The L.A. Phil has had an uncharacteristic amount of worry, and Gustavo Dudamel has been at the center of it. Little has seemed right since his announcement last year that he would exchange the L.A. Phil for New York’s Philharmonic at the end of the 2025-26 season. - Los Angeles Times
A composer cycle is no mean feat – for both musicians and audiences. But there is something remarkable about hearing works from the same series performed by the same musicians, which is why composer cycles regularly appear in concert and recording programmes. - Classical Music UK
"This is a cautionary tale of performing-arts nonprofits, of board burnout, of soaring costs in a post-COVID world, of the precarious state of philanthropy. The primary cause of death was that people — donors, audiences, players and board members — appeared to have taken for granted an institution they loved." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
"Conductor Anthony Parnther and the Musicians at Play Foundation speedily formed a new training orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles, and scheduled an inaugural concert for April 28, on the same weekend that AYS was supposed to play the final concert of its season." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
Puccini died before composing the final scene, and many find the standard ending by Franco Alfano unsatisfying. This alternative by composer Christopher Tin and librettist Susan Soon He Stanton has a better reason for Princess Turandot executing her suitors than the centuries-old rape and murder of an ancestor. - AP
I’m not a medical person, but we do know that sound is about vibration. The body is like a resonating chamber; every part of our body can be affected by sound. opening the body up as a resonator in order to perceive sound, you have a good appreciation of resonance. - San Francisco Classical Voice
Derek Ash, whose great-grandparents, Sam and Rose Ash, opened the first Sam Ash store in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in 1924, said the company’s 42 locations could not compete in the era of online shopping. - The New York Times
From the company's opening in 1883 to eight years ago, there were only Sarah Caldwell (1976), Simone Young (1996), Jane Glover (2013), and Susanna Mälkki (2016). From April 19-26, 2024, there were Oksana Lyniv (Turandot), Speranza Scappucci (La Rondine), Marin Alsop (El Niño), and Xian Zhang (Madama Butterfly). - AP
"The orchestral sector and the opera and ballet sectors are facing a funding crisis at the moment, which might mean that the focus is not really on changing the culture but just on survival. But that’s not an excuse." - The Stage
"The suggestion that the 45-year-old Abravanel Hall could be demolished or altered has been floated as Smith Entertainment Group — the company ... that owns the Utah Jazz and the state’s newly acquired National Hockey League franchise — begins planning for an 'entertainment district' adjacent to the teams’ home at Delta Center." - The Salt Lake Tribune
Kyu-Young Kim cited "recent organizational decisions and shifts in priorities" for his decision, though he will continue as concertmaster. Subsequently, the 28 members of the SPCO musicians' union voted unanimously against the orchestra's president/managing director, Jon Limbacher, who has reduced the number of both performances and venues. - Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MSN)
Sorey takes honors this year after having been a finalist last year for his Monochromatic Light (Afterlife). Adagio, which "moves at a glacial pace, (yet) holds its subject in steady focus," is written for alto saxophone soloist and orchestra and was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival and the Atlanta Symphony. - NPR
At 78 minutes, Cowboy Carter is nearly as long as composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s epic Seventh Symphony (1941) and has structural similarities to symphonic music too. There are clear “movements” within the work in which certain lyrical and musical ideas are grouped together. - The Conversation
