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Saturday, August 31, 2024

The Quality of NY Times Reporting

I see a lot of complaining, much of it righteous, about the quality of NY Times reporting on politics and particularly the presidential election. There was that full-court press to get Biden to step aside; there's the constant normalizing of Trump's behavior and speeches even when he is outrageous and incoherent. And there there are specific stories that leave me pounding the table.

For example, take Jennifer Medina's story of August 22, Are Voters Ready to Elect a Woman? Democrats Say They Have No Doubt (gift link). Well, gosh. Medina goes into all kinds of twists and turns about why or why not this year is different from 2016.

What she doesn't mention: Hillary Clinton got three million votes more than Donald Trump. Americans were ready to elect a woman eight years ago. It's only the ridiculous and undemocratic Electoral College that kept her out of office. In any other country, she would have been elected president.

Friday, August 30, 2024

SFS: Eric Owens Withdraws from Verdi Requiem


Davies Symphony Hall
Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Bass Eric Owens has withdrawn, for personal reasons, from September's performances of the Verdi Requiem at San Francisco Symphony. He'll be replaced by Peixin Chen. The other soloists are soprano Leah Hawkins, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, and tenor Mario Chang, The program opens with three works for chorus and orchestra by Gordon Getty, conducted by Symphony Chorus Director Jenny Wong.

Friday Photo

 


Entrance to the Victoria Turkish Bath, Spitalfields
I believe it's now an event space.
London, July, 2024




Side view.

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Musical Music Director Chairs

The latest news:

  • Lorenzo Viotti will be the next music director of the Tokyo Symphony, commencing in the 2026-27 season. He succeeds Jonathan Nott, who steps down in March, 2026.
  • Edward Gardner leaves the Bergen Philharmonic at the end of 2023-24.
  • Robin Ticciati leaves the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in 2025.
  • Santtu-Matias Rouvali leaves the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in 2025
  • Lorenzo Viotti leaves next year)
  • Daniel Harding leaves the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2025 (Daniel Harding leaves next year)
  • Daniele Rustioni leaves the Ulster Orchestra at the end of this season
  • Jessica Rivero Altarriba is the new Assistant Conductor of the Utah Symphony, which doesn't have a music director at the moment.

Open positions:

  • Ulster Orchestra, when Daniele Rustioni leaves
  • Utah Symphony
  • Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, when Daniel Harding leaves
  • Oslo Philharmonic, when Klaus Makela moves on in 2027
  • Orchestre de Paris, when Klaus Makela moves on in 2027
  • Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, when Santu-Matias Rouvali leaves in 2025
  • Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra because of the departure of Lorenzo Viotti in 2025
  • Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, because of the departure of Lorenzo Viotti in 2025
  • Dutch National Opera, because of the departure of Lorenzo Viotti in 2025
  • English National Opera
  • Bergen Philharmonic
  • LA. Opera, at the end of 2025-26
  • San Francisco Symphony, at the end of 2024-25
  • Phoenix Symphony
  • Cleveland Orchestra, as of June, 2027.
  • Lahti Symphony, when Dalia Stasevka leaves.
  • Antwerp Symphony, with the departure of Elim Chan.
  • Paris Opera is currently without a music director.
  • Nashville Symphony, when Giancarlo Guerrero leaves.
  • Deutsche Oper Berlin, when Donald Runnicles leaves.
  • Rottedam Philharmonic, when Lahav Shani leaves.
  • Los Angeles Philharmonic, as of 2026-27, when Gustavo Dudamel leaves for NY.
  • Seattle Symphony, following Thomas Dausgaard's abrupt departure in January, 2022.
  • Teatro Regio Turin: Open now with departure of Gianandrea Noseda. The Teatro Regio has not named a new music director.
  • Marin Symphony, at the end of 2022-23.
  • Vienna Staatsoper, when Philippe Jordan leaves at the end of 2025.
  • Pacific Symphony, when Carl St. Clair retires.


Conductors looking for jobs (that is, as of the near future, or now, they do not have a posting). The big mystery, to me, is why an orchestra hasn't snapped up Susanna Mälkki. Slightly lesser mystery: Henrik Nanasi, whose superb Cosi fan tutte is still lingering in my ears.

