Victoria & Albert Museum
November, 2019
Monday, May 31, 2021
Sunday, May 30, 2021
Sunday Miscellaney
Several things make a post:
- Bang on a Can has a marathon coming up on June 6, 2021, from 1 to 5 p.m.; for details, see the web site live.bangonacan.org.
- Estonian composer Erki Pärnoja has an album of "cross-genre" choral music out.
- Flutist of flutists Claire Chase and clarinetist Joshua Rubin have released an EP of Alvin Lucier's Monteverdi Shapero, in honor of Lucier's 90th birthday, and yes, that's my late teacher Harold Shapero in close company with Claudio Monteverdi. You can hear it at Chase's web site, complete with informative notes.
- Opera Orlando's 2021-22 season includes La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Stella Sung's The Secret River (libretto by Mark Campbell).
- The New York Opera Fest has been going on for a month and continues into June with a huge list of programs.
- Congratulations to Douglas Kearney, who has been named the first recipient of Opera America's Campbell Opera Librettist Prize. Kearney is a poet, with seven books of poetry published, and the librettist of several operas, with others forthcoming:
- Crescent City and Sweet Land, both of which The Industry performed to great acclaim
- Mordake
- Sucktion
- Call for scores from the string quartet Ethel, due date July 1, 2021. Read about it at HomeBaked Round V.
Friday, May 28, 2021
Friday Photos, Super Blood Moon Edition
Eclipse
May 26, 2021, around 3 a.m.
Eclipse
May 26, 2021
The streak is the lights of a plane.
Eclipse
May 26, 2021
Eclipse
May 26, 2021
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Edwin Outwater at SFCM
Conductor Edwin Outwater
Photo by David Kim, courtesy of SFCM
In April, 2020, Edwin Outwater was appointed to the position of Music Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I meant to report on this at the time and, well, the pandemic and life caught up. Here's the press release; note that all dates not otherwise specified are 2020:
In the past two decades, savvy classical music presenters have focused on evolving the art form – through cross-genre collaborations, new audience engagement, and demonstrating relevance to modern-day life. In the past two months, this relevance has been thrown into sharp relief, as audiences worldwide have found comfort, escapism, and catharsis in digital performances during the COVID-19 pandemic. San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s contribution to this movement is the Tiny Dorm Concert Series, an expertly curated whole-community effort connecting faculty, students, and alumni with audiences across the globe.
On Saturday, April 11, the series’ closing night will be hosted and curated by visionary conductor Edwin Outwater, announced today as the new SFCM Music Director. San Francisco audiences will recognize Outwater from his enduring relationship with San Francisco Symphony, where he has served as Resident Conductor, Director of Summer Concerts, and Music Director of its Youth Orchestra. Collaborations with living composers such as Mason Bates, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Missy Mazzoli have been hallmarks of his career, as have projects with household names like Renée Fleming, Wynton Marsalis, John Lithgow, Metallica, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Outwater has also enjoyed high-profile engagements with Ben Folds, Sara Bareilles, Seth MacFarlane, Tituss Burgess, and legendary drag performers Peaches Christ, Bob The Drag Queen, and Courtney Act.
“We knew SFCM’s next music director would need to have a rare combination of qualities,” said Conservatory President David Stull. “Essentially, we sought an architect for the ensemble of the future – someone with both a truly innovative mindset and extensive experience working with top-tier ensembles. After a two-year search, we have found this leader in Edwin Outwater.”
As music director, Outwater’s primary focus will be the conservatory’s broadscale musical objectives – shaping the large ensemble experience across orchestra, chamber, and contemporary music ensembles, striking a balance between canonical works and new initiatives, and guiding programmatic themes. His duties will also include direct mentorship of students in the conducting program.“There is an incredible wave of growth happening at SFCM,” said Outwater. “I’m thrilled to be joining this dynamic and forward-looking institution. Under David’s leadership, the conservatory’s expansions, including creative technology and jazz, are creating new pathways for young musicians. I’m eager to help nurture these entrepreneurial students as they build careers for today’s musical landscape.”A California native, Outwater has forged his own inventive career at major orchestras and institutions throughout the world, where he has often premiered new commissions and introduced audiences to works beyond the standard repertoire. His stellar reputation as a curator has been built via the SoundBox series in San Francisco and the Intersectionsseries, which has connected orchestral music to quantum physics, neuroscience, film, food, and yoga, in the United States and Canada. His broad curiosity has resulted in collaborations with a diverse array of artists from all musical genres – from cellist Johannes Moser to Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq – and inspired the creation of Hack The Orchestra, a hackathon that challenges young programmers to create new content for the concert experience.As the COVID-19 pandemic drives both higher education and arts institutions to embrace the agile mindset required for rapid innovation, Outwater’s vision can be expected to shape the SFCM student experience across programs and platforms.“Ultimately, I hope our present circumstances can be a catalyst for greater ingenuity,” said Outwater. “SFCM makes it a priority to empower students to take an active role in creating their own musical futures, and this is the attitude the world needs to continue moving forward. Leonard Bernstein called it the lesson of the century: ‘as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man.’”
