Brandeis Was Ahead of Its Time

Slosberg Music Center

Courtesy of Brandeis University

As a Brandeis undergrad, I spent countless hours attending classes, practicing, and rehearsing at Slosberg.

Two years ago, Brandeis announced that it was suspending admissions to its graduate music programs, in music history, music theory, and composition. For a while, it looked as if it might reverse this decision, since the music graduate programs cost about $300,000/year, a rounding error in its $100 million annual budget. But then they went ahead, ending Brandeis's long history of excellence in training music scholars and composers.

Since then, we've seen many other schools suspend various programs in the humanities, including unique programs in certain Eastern European languages, graduates of which have served in the U.S. Foreign Service and at U.S. intelligence agencies. The University of Wisconsin is eliminating such programs. Indiana University is discontinuing up to 100 different programs. 

Brandeis is overhauling its liberal arts programs to make them more career-oriented. (They're calling this a bold initiative, well....) I'm so glad that I went to college when there was respect for the arts and humanities.

The University of Chicago is the latest to join in this ongoing attack on the humanities.

• UChicago Reducing, Freezing Ph.D. Admissions for Multiple Humanities Programs
  
• More UChicago Ph.D. Programs Pause Admissions in Humanities, Social Sciences
  

Chicago's musicology program has a legendary history. When I mentioned this to my colleague Michael Zwiebach at SFCV –– himself a holder of a UC Berkeley doctorate in musicology –– he cited a wide range of scholarship that's come out of Chicago in the last fifty years. 

These changes are truly tragic, inflicting major damage on the intellectual life of the United States. Once you eliminate these programs and possibly lay off scholars in those areas, it's at best extremely difficult to reconstruct them. Institutional memory is lost along with teachers and students. What happens to specialized libraries and archives in those areas? Are they dispersed to less shortsighted institutions?

What's happening here is not so different from the Trump regime's ongoing attacks on science, with their attempts to eliminate important medical and scientific research and institutions, for no discernible reason other than to be destructive. The country is being set back decades with the destruction of ongoing and anticipated research. The elimination of funding for mRNA research means abandoning productive research into things like cancer cures. The attack on vaccines means people will die. The elimination of smallpox and the near-elimination of infectious diseases like polio and measles is one of the great triumphs of medical science and public health, and a few crackpots are being allowed to throw all of this away.

Making the San Francisco Symphony Look Even Smaller

Photo: Minna Hatinen

Esa-Pekka Salonen writes on his Facebook page:

I am happy to announce that I will begin three new positions in coming seasons: Creative Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Creativity and Innovation Chair of the Philharmonie de Paris, and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre de Paris. 

Over the course of my career, I am lucky to have found myself in many situations where the right parts have been in the right place to create genuine magic. More often than not, that place happened to be Los Angeles or Paris. 

We aspire to invent the musical worlds in which we want to live, and the LA Phil and Orchestre de Paris have done just that with Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Philharmonie de Paris. These are top-notch orchestras and the coolest halls, embedded within cities with the most curious and adventurous audiences. Most important, they are institutions who understand that the behind-the-scenes creative work is just as important as waving the stick.

I cannot wait to start creating together.

Chief/principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris make him the successor to Klaus Mäkelä. Lucky Paris! Lucky L.A.!

• Press release, L.A. Phil
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle, fulminating
• Michael Zwiebach, SFCV
• Joshua Barone, NY Times (gift link)
• Mark Swed, LA Times
• Aidin Vaziri, SF Chronicle (gift link)

 

More on the NY Times Bad News

Hat tip to Steve Smith for pointing me to Hell Gate's reporting on the NY Times arts criticism news. Hell Gate reports the following:

According to Lachlan Cartwright, the new roles offered to the four were as follows: culture section correspondent roles for [Jon] Pareles and [Jesse] Green, an editing role for [Margaret] Lyons if she relocates from Chicago to New York, and an option to join the obituary desk for [Zachary] Woolfe. 