  • Marc Albrech
  • Markus Stenz
  • Esa-Pekka Salonen, if he wants such a position again
  • James Conlon, if he wants such a position again.
  • Dalia Stasevska (though her contract at Lahti has been extended by a year)
  • Elim Chan
  • Kirill Karabits
  • Tito Muñoz 
  • Andrey Boreyko
  • Osmo Vänskä
  • Susanna Mälkki, who left the Helsinki Philharmonic at the end of 2022-23.
  • MGT (apparently does not want a full-time job, as of early 2022)
  • Miguel Harth-Bedoya (seems settled in at Baylor)
  • Sian Edwards
  • Ingo Metzmacher
  • Jac van Steen
  • Ilan Volkov
  • Aleksandr Markovic
  • Lothar Koenigs
  • Henrik Nanasi
  • Philippe Jordan, eventually
  • Franz Welser-Möst, if he wants such a job

And closed:

  • Edward Gardner starts as music director of Norwegian National Opera this season,
  • Sarasota Orchestra: Giancarlo Guerrero just got named music director, as of 2025.
  • Hong Kong Philharmonic: Tarmo Peltokoski becomes music director in 2026.
  • Tokyo Symphony, with the appointment of Lorenzo Viotti.
  • Oakland Symphony, where Kedrick Armstrong succeeds the late Michael Morgan.
  • Minnesota Opera: closed with the appointment of Christopher Franklin.
  • The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gets to share Klaus Mäkelä with the Concertgebouw.
  • The Hallé Orchestra's next conductor will be Kahchun Wong.
  • Marin Alsop becomes principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, I believe succeeding Nathalie Stutzmann.
  • Simon Rattle becomes principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.
  • John Storgards will becomes chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic.
  • Update and correction: San Francisco Chamber Orchestra was unable to hire Cosette Justo Valdés. Instead, Jory Fankuchen, a violinist in the orchestra, has been named Principal Conductor and will lead this season's programs.
  • Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra: Cristinia Mačelaru becomes music director in 2025
  • Indianapolis Symphony hires Jun Markel, effective September 1, 2024.
  • Andris Nelsons renewed his contract with the Boston Symphony. He's now on an evergreen rolling contract, which will continue as long as he and the orchestra are happy with each other. MTT had one of these at SFS.
  • Shanghai Symphony, with the appointment of Long Yu.
  • Virginia Symphony, with the appointment of Eric Jacobsen.
  • Warsaw Philharmonic, with the appointment of Krzysztof Urbański.
  • Bern Symphony, with the appointment of Krzysztof Urbański.
  • Berlin State Opera, with the appointment of Christian Thielemann.
  • Dresden Philharmonic, with the appointment of Donald Runnicles.
  • New York Philharmonic, with the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel. Note that Jaap van Zweden leaves in 2024 and there will be a two-season gap before Dudamel arrives.
  • Helsinki Philharmonic: Jukka-Pekka Saraste to succeed Susanna Mälkki.
  • Staatskapelle Dresden, with the appointment of Daniele Gatti.
  • Seoul Philharmonic appoints Jaap van Zweden.
  • Royal Opera appoints Jakub Hrůša to succeed Antonio Pappano

Monday, August 26, 2024

Museum Mondays

 


National Gallery Facade and Trafalgar Square
London, July, 2024



Friday, August 23, 2024

Some News


How it started.


On November 13, 2006, I drove to Mountain View, CA, signed a lot of forms, made a bunch of benefit elections, got my photo taken, collected a laptop, put on a funny hat, and started working for a new employer. On July 5, 2024, after 6,444 days, 10 different physical locations in the Bay Area (not counting my WFH locations during the pandemic), 12 managers, and an awful lot of documentation written, I left that employer, the Google division of Alphabet.

Leaving Google left me both melancholy and relieved, weirdly for some of the same reasons: Google was an amazing place to work for most of my time there, a place where you could speak freely to whomever you wanted, up to and including the founders and senior VPs; where you felt that management treated the employees like real people whose opinions were valuable and to be welcomed; where management was incredibly generous about money, travel, and other perks; where the food was astonishing; where the technology was fantastic; where people were generally idealistic and thought that Google could do real good in the world with its technology.

