Category — News

• Some very sad news from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose Principal trombonist, Steven Witser, died of a heart attack at the age of 48 on Monday night.
• The Ying Quartet is losing its first violinist, resulting in a quartet that will not be all siblings.
• The Baltimore Symphony musicians have given $1 million in voluntary wage/benefit concessions and are involved in an extensive fundraising drive for the orchestra.
• Interesting article in NewMusicBox about the efficacy of pre-concert lectures.
• Krystian Zimerman creates a furor with his politically-based anti-US concert remarks and apparent self-imposed ban on future US performance.

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Photo: Oregon Symphony

Acclaimed fado singer Mariza will appear with the Oregon Symphony Saturday evening – it should be an amazing evening of some great singing.

Tickets are still available – go here to get yours.

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From today’s New York Times – Joseph Patelson’s Music House will soon be closing its doors after over 60 years in business in its location across W 56th Street from Carnegie Hall.  Read the entire story here.

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The OSO’s press release:

Apr. 9, 2009

BOUND FOR THE BIG APPLE:
OREGON SYMPHONY WILL PLAY CARNEGIE HALL IN 2011

(PORTLAND, Ore.) – For the first time in its history, the Oregon Symphony will travel cross country in spring 2011 to perform a concert at music’s most prestigious venue, Carnegie Hall in New York.

The Oregon Symphony is one of seven orchestras from across North America selected today to perform at the venerable concert hall as part of the first Spring for Music festival, a new one-of-a-kind annual concert series at Carnegie Hall designed to spotlight the artistic vision of orchestras dedicated to distinctive and adventurous programming. Festival organizers call the unique concept “a high-profile artistic laboratory for programming and concert experimentation in the world’s most competitive and visible musical environment.”

The 2011 festival includes seven concerts over nine night nights, May 6-14. The Oregon Symphony, with Music Director Carlos Kalmar conducting, will perform on Thursday, May 12.

“The invitation to appear at the first Spring for Music festival is a tremendous endorsement of what the orchestra has achieved over the past six years under music director Carlos Kalmar”, said Oregon Symphony Association president Elaine Calder.   “This gives us a chance to show to the rest of the country what a great orchestra we have here.  Playing at Carnegie Hall is the dream of every classical musician and ensemble – it’s simply the venue, and the ultimate testing ground.  This is a terrific opportunity to build morale and support at home, and burnish our national reputation.

“We hope many of our friends and supporters will join us on the trip to New York, and we’ll be starting work immediately to raise the money to go, and to organize some very special events both in Portland and in Manhattan.”

The announcement was made today in New York by Thomas W. Morris, artistic director if the Ojai Music Festival in California and former executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra, who serves as Spring for Music’s artistic director; and David V. Foster, president of Opus 3 Artists, the festival’s director.

The participating orchestras were selected in a competitive process, based on a single criterion – the creativity of the program they submitted for consideration.  More than twenty orchestras across North America were eligible to compete.  Details of the programs to be performed by the Oregon Symphony and other festival participants will not be announced until much closer to the 2011 festival.

Funding comes from Jan and Daniel Lewis of Miami, Gerry Lenfest of Philadelphia, The Irving Harris Foundation of Chicago and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York through the American Music Center.  Festival organizers announced today that funding is in place for the first three years of Spring for Music, 2011 through 2013.

The festival will pay the costs of renting Carnegie Hall, producing the concerts and selling tickets, as well as providing a financial guarantee for each participating orchestra. The orchestras are responsible for their own travel and transportation expenses, and will be able to purchase up to 1,000 tickets in advance of the general public, to give and/or sell to their supporters.  Remaining concert tickets will be priced at $25 and $15.

Complete details on the festival are on the web site springformusic.com

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The Oregon Symphony has been one of seven US ensembles chosen to participate in the first Festival of American Orchestras at Carnegie Hall in May 2011.  I have the feeling that there is a lot that has to happen before the orchestra actually goes, but this will be a watershed moment for the oldest orchestra west of the Mississippi River.

From today’s New York Times:

Not this May, not next May, but in the May after that, Spring for Music, an independent annual festival of North American orchestras at Carnegie Hall, is finally to come to life. Long lead times are nothing new in classical music, but they are not always so acutely felt, since there is usually plenty happening in the meantime.

Here, so far, there are only prospects and plans. On Thursday, the festival’s creators will announce the seven orchestras selected from 25 applicants for that first outing of May 6 to 14, 2011. They are the Albany, Atlanta, Dallas, Montreal, Oregon and Toledo Symphony Orchestras and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The Albany, Toledo and Oregon ensembles will be making their Carnegie debuts.

The administrators will also announce a grant of $1 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which they say will ensure the first three festivals.

First made public last June, the series is intended to encourage orchestras to program imaginatively, without regard to marketing considerations. The marketing and ticket sales (with most seats priced at $25, a few at $15) will be handled by the festival.

Read more about it here.

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• UPDATE 4/08 [link] The Utah Symphony/Opera cut 11.5% of of their benefits plus Keith Lockhart takes 10% pay reduction.
• [link] The Atlanta Symphony musicians have reopened their previously negotiated CBA (which ran through 2011) and will be taking an 8.8% pay cut by the end of 2011 (the first drop will be 5% for 09/10, then a further 3.8% in 2011).
• [link] The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra musicians have agreed to a 12% pay cut for the 09/10 season.  Staff cuts were 17% cut of staff positions and a 15.5% cut of top executive pay, and a salary freeze for non-senior management.
• Philadelphia Inquirer arts writer Peter Dobrin writes about a possible sea change in how US orchestras will be structured in the midst and the wake of the current recession/depression.  The main point concerns salaries – both executive and musician.
• David Brewster of Crosscut.com writes about the possibility that Seattle over-built its arts infrastructure, and points to Portland as a model of where Seattle might be headed (and that Seattle might be a place that Portland should worry about becoming).