Read the whole Hell Gate article, really. 

Words That Should Not Have Been Spoken

Heard on KDFC, said by different announcers:

• ".....the McGill boys," following a performance featuring the distinguished musicians Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, and his brother Demarre McGill, principal flute of the Seattle Symphony. They are both great players, if I haven't already made that clear. If you're not aware of it, the McGills are Black men. Apply the word "boy" to adult Black men was something done by white people to dehumanize and disrespect Black men during the period of slavery, during the Jim Crow/segregation period, and at other times. Don't do this, ever. And remember, it would have been easy to refer to "the McGill brothers," which is factual and neutral. 
• "Celebrate Esa-Pekka Salonen's last season as music director of the San Francisco Symphony." COME ON. Somebody at KDFC should be paying attention enough to know that Salonen's last season is nothing to celebrate. It's an institutional disaster and a huge mistake. We should have been celebrating the extension of his contract, but no. I mean...maybe this was part of a paid ad. Maybe KDFC should have refused the money.

Brandeis University Destroys Its Music Department

Slosberg Music Center, Brandeis University

Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel

Used with permission under the terms of the 

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed

No changes have been made to this photograph.

I'd reported in 2023 that the Brandeis University administration was threatening to shut down the graduate programs in music. I neglected to report that it appeared, after protest, that these programs, which cost about $300,000/year, were going to be retained.

Ultimately, though, the university decided to shut down the graduate programs and also to lay off the Lydian String Quartet, which has been in residence for forty-four (44) years. In that time, the Lydian has been an advocate for new music and hugely valuable as coaches and teachers as well as performers. The cost of the Lydian was about $275,000/year.

This is truly terrible: what it means is that in the future, the faculty won't have graduate students to teach and the undergraduates won't have the vast wealth of teaching and performing experience of the Lydian. It will be nearly impossible to attract top scholars and composers to Brandeis because there won't be graduate programs.

This has already resulted in the decision of longtime faculty members Eric Chasalow and David Rakowski to accelerate their retirement from Brandeis.

I was an undergraduate at Brandeis in the late 1970s, and my teachers there included musicologists Joshua Rifkin, Edward Nowacki, and Margaret Bent, composers Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger, and conductors James Olesen and David Hoose, who provided a first-class music education. I remain grateful to them all to this day and I deeply regret that future Brandeis students won't have the opportunities that I had.

I sent printed letters in August to various high-level administrators and heard nothing. (The president of the University was on the verge of announcing his resignation, so it's not a surprise that he didn't respond.) I wrote again in October to most of the same group and added a few members of the board of trustees. Only one person bothered to respond; her line was "hard decisions must be made." Note that there was no outreach to music department alumni about the status of the department and no attempt made to raise funds from us.

I did tell each person I wrote to that I had planned a substantial bequest to Brandeis, but I had called off those plans and would never donate another cent. I hope that other Brandeis alumnae who studied in the music department will do the same.

 

Facepalm

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Found all over the place, on social media, in email, and elsewhere:

Crude as a gut punch, tender as a kiss, Verdi’s Requiem translates the medieval Latin mass for the dead into the vivid and visceral idiom of Italian opera.

Very seriously, who writes this stuff? That first clause is ridiculous, inaccurate, a likely turn-off to potential audience members, and frankly embarrassing. SF Symphony can certainly hire better people than this....well, wait, maybe they just can't afford to these days.

 

Can't Anyone at the Times Count?

Found in The NY Times this morning:

When she won a sixth term in 2018, she was already the oldest member of the Senate, having outlasted four presidencies and seen the beginning of a fifth, that of Joe Biden.

The 2018 election was for Feinstein's fifth complete term; her first was a stub in a special election to replace Pete Wilson, who had been elected governor. But in 2018, she also had not outlasted four presidencies because the 45th president was still in office and somehow managed to serve a full term.