I asked about the responsibilities that come with this position, and SFCM replied:
As music director, he conducts the orchestra, oversees the program, selects the personnel and identifies large scale projects. He also curates our contemporary music division, works with Historical Performance and the Opera Departments on large scale projects, identifies guest conductors (for all ensembles including the orchestra), coaches students, and works with the Assoc. Dean for Artistic Programming (Hank Mau) in crafting a season. He occasionally will teach a seminar and he runs the conducting program which comprises 2-4 students.Edwin will also lead a discussion that selects our artistic/academic theme for the year, which is part of an initiative we refer to as "Connected Learning." This year it was Music and Nature, and we witnessed academic courses revolving around the use of natural themes in art, literature, technology, and music. Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) undertook several projects in which data from the Livermore Labs measuring climate change was translated into a soundscape installation, and smaller projects such as the one we have moved to August 30th at the Lynmar estate, where we will show the parallels of mathematics that describe the natural world (Fibinnaci, Golden Section) and string instrument design.
Interesting work!
Outwater's predecessors were:
- Eric Dudley, currently Artistic Director of SF Contemporary Music Players, from 2016-2017 through 2017-18.
- Scott Sandmeier, from 2013-14 through 2015-16
Monday, May 24, 2021
Friday, May 21, 2021
Monday, May 17, 2021
Friday, May 14, 2021
Monday, May 10, 2021
Friday, May 07, 2021
Monday, May 03, 2021
Friday, April 30, 2021
Monday, April 26, 2021
Family Connections
If a couple of names in my previous post seemed familiar, you can consider yourself alert and on top of things: the conductors Ken-David Masur and Joshua Weilerstein, who will be appearing at San Francisco Symphony in the near future, come from musical families. Masur is the son of the late Kurt Masur, who led the NY Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Weilerstein's parents are Donald Weilerstein, distinguished teacher and longtime first violin of the Cleveland Quartet, and Vivian Hornick Weilerstein, pianist. His sister is the cellist Alicia Weilerstein.
Coming from such families gives you a leg up, in exposure to music, in early training, in name recognition, in the people you meet socially and in the business, contacts most of us just haven't got access to. The brilliant Kate (McMansion Hell) Wagner wrote an article in 2019 about what it's like to try to make it even in the lower echelons of classical music if you come from a less-privileged family. Think about it: classical music just isn't a meritocracy, owing to the different access and privilege that different people have.
The Return of San Francisco Symphony
Photo by Lisa Hirsch
I think I might be up for this! The announced programs are certainly tasty.
Here's the schedule as of today; full programming will be announced next month:
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Christa Ludwig
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano, died on Saturday, age 93. She was the best of the best, one of the greatest of postwar singers, with a beautiful voice, temperament, sensitivity, musicality. She had it all and was outstanding in every repertory she sang: Mozart, Strauss, Wagner, Lieder. I have one oddity around that is...not...quite....right: a Rossini aria, in German, made during the years when you heard opera in the vernacular in many European countries. But of all her recordings that I know, that's the only even slightly off item.
There are a couple of Immolations, delivered with such force and imagination that you realize that had she been a soprano, she would have been on the same lofty plateau as Varnay and Nilsson. Of course, you can tell this from her Brangäne, her Fricka, her Ortrud, her Dyer's Wife, and on and on; from her Mahler, especially on Klemperer's Das Lied von der Erde; her Mozart, where I first heard her on Klemperer's Magic Flute, as one of the Queen of the Night's ladies; as the Witch in Hansel und Gretel, which she said was her favorite role.
To my great regret, I never heard her live; she retired from opera around when I got seriously interested, and sang at San Francisco Opera only once anyway, in an early-70s Rosenkavalier. I'm grateful for her enormous recorded legacy, even though it's not the same.
RIP Christa Ludwig; you were one of the giants.
Friday, April 23, 2021
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
(Belated) Museum Mondays
Artificial Leg
Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret Museum, London
November, 2019
Friday, April 16, 2021
Dudamel to Paris Opera
The NY Times reports that Gustavo Dudamel will become the next music director of the Paris Opera. Well....uh....he has comparatively limited opera experience and my general impression is that the Paris job is complicated, with two houses and a huge schedule. The appointment also overlaps with his music directorship at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he has an excellent orchestra, a great hall, and a fantastic, forward-looking administration to work with. The Times article notes that he's not great with languages, and while things have changed a lot in France, I think you'd better speak French if you're working there.
Lastly, does he get to keep the LA Phil job?! As I've noted repeatedly, there's so much musical talent and skill in the world that it's ridiculous that anyone has more than one major appointment. No, YN-S should not have the Met and Philly; Andris Nelsons should not have the Boston Symphony and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, etc., etc.