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Last night was the annual Evelyn Nagel Donor Appreciation Concert (otherwise known around the OSO as “ENDAC”).  Instead of the usual program of warmed-over pieces from other concerts with a full orchestra, the action moved across the street to the Newmark Theater with a full slate of chamber works featuring OSO players.  I hope that the assembled donors and their guests enjoyed the concert as much as we did – it was a blast, both to play with some of our most talented colleagues and to hear them in action in other works.

I cannot single out anyone for praise – everyone was uniformly excellent, so I’ll just share some photos from the dress rehearsal period on Tuesday morning.

Slide show after the jump: [Read more →]

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I just received an email from OSO president Elaine Calder to all musicians and staff.  It states that the Oregon Symphony has completely scrapped its plans for next season and will no longer play its Classical series of concerts.  Instead, the Oregon Symphony will change its name to the Oregon Pops Orchestra in order to “more effectively serve the needs of its audience”.

Click here for more information.

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From a musician press release:

Musicians are upset because Texas Ballet Theater is using recorded music it made in China to replace them in the orchestra pit at Bass Hall. When it owed the Fort Worth Symphony Association and Bass Hall more than $300,000 for services and rent last season, the company’s artistic staff traveled to China in June 2008 and paid the Chinese government $30,000 to obtain a recording utilizing the staff orchestra of the National Ballet of China, which the company will use in lieu of professional musicians for performances of Cleopatra. The company’s canned music policy killed weeks of work that have hurt professional musicians and cheapened the art form, outsourcing not only musicians’ jobs, but culture as well. The company is selling tickets to its 2009/10 shows at the new $400 million Dallas Center for the Performing Arts without acknowledging that with an empty orchestra pit, consumers won’t be getting what they’ve paid for. “By using recordings – including some it made in China – Texas Ballet Theater is cheating its patrons out of a legitimate ballet experience and is committing artistic fraud,” said Union president Ray Hair. “We cannot stand idly by and see beautiful Bass Hall transformed into a Big-box discount store where the goods are made in China. We will not sit quietly while professional musicians are hurt by the company’s mismanagement. We think consumers who have paid for a professional ballet experience – with a live orchestra – deserve to get one. We urge arts lovers everywhere to stay away from the company’s canned performances and we’re asking ticket holders to ask for refunds. We’re inviting the public to join our protest and boycott the company until musicians return to the orchestra pit.”

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Many exhausted musicians presented the finale to the 24/7 event at Weiden+Kennedy last evening at 6:00 p.m.  To say that it was a successful event would be the understatement of the century, so here are some images and a video of the moments leading up to the performance from a seat inside the orchestra.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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The Oregon Symphony is taking part in a national drive to help feed the hungry in our communities.  Our goal at the OSO is to amass 1 million pounds of food for the Oregon Food Bank by March 28th.

OSO cellist Gayle Budd O’Grady with the first batch of food collected in the drive.

The national drive, called Orchestras Feeding America, was inspired by the events depicted in the book and film The Soloist, and is a project of the League of American Orchestras.

When you come to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for a concert, please bring canned and/or non-perishable food items along with you.  There will be big Oregon Food Bank collection barrels in the lobby for your donations through March April 28th.

Here is a list of the most commonly requested items:

Dry Soup
Rice
Powdered / Canned Milk
Macaroni & Cheese
Cereal
Peanut Butter
Beans
Canned Fruit and Vegetables
Tuna
Canned Meats
Stew
Soup
Pasta
Cereal
Fruit Juices / Sip-sized Juices

Please help us help the hungry in Portland!

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Helene Grimaud – will rue the day
Photo: Mat Hennek/DG

Valentina Lisitsa – saved the day
Photo: Iran Issa-Khan

Pianist Helene Grimaud spaced out and learned the wrong Beethoven concerto for her planned CSO appearances this weekend, and Portland favorite Valentina Lisitsa was called in to pinch hit for the Beethoven Emperor Concerto.  Grimaud recently recorded the piece, so I cannot understand how she could possibly think she was playing something else (or have it so out of her fingers that she couldn’t quickly get it into performance shape).  The performances were led by recent OSO guest conductor James Gaffigan.

Here’s an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times review:

Lisitsa is known for her manual dexterity and an ability to delineate individual notes in even the most torrential runs. And her filigrees hold our attention. She did not disappoint Saturday night. But she also seemed to take Beethoven’s majesty down a notch so that the elegant slow movement became the work’s musical as well as literal center.

I hope we get Valentina back for some non-Russian repertoire soon, she’s great in the Rachmaninoff/Tchaikovsky rep. with which she’s made her reputation, but I’d love to hear her play Beethoven, too.

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The last three days have been taken up for nine of my colleagues in listening to auditions for the assistant principal cello position in the OSO.  I believe that there were something like 50 or so applicants that showed up for the preliminary auditions.  Someone has been offered the position, but I cannot reveal their name officially until they have signed a contract, but I believe that it’s a hire that is a big win for the orchestra.  We’ll also be holding auditions for English Horn/Utility Oboe in May April.

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Just a heads up – I’ll be on KBPS-FM (All Classical 89.9 FM, or allclassical.org) from 2 – 3 p.m. today for their spring pledge drive.  I’m not sure what I’ll be talking about, or with whom I’ll be talking, but it should be fun!

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