The Times tried to correct the above and failed:

When she won a sixth term in 2018, she was already the oldest member of the Senate, having outlasted four presidencies. She went on to see the beginning of a fifth, that of Joe Biden.

Again, in 2018, she had outlasted three presidencies, and went on to outlast four and see the first two years of Joe Biden's term. 

Updated: The Times also somehow thinks she had shingles last year. Sorry! It was this year!

Ms. Feinstein’s frail appearance was a result of several complications after she was hospitalized for shingles in February 2022, some of which she had not publicly disclosed. The shingles spread to her face and neck, causing vision and balance impairments and facial paralysis known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome.

I am happy to admit, by the way, that I was one of the people calling for her resignation; I phone her local office multiple times to ask her to resign. No, Rep. Pelosi, it's not sexist to want the people of California to be represented in the Senate by someone who is mentally competent. It is extremely sad that such an important and effective politician as Dianne Feinstein (and her supporters) couldn't see this.

 

Brandeis Music Department Response to Graduate Program Closure

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. 

Friday Photo

 

Self-Driving Vehicle Stuck at Grove and Polk, San Francisco

April, 2023

This Cruise taxicab got stuck in the pedestrian crosswalk and couldn't move. Those are Davies Symphony Hall and the Opera House in the far background, City Hall on the right.

Don't Be This Small Non-Profit 3

In 2018 and 202, I posted about issues I had with trying to renew my membership in a small nonprofit organization (SNP) and then about what I saw as some issues in that organization.

Today I received this from SNP, and JFC. This organization hasn't followed basic principles of record keeping, considering that they are missing legally required documentation. I really have to wonder what will happen when they've been audited. I'll note, in passing, that Pro Publica's Nonprofit Explorer's last 990 for this organization is from 2011. It's possible that the IRS is behind in processing whatever they've submitted, but I wonder whether anyone on the board knows what a 990 is.

When we, your 2023 Board, took the reins this year, 3 of the 6 of us noticed an alarming amount of past mismanagement and financial discrepancies. The other 3 Board members have since resigned. The three of us remaining have been working hard to investigate and clean up our compliance and financial issues and had hoped it was all a case of innocent naivete on the part of past boards and not the intentional Theft by Transfer that our organization has been threatened with in recent months.

Unfortunately, this is not or at least not entirely the case. SNP has been the target of an intentional, attempted takeover event from inside the organization. We are not at liberty to say who at this point in the criminal investigation, but we can tell you that the core breach happened in the last half of April this year and the only people with access to our accounts were 2023 and 2022 board members. We are frustrated, angered, disappointed that someone(s) in our community who we elected to protect this organization has broken the trust we all put in them.

We know that member names were taken, along with email addresses, and any other contact information you supplied to SNP; phone, physical address, etc. Due to how our web host works, we do not have reason to believe that individual credit card numbers have been stolen, but our thief(s) have, since the breach, had the ability to charge/refund charges if you had payment on file with us. So if anything suspicious shows up, please let us know.

Separate from this breach, SNP is also missing a great deal of legally required documentation from the past 5-7 years. If anyone, past board member or otherwise, has any copies of old board meeting minutes and especially financial records, please send them to either [email address1] or [email address2].

While this breach of trust from some of our own is very serious, we and our legal counsel know SNP has the law on our side and we are working hard to bring about accountability and ensure the security of this organization and your information going forward. 

Changes, Bad Ones, at San Francisco Symphony

 

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Janos Gereben is on it at San Francisco Classical Voice. Briefly, there was some kind of a re-organization of communications, marketing, and digital innovation teams that resulted in the layoff of Oliver Theil and presumably others. The SFCV article doesn't discuss who else was involved, because SFS wouldn't discuss that. 

Theil has been with SFS since 1991 and has held multiple important posts in artistic planning, communications, and digital innovation. Letting him go means an immense loss of institutional memory and damage to the orchestra's current and future work in the digital area.

