ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

MUSIC

A Window Into A New Opera Festival

What the Prototype festival brings to audiences: Anything from Biblical translations to "a kind of nostalgic reminder of the loud, messy, nudity-filled, often self-serious, generally baffling shows that were once fixtures of downtown New York." - The New York Times

The Portland Opera Is Selling Its Building To Relieve Debt

The company "will be vacating the entire bundle: administrative offices, costume shop, rehearsal space, parking lot and all." Where will it go? That's not yet clear. - Oregon ArtsWatch

Young Musicians Are Starting To Follow The Taylor Swift Career Playbook

This recalibration of the rules of engagement between artists and labels is also a result of the democratisation of information about the byzantine world of music contract law. - The Guardian

Violinist Hilary Hahn Awarded $100,000 Avery Fisher Prize

Previous recipients of the prize, now in its 50th year, have included Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, André Watts, Midori, Joshua Bell, the Emerson and Kronos string quartets, flutist Claire Chase, and, most recently, clarinetist Anthony McGill. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

Conductor Jan Latham-Koenig Arrested In London For Sexual Communication With A Minor

The 70-year-old has been charged with "arranging/facilitating a child sexual offence and sexual communication with a child." He has had a major guest-conducting career and held chief conductor positions in Moscow, Mexico City, Porto, Bruges, and elsewhere: he's currently music director of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. - The Standard (London)

Franz Welser-Möst Announces Retirement Date From Cleveland Orchestra

The Austrian conductor, now 63, announced that he will not renew his current contract when it expires at the end of the 2026-27 season. By that point he will be, at 25 years, the longest-serving music director in the orchestra's history. - Cleveland.com

Can A Female Composer’s Music Be “Virile”?

The words "virile" or "virility" were constantly used in reviews of the music of the late 19th-century Irish-French composer Augusta Holmès. What's more, "Holmès's virile lifestyle, as much as her works, put Ernest Hemingway’s to shame," writes Julia Conrad, who ranks the composer's works in order of virility. - Van

New Tax On UK Orchestras Touring In Europe Is The Latest Brexit Blow

A new Brexit tax hike set to hit U.K. orchestras later this year could make trips to Europe “unviable” and undermine their activities back in Britain, the trade body representing the musical ensembles is warning. - Politico

Study: How Music Puts Us In “Sync”

“I am interested in how being ‘in sync’ with other people through the experience of music-making and other forms of artistic expression supports a general feeling of connectedness to others, which in turn may support people’s well-being.”  - Ludwig Van

Jonathon Heyward On The Future Of The Baltimore Symphony

I don’t want it to be an art form where people feel like it’s only for certain types of people. Because it’s not. I mean, my story is sort of a testament to that. - Washingtonian

The San Francisco Symphony Has Cut Back Its SoundBox Concerts. How Worrisome Is This?

The orchestra says it reduced the programming to save money, because SoundBox concerts lose a lot of it even when they sell out. Yet the very-well-endowed SFS reported $144.9M income and only $74.7M in expenses for FY2022. Two SFCV writers consider what orchestra management has said about this. - San Francisco Classical Voice

The Musical Mind Of George Lewis

George Lewis is one of the most formidable figures in modern music: a composer of international renown, a legendary improvising trombonist, a computer-music pioneer, a professor at Columbia, a stalwart of the Black avant-garde collective known as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. - The New Yorker

Stats: Trends Across Ten Years In The Classical Music World

One notable finding over the past ten years has been the steady rise in programming of music by living composers. Worldwide, since 2013, contemporary music has risen from around 6% to 14% in our listings. - BachTrack

America’s Oldest Choral Festival Adopts A New Artistic Model

A different festival director from a variety of artistic disciplines will be engaged each year. It is a new concept for the oldest choral festival in the Western Hemisphere. - Cincinnati Business Journal

Philadelphia Orchestra Appoints Marin Alsop As Principal Guest Conductor

"Alsop, 67, was music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007-08 through 2020-21, the first woman to lead a top-level American orchestra. She agreed to a three-year term with the Philadelphia Orchestra starting with a 2024 tour of China." - AP

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