Well, things changed a lot in the last few years. The layoffs, from the big layoffs of January, 2023, through the constant trickle of layoffs since then, left everyone in a state of fear that they might be next, especially because the severance pay got worse and worse. The founders and Eric Schmidt left; many of the most trusted people in the company left (I'm looking at you, Laszlo Bock and Alan Eustace, in particular). The internal culture deteriorated, with lots of moderation of mailing lists, masquerading as a way to protect people and keep us thinking about work. The ethical AI team was laid off by someone who had been regarded as one of the good guys. Women in upper management left. Bean counters took over: did you know that a company with $80 billion/year in profit has gotten stingy with its travel budget? and doesn't have enough technical writers?

So, I'm melancholy about leaving what was a great to good job for nearly 18 years, and I'm melancholy about not working with my colleagues (who were mostly great!), but more melancholy about the ways the company changed in that time. And I'm relieved to have left, because of those changes, and because I won't be around to see how LLM and AI change technical writing. 

I still like technical writing, which suited me very well for twenty-eight years, but at the same time, I have less interest than I used to in learning about new technology and documenting it. I worked on some amazing technology, such as the Google Search Appliance (RIP), many Google Cloud products, and optical circuit switching. The OCS project had the most amazing technology I worked on documenting; I honestly believed that Google would never go public about its use of optical circuit switches, but my link is to the very public paper that the technical wizards published a couple of years back.

What's ahead for me? Well, I effectively retired from Danzan Ryu jujitsu at the beginning of 2022. I started practicing in 1982, but was off the mat for six years in the middle somewhere, owing to work and family stuff and after having left my previous school. I temporarily shut Open Door Jujitsu at the start of the pandemic, then cautiously re-opened in late 2021, shut down again because of the first Omicron variant. I never re-opened. In the 18 months or so of closure, I lost more physical ability than I'd lost during six years off the mat during an earlier hiatus. My school was never big enough to break even and after ten years of struggling to find students, it seemed like time to throw in the towel.

So on my agenda is finding a Tai Chi teacher, preferably Chen style, and picking up my practice of that style. And possibly making music again in some form: singing in a chorus or restarting on the flute or starting a new instrument. And maybe taking some classes. And more travel and working in my garden.

But the biggest thing is surely that I have much more time for music writing, so I am going to be doing a lot more reviewing and feature writing. And I have a lot of time for get-out-the-vote work for the November elections. Those are my two priorities for the next few months.

Friday Photo


The London Eye
London, July, 2024

 

Monday, August 19, 2024

Museum Mondays


House of Worth Gown
Owned by Sybil Sassoon, the Countess of Rocksalvage
John Singer Sargent painted her wearing this gown.
Sargent and Fashion
Tate Britain, July, 2024


Sunday, August 18, 2024

Vallejo Festival Orchestra Plays Brahms


Johannes Brahms


Next month, Thomas Conlin leads the Vallejo Festival Orchestra in a program of Brahms. Highly recommended! Remember, last year I heard the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vallejo Festival Orchestra in the same week....and the Vallejo Festival Orchestra concert was by far the more satisfying. 

Here's the program:
  • Brahms, Violin Concerto, Nigel Armstrong, soloist
  • Brahms, Symphony No. 4
Saturday, September 14, 2024
330 Virginia St, Vallejo, CA 94590

Tickets are $35-$95, BUT there is a 20% discount code for remaining tickets, for readers of this blog! Buy your ticket starting on August 23, and use the code BRAHMS at checkout, starting at the VFO site http://www.EmpressTheatre.org/Vallejo_Festival_Orchestra/.
 

Friday, August 16, 2024

Friday Photo


Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
London, July, 2024
The initials on the curtain are still ER. They will eventually be swapped out to read CR, I presume.

 

Monday, August 12, 2024

Museum Mondays


London Mithraeum
Bloomberg Building
London, July 2024

The London Mithraeum was discovered in the 1950s during excavations in the bomb wreckage around St. Stephen's Walbook, near Bank Station, Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, and the Bank of England. It was removed from its site and moved elsewhere. When the Bloomberg Building was constructed about a decade ago, arrangements were made to move it back to its original location about 20 feet under the modern London surface and create a museum so it could be visited. It's free, but you need to make a reservation. It is very cool, and the site I link to includes film of its original discovery.

One of many things that I love about London is that you can't dig there without stumbling across Roman ruins. This is just one example.

 

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Belated Friday Photo


Bank Interchange
London, July, 2024
Royal Exchange with skyscrapers behind it.