This statement from SFS, quoted at SFCV, is a doozy:

Changes were made last week to the structure of the Symphony’s administrative team. The marketing and communications departments were merged to better support the organization’s work in audience development and concert promotion. The in-house video department was dissolved in a strategic move towards working with independent contractors with specialized skill sets, catered to the bespoke needs of future digital projects. The changes were part of a strategic internal restructure and will not impact the audience experience or any of the organization’s public-facing programs.

I mean, the whole damn thing is in the passive voice. No clue as to who decided on these changes and a little reading between the lines is involved to figure out the why. Here's a possible translation:

SFS has made changes to our administrative staff. We merged two departments, which included laying off Oliver Theil. We think that this will improve certain areas. We also laid off people in the in-house video department. Instead, we're outsourcing this function, which will save money.

Of course, I'm guessing that other people were laid off, because SFS didn't provide additional details, and I have translated the corporate-speak into English as best I could. I think that organizations are best off when they say what's actually happening, as in "Because of the financial pressures of the last few years, we need to cut the budget. We have already cut musician salaries as much as we can, so we are trimming administrative personnel costs. The changes will result in savings of $someamount over the next three years."

Three more things: 

1. Keep an eye on the orchestra's administration page for changes. I saved a copy last night, so I can help with this! 

2. Former chief executive Mark Hanson's departure was announced on July 15, 2021 and his last day was August 31. I understand that there aren't that many people who are qualified to run a top-tier, high-budget American orchestra, but it's a surprise that it's taken this long to find someone. Hanson was appointed on a timely basis so that he could start exactly when Brent Assink left. It is a problem that this has taken so long.

3. The next chief executive's response to what has happened might be "This is an important part of being an orchestra in the 21st century. Why did you do this?" A candidate might even look at this and say "Wow, that was short-sighted. Why should I come to work for SFS?"

Ticket Fees, Again

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Unbelievable: I am a subscriber to San Francisco Symphony (full orchestral sub for 2021-22). I donated during the cancelled pandemic season and this season. I called to swap my ticket to tonight's program for tomorrow....and was told that there would be a $12 fee to swap over the phone for my $40 subscription ticket. That's...more than 25%. I mentioned this and the patron services rep dropped the fee.

SFS, STOP DOING THIS. We can't all stroll to Davies for a free exchange at the box office. STOP PENALIZING TICKET BUYERS FOR WANTING OR NEEDING SOME FLEXIBILITY. The three minutes the exchange took - I looked for a desirable seat before I called - does not cost you $12. Remember that people with chronic illness or who are being treated for a serious acute illness could be among the most affected.

SFS's ticket exchanges policies are buried on an FAQ page, rather than posted on a separate page called, for example, "Ticket Purchase and Exchange Policies," which would be more helpful. Here are the (outrageous) policies:

Exchange Fees: 

• Exchanges are free for subscribers who exchange in person or by mail.
• Subscribers - $12 for each phone or fax exchange 
• Non-subscribers - $20 for each exchange
• Exchange requests for a higher-priced performance or section will be charged the difference.
• Exchange requests for a lower-priced performance or section will be considered a donation or can be applied to additional ticket purchases in the same transaction. 
• All other exchanges of discounted tickets require upgrading to a full-price ticket and paying the difference in price.

This is a great, great way, to DISCOURAGE exchanges, which might be the purpose! It's crap customer service, regardless. Unless you're going on a planned business trip or vacation, exchanging by mail is impractical. Exchanging in person is impractical unless you live or work close enough to Davies that it's convenient. (I don't; even taking Muni from my workplace would cost an hour in time plus two Muni fares, versus three minutes on the phone.)

By the way, I was not amused with the patron services rep telling me they'd had this policy for at least 15 years. SO WHAT? That doesn't make it a good policy.

SF Symphony Black Friday Sale

Davies Symphony Hall, home of the San Francisco Symphony

You might have gotten an email from SFS about their Black Friday sale, which gives 50% off a bunch of upcoming concerts, from December out to February or March. Here's a tip: as of right now, if you're logged in to the orchestra's web site as a subscriber, you won't see the discount prices. You'll only see subscriber prices, which give you a discount, but not 50%.

