Category: music

Katherine Chu and Juliet Petrus, both alumnae of San Francisco Opera’s Merola/Adler young artists’ program, have written “the first book to introduce Mandarin as a language for singing, with a detailed explanation for the creation of sounds and a system for learning them. … Singing in Mandarin combines a brief study of linguistics, notes about the history of China and Taiwan, the development and significance of Pinyin …, a wealth of information about Mandarin pronunciation, and scores with multilingual text of Chinese [art] songs.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

Conlon — music director of Los Angeles Opera since 2006 and previously music director or principal conductor of the Paris Opera, the Cincinnati May Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Turin, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the city of Cologne in Germany — will become the Baltimore Symphony’s Artistic Adviser in September of 2021, when Alsop ends her 14-year tenure as music director. Conlon will not be a candidate for the permanent music director post. – Baltimore Business Journal

“There should have been no better time to start than this, the company’s 350th anniversary, which was to have culminated this fall with a splashy new production of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle. Instead, [Alexander] Neef … walked straight into an annus horribilis.” – The New York Times

“We are currently living through the longest period of uncertainty that any of us has ever experienced in our professional lives, and it feels like an eternity. The more care we spend thinking about our missions in this not-yet moment, the more fully we’ll be ready for the world more embracing that awaits us.” – Simon Woods

At least 55 of the chorus’s 62 members have received notice of the mandatory hearing that precedes layoffs in Israel; the singers have been on furlough since the spring. Their union reports that the company abruptly ended negotiations on a new contract and evidently plans to hire freelance choristers at cheaper rates. – The Jerusalem Post

The new online version of Tower Records was originally scheduled for introduction at the 2020 South by Southwest, but pulled back when that event was curtailed by the pandemic. It was also envisioned as a series of pop-up shops, an idea also delayed by the coronavirus. – Deadline

While the shutdowns across the world created some opportunities for musicians to rest, pause in endless touring, and recuperate from years of relentless work, it’s also caused some major challenges. “We just keep surfing on the waves — see what’s gonna happen next day, what’s gonna happen next day, next month.” – NPR

“Why are pianists at such a loss when it comes to understanding the mechanics of their own instrument? This lack of knowledge separates them from almost all other instrumentalists. Not