 

Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Schoenberg Series at The Hillside Club, Berkeley

Jonathan Khuner, music director of West Edge Opera, has put together a five-part lecture/recital on Arnold Schoenberg at Berkeley's Hillside Club, starting on September 1, 2024. Here are the programs:

Sunday, Sept. Ist at 3pm - - Recital/Lecture 1: Piano Works

Jonathan Khuner


Saturday, Sept. 7th at 7pm - - Recital/Lecture 2: Songs

Charlotte Khuner and Jonathan Khuner/Lecturer


Sunday, Sept. 15th at 7pm - - Recital/Lecture 3: Chamber Music

Earplay New Music Ensemble, Bruce Bennett Lecturer


Sunday, Sept. 22nd at 7pm -Recital/Lecture 5: Choral Works

Voices of Silicon Valley, Cyril Deaconoff Director/Lecturer


Sunday, Sept. 29th at 7pm -Recital/Lecture 5: Cabaret

Nikki Einfeld, Left Coast Ensemble, Matilda Hofman Director/Lecturer


You can get tickets from Allevents. $60 general administion, $40 seniors/students, free to Hillside Club members. Those prices are for the entire series! Even if you can't get to all of them, that is a bargain.


You'll have noticed that Schoenberg, an immensely important 20th c. composer, hasn't gotten a lot of love in the Bay Area this year, the 150th anniversary of his birth. West Edge and SF Symphony have both staged his monodrama Erwartung. The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players did a pair of concerts about Pierrot Lunaire and its influence. Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (see above) is also performing Pierrot later this year. The LA Phil is performing Gurrelieder twice in December (Zubin Mehta conducts).


I doubt that I can get to all of these programs, but I'm going to try to get to what I can.


Tuesday, August 06, 2024

The Real Reason Things are Going So Well for the Democrats.

On July 6, I bought a "Dems in Disarray" t-shirt.

I did, really! But seriously, it has been amazing to see how fast the Democrats have come together behind Kamala Harris and just-announced VP candidate Tim Walz (pronounced walls, not waltz, and there go all of my good musical jokes), and how much money has been thrown at the campaign. ($300 million?!?!) It is just over two weeks since Biden stepped down.

Harris and Walz go together well, and as someone on xTwitter said, "It's the fun aunt/supportive Dad ticket versus the creepy uncles you can't be left alone with ticket." Right she is, although I might have said the Mamaleh/supportive Dad ticket! The Emhoffs are very, very clear that Harris is one of Ella and Cole's parents.

I missed her speech today, but caught his, and nearly fell on the floor when he said the word "couch." The two of them will just shred the creepy uncles if they debate.


Monday, August 05, 2024

Museum Mondays


Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
Photo of a photo
John Singer Sargent and Fashion
Tate Britain, July, 2024




 

Sunday, August 04, 2024

The Veepstakes

Here we go: within about two days, we'll know who Kamala Harris is naming as her running mate. The candidates are, apparently, Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN). Note that those names are in alphabetical order. I do not have a personal favorite among them.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw both letters to the NY Times (gift link) and posts on Facebook supporting the notion that Harris should choose a Republican as her running mate. The names I saw included Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lisa Murkowski, Larry Hogan, and Mitt Romney.

And what I have to say to my fellow Democrats is: Get a grip. And after you have gotten a grip, take a look at the platforms each of those people espoused during their political careers. They are Republicans through and through; anti-abortion, pro-military, anti-Voting Rights Act, anti-transgender rights, anti-diversity, anti-social spending, and on and on. You really don't want someone with those politics one illness, accident, or assassination from the presidency, not if you're a Democrat. Just stop with fantasies of some kind of bipartisan unity ticket.

I get that there are things to appreciate, and even admire, about each of them. Kinzinger and Cheney gave up their political careers because they recognized that January 6, 2021 was an attempted coup and they recognized that Donald Trump is a danger to democracy and to the whole world. That took guts, and yes, I do admire them for it. I'm grateful to them, even. It's good that there are a few Republicans who publicly recognize just how bad Trump is and the lengths to which he is willing to go. 

Romney has roughly half a spine, and it's true that he has done a few good things, including the universal health bill he signed when he was governor of Massachusetts. I own that Hogan and Murkowski are to the left of the others, but none of them are Democrats and they don't share the values of the  Democratic Party. We should never, ever, offer them the vice presidency or do anything to help them get elected to public office.

Friday, August 02, 2024

Friday Photo


Columns, Bank of England
London, July 2024