Oh, yes, I have reported this directly to the Box Office and Patron Services. Is the IT Department available to fix this? I don't know.

My suggestion if you're buying seats: 

1. Make sure that you are logged out, whether or not you're a subscriber.

2. Find the concerts you want to buy tickets for on the SFS Calendar, or click the links in the email.

3. Select your seats and add them to the cart.

4. Pay without logging in OR log in only after the discounted tickets are in your cart.

5. If you do log in, make sure that the discount sticks.

Yep, somebody didn't adequately test this before the email went out.

 

NY Times Book Review, WHY WHY WHY.

The NY Times Book Review, celebrating its 125th birthday, decided it would be fun to try to choose the best book of the last 125 years. Now, this kind of thing is a total fool's errand, as readers of this blog surely know, especially if you saw Anthony Tommasini's quixotic effort to choose the top 25 (or something) Western classical composers. He excluded every composer before a certain period for reasons that amounted to "I know these composers and my fellow reviewers know these composers and so do musicologists but the average classical music lover has never heard of Dufay, Machaut, or Josquin so fuck everyone born before Bach except maybe Monteverdi."

Okay, I'll take a deep breath and get off that particular hobby horse, especially with Tommasini stepping down from the position of chief classical music critic of the Times. He did get a book out of it, so bully for him. Or something.

ANYWAY. The Times's methodology oh my god had readers nominating books back in October. Today they've got a list of 25 out for people to vote on. And it is just awful, in about 27 different ways. Okay, fewer than that, but bad enough.

Let's start with some statistics. Twenty-five books, of which 7 are by women. Twenty-five books, of which 6 were published before 1950 and the earliest were published in the 1920s. Twenty-five books, of which 7 were published in the last 25 years. Twenty-five books, of which 17 were written by U.S. writers. (I have omitted Nabokov from those 17 because, you know. He is a man of unclassifiable nationality.) Twenty-five books, of which 3 were written by non-white people. (I'm counting Garcia Marquez as white here.) Twenty-five books, and I think only One Hundred Years of Solitude was written in a language other than English.

Let's include a few books that just. don't. belong. on. this. list. Top of the heap, the hideously racist Gone with the Wind. Second, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which isn't a particularly good book! Third, The Catcher in the Rye. DOES ANYONE REALLY LIKE THIS BOOK? 

Let's go into a few of the missing. First, practically everyone who published in a language other than English! So, no Kawabata, no Mishima, no Tanizaki, no Mann, no Proust, Camus, Grass, Singer,....well, list out your favorites here. No Kristen Lavransdottir, which is so very much better than Gone with the fucking Wind. 

After that, my gosh, no poets, although the nomination process was open to poets and memoirists. So just put every great poet of the last 125 years on your list. Never mind giants like Yeats, Eliot, Bishop, and on and on.

And there's a serious recency issue here. Way too many of the books were written since 1980. Among the missing: James, Wharton, Cather, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Conrad, Woolfe. 

Leaving aside the recency issue, no Rushdie! No Lessing! Nothing by any number of great writers.

As I said, it's a fool's errand, and the Times shouldn't be doing this. They could have moderated the utter stupidity of the list they wound up with by, say, inserting themselves between the votes of nostalgia-ridden former teenaged boys and the final list. Or, even better, asking a whole bunch of outstanding living writers and critics to name their views of the best books of the last 125 years and publishing those as opinion pieces.

Friday Photo

Front Page of The NY Times

May 24, 2020

It didn't have to be this way, and now, 18 months later, we're at 700,000 deaths. 

At this point, 95% or more of deaths are among the unvaccinated.