I had thought that there was a good chance of the Paris job going to Susanna Mälkki. She is the principal guest conductor of the LA Phil, so I guess this further cements the possibility of her become their next music director, should two jobs ten hours apart not actually work for Dudamel.
Open positions:
- Royal Opera, when Sir Antonio Pappano leaves for the LSO in September, 2024.
- Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, when Robert Spano leaves at the end of 2021-22.
- City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, when MGT leaves at the end of 2021-22
- Baltimore Symphony, because Marin Alsop did not renew her contract there
- Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra following the firing of Daniele Gatti
- Opera Theatre of Saint Louis: Stephen Lord resigned following accusations of sexual harassment. OTSL has not named a new music director.
- Michigan Opera Theater: Stephen Lord resigned following accusations of sexual harassment. MOT has not named a new music director.
- Teatro Regio Turin: Open now with departure of Gianandrea Noseda. the Teatro Regional's has not named a new music director.
- Minnesota Opera: Michael Christie has left. MO has not named a new music director.
- Sarasota Orchestra after Anu Tali leaves at the end of 2018-2019. Jeffrey Kahane is "artistic advisor" but whether that means he is conducting the orchestra....I do not know.
- Melbourne Symphony: Sir Andrew Davis leaves at the end of 2019. No new music director has been named.
- Virginia Symphony: JoAnn Falletta is now laureate, but no successor has been named.
- Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
- Minnesota Orchestra, when Osmo Vänskä leaves in 2022.
Conductors looking for jobs (that is, as of the near future, or now, they do not have a posting):
- Miguel Harth-Bedoya
- Lionel Bringuier
- Juanjo Mena
- Ludovic Morlot
- Sian Edwards
- Jun Markl
- Ingo Metzmacher
- Jac van Steen
- Mark Wigglesworth
- David Robertson
- Peter Oundjian
- Philippe Auguin
- Kwame Ryan
- Ilan Volkov
- Aleksandr Markovic
- Lothar Koenigs
- Henrik Nanasi
- Carlos Kalmar
And closed:
- Paris Opera signs Gustavo Dudamel to succeed Philippe Jordan.
- London Symphony Orchestra: Sir Antonio Pappano becomes Chief Conductor Designate in September, 2023, Chief Conductor the following year.
- Fort Worth Symphony: Robert Spano to succeed Miguel Harth-Bedoya.
- Oregon Symphony: David Danzmayr succeeds Carlos Kalmar at the beginning of the 2021-22 season.
- Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Maxim Emelyanychev has succeeded Robin Ticciati
- Orchestre de Paris, Klaus Mäkelä to succeed Daniel Harding
- Montreal Symphony Orchestra: Raphael Payare has succeeded Kent Nagano.
- Richmond Symphony: Valentina Peleggi succeeds Steven Smith.
- Singapore Symphony: Han Graf succeeded Lan Shui.
- BBC National Orchestra of Wales: Ryan Bancroft succeeded Thomas Søndergård
- BRSO hires Sir Simon Rattle to succeed the late Mariss Jansons, effective 2023.
- Jader Bignamini is now Music Director of the Detroit SO, succeeding Leonard Slatkin.
- Opera North: Garry Walker is music director designate
- Sydney Symphony Orchestra names Simone Young their chief conductor; she takes over in two years, succeeding David Roberts.
- San Francisco Opera appoints Eun Sun Kim its music director, starting August 1, 2021. She succeeds Nicola Luisotti.
- Philharmonia Orchestra names Santtu-Matias Rouvali as its next Principal Conductor, starting in 2021-22.
Friday Photo
Davies Symphony Hall
February 29, 2020
The Program
I do realize that I should have run this a few weeks ago.
Monday, April 12, 2021
Museum Mondays
Facade of Sir Paul Pindar's House
Victoria & Albert Museum
London, November, 2019
This facade is all that's left of Sir Paul Pindar's house, one of the great Elizabethan private houses in London's Spitalfields neighborhood. The structure, or part of it, survived well into the 19th century before being demolished, with this bit saved.
Friday, April 09, 2021
Monday, April 05, 2021
Museum Mondays
Virgin and Child
Relief in limestone ("Verona marble")
Italian, c. 1160-80
Victoria & Albert Museum
London, November, 2019
Friday, April 02, 2021
Thursday, April 01, 2021
Spring at OTSL
Opera Theatre of St. Louis has a very nice spring season on offer, all performed outdoors:
- Gianni Schicchi, Puccini
- Highway 1, U.S.A., William Grant Still
- La Voix Humaine, Poulenc
- New Works, Bold Voices (three new short works)
- I Dream a World, a Celebration of Juneteenth
Patricia Racette is singing Elle and directing the Poulenc; the wonderful baritone Will Liverman is in Highway 1, as is soprano Nicole Cabell. The new short works look great, as well; they're by Damien Sneed, Laura Karpman, and Steven Mackey. Leonard Slatkin conducts the Puccini and Still works.
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