here for photos and bio of Renée Fleming
UPDATED PROGRAM DETAILS
Saturday, August 12, 2023
10:30 a.m., Shed
Open Rehearsal, BSO Sunday, August 13 program
Sunday, August 13, 2023
2:30 p.m., Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Renée Fleming, soprano
Julia ADOLPHE, Makeshift Castle
Richard STRAUSS, Songs with orchestra
STRAVINSKY, Petrushka (1947 version)
Best wishes to Mr. Ma for a swift and complete recovery. That's a nice program and the kind of thing Fleming is very good at.
The Opening Night Concert and third performance of every opera production will be livestreamed. Tickets for the opera streams include a 48-hour on-demand viewing window, except for the Opening Night Concert which will be streamed live only. Tickets are available now for $27.50. All times below are Pacific Time (PT). For more information visit sfopera.com/digital/livestream
OPENING NIGHT CONCERT | Fri., September 8 at 8 p.m. |
IL TROVATORE | Wed., September 20 at 7:30 p.m. |
THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS | Wed., September 27 at 7:30 p.m. |
LOHENGRIN | Sat., October 21 at 7 p.m. |
OMAR | Sat., November 11 at 7:30 p.m. |
THE ELIXIR OF LOVE | Sun., November 26 at 2 p.m. |
THE MAGIC FLUTE | Tue., June 4 at 7:30 p.m. |
INNOCENCE | Wed., June 12 at 7:30 p.m. |
PARTENOPE | Sun., June 23 at 2 p.m. |
It appears that the voters of Ohio have very, very soundly and thoroughly defeated Issue 1, an attempt to undermine democratic processes by the Ohio Republican Party. This was so craven that Democrats and Republicans lined up to condemn the measure. Here's what the Republicans tried to put over on the citizenry:
I can't imagine that it's possible to fix this. SFS has Simon Keenlyside coming in for the opening gala; SFO can't move the opening of Steve Jobs to Saturday, September 23, because there's a Trovatore performance that night. Pulling it in to Thursday? Well, not if the dress rehearsal is on Wednesday, and not without seriously inconveniencing everyone who has a ticket to the Friday performance.
How long before the first cast change announcement comes through, for the performing arts organization of your choice? And who will it be?