Rolling My Eyes, part 285

Found in The NY Times:

On Monday, for the first time in its 138-year history and as it returned from an 18-month closure, the Metropolitan Opera presented a work by a Black composer: Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” By opening the season with this work, the Met filled a gaping hole in its repertory at a time when the performing arts are rightfully being challenged to become more diverse. 

Here are all of the operas that the Metropolitan Opera has performed that weren't written by white men:

• Der Wald, Ethel Smyth (2 performances)
• L'Amour de Loin, Kaija Saariaho (8 performances)
• The First Emperor, Tan Dun (12 performances)
• Fire Shut Up in My Bones, by Terence Blanchard (7 performances)

That's 29 performances, total, of four operas. For contrast, looking at the Met's repertory report, La Boheme has gotten a total of 1344 performances, Aida 1175, and, scrolling way down past dozens of works, La Damnation de Faust and Der Freischütz have each gotten 30.

Staging Fire Shut Up in My Bones isn't filling a gaping hole. It is going to take years to do much about those gaping holes.

Rolling My Eyes

Yesterday, San Francisco Symphony sent around this press release:

RAGNAR BOHLIN CONCLUDES 14-YEAR TENURE AS SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY’S CHORUS DIRECTOR

—The San Francisco Symphony today announces that Ragnar Bohlin will step down as the Orchestra’s Chorus Director at the end of August 2021. 

Bohlin began his tenure as Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony in March 2007. Under his leadership, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus received a Grammy for Best Choral Performance for the recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. With the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, Bohlin has conducted such works as J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B minor, Handel’s 

Messiah, Arvo Pärt's Te Deum, and a cappella works such as Poulenc’s Figure Humaine. Bohlin is also the founding Artistic Director of the professional chamber choir Cappella SF with which he has recorded four CDs. In March 2013, he was awarded the Cultural Achievement Award from the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, and in 2018 the Michael Korn award from Chorus America. 

“In his fourteen years as Chorus Director, Ragnar has been a vital part of the San Francisco Symphony’s artistic leadership,” said San Francisco Symphony Interim CEO Matthew Spivey. “He is a gifted and expressive musician and has led the San Francisco Symphony Chorus through countless artistic achievements and memorable performances. He will be greatly missed, and we wish him well as he embarks on his next chapter.”

San Francisco Symphony Chorus performances in the 2021-22 Season include Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9; George Frideric Handel’s Messiah; Johannes Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, Nänie, Gesang der Parzen, and Schicksalslied; Jack Perla’s arrangements of “Give Me Jesus,” “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord”; and semi-staged productions of Igor Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex and his Symphony of Psalms. The San Francisco Symphony will engage guest chorus directors to prepare these performances; more information about guest directors will be announced at a later date.

I thought that this was unfortunate in multiple ways; first, that with such a short notice period, SFS is without a chorus director with the season opening in around a month, second, that he has been an outstanding chorus director. Under his direction, the already-excellent SFS Chorus became more precise, diction improved, and general musicality seemed to get better.

But when I looked around for more information, I found Lily Janiak's Chron article, in which the headline and subhead say it all:  San Francisco Symphony Choral Director Ragnar Bohlin resigns over vaccine mandate;  Bohlin has been outspoken about his anti-vaccination views on his Facebook page.

Big sigh. The article has quotations from Bohlin, whom Janiak phoned, and SFS confirmed that this was why he resigned. I mean, a choir rehearsal was an early super-spreader event in this pandemic! There could be immunocompromised people in the SFS chorus! The room they rehearse in is not huge and I don't know how good the ventilation is. So, a lot of sighing and eye-rolling from here. (Including at the "critical thinker" over on Twitter who admired Bohlin standing up for his beliefs. I don't find it all that admirable when someone is willing to endanger others in the middle of a pandemic.)

A Reminder from the Past

If you're tempted to tangle with Heather MacDonald, directly or indirectly, over her recent awful article (part 1 of 2!), I advise ignoring her. Folks with her beliefs can't be persuaded; the only reason to engage with her or what she writes is for bystanders.

Around ten years ago, she and Greg Sandow had a dust-up and Greg wound up writing five articles, a tremendous waste of his time. I wrote about that exchange myself and mentioned her here and here. Seriously, don't bother.

SFS Ticketing Update

 

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by me

So I managed to buy my SFS tickets today, on the last day of their free ticket offer. The process was painful:

1. Log in.
2. Proceed to subscription page.
3. Pick the day you want your tickets on. (Note: Fridays are more expensive than Saturdays, so I picked Saturday.)
4. Click the button for the subscription you want.
5. Pick your first choice section. (Note: You can't choose your seat because people who already hold subscriptions get to keep their seats. So until their orders are committed and fulfilled, SFS doesn't know which seats are unavailable and can't give you options.) 
6. Pick your backup section, in case your first choice is full.
7. Click Add to Cart. That takes you to your cart.
8. Scroll to the Add another series button and click it.
9. Go through steps 3 through 8 again. And again. And again. Because there's no way to select all four series and sections that you want at one time.
10. Select a couple of other concerts you want to see. Go through section choice flow for each of them.
11. Decide you can't stand it any more even though you know your missed something you want to buy.
12. Realize that there was nothing about free tickets, even though the SFS web site says that when you buy 18 or more tickets, you get eight free tickets. (Click through and scroll down.)
13. Call the box office, where what you find out leaves you shaking your head.
1. The free tickets aren't offered as a discount on your subscription, that is, buy 28 concerts, get eight of them free.
2. They are add-ons. Sometime after you buy, you get a voucher or something like that enabling you to request eight additional tickets at no charge. Yay, you can take friends free. 
3. That's nice, but none of the advertising makes this clear, nor does the web site.
14. Buy your seats.
15. Write this blog post.

Oof.

War Memorial Opera House Interior

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

A dismaying press release from the Merola Opera, SFO's young singer training program. This sounds....bad:

Based on an abundance of caution the acclaimed Merola Opera Program has announced a programming update for its Merola Grand Finale, to be presented live July 31 atthe Golden Gate Park Bandshell. Following an occurrence in which artist health and safety COVID protocols were compromised by a number of participants, the decision has been made to prioritize the well-being of young artists, faculty, staff, and other participating artists, and to proceed with a reduced number of onsite participants and a greater focus on virtual training for the duration of this year’s program. 

 

After exploring numerous possible alternatives, it has been determined that this difficult step would help ensure the safest environment for the final week and a half of the summer training program and the Merola Grand Finale. Says Jean Kellogg, Executive Director of the Merola Opera Program, “It was a heartbreaking decision, but the safety of our young artists and production team is paramount.” 

I mean...health and safety protocols compromised by a number of participants? A wild party of some kind? People drinking to excess? Everybody leaving their masks home? Ouch, in any event. The press release continues: 

The public will still have the opportunity to enjoy a free outdoor performance featuring outstanding young artists from the Merola Opera Program performing a thrilling array of selections from some of opera’s most brilliant works. The Merola Grand Finale will be presented at 2:00pm, Saturday, July 31, at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell, John F. Kennedy Drive and Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Admission is FREE and open to the public. (Limited reserved seating is available for Merola members Gold Circle and above.) 

 

All Merola participants can be seen next month in “Back Home: Through the Stage Door,” a digital production filmed on location in early July at the historic Herbst Theatre, with the entire 2021 Merola ensemble performing classics and lesser known gems. Free on-demand streaming of “Back Home: Through the Stage Door” will be available to Merola members beginning August 13, and free to the public beginning August 27. For more information or to become a Merola member, visit www.merola.org.

 

San Francisco Opera Center Artistic Director Carrie-Ann Matheson and General Manager Markus Beam noted, “The health and well-being of our artists, faculty, and staff has been and must remain our top priority,” adding that some participants will continue their Merola summer training virtually. The 2021 Merola Stage Director Audrey Chait, as originally announced, will direct the Merola Grand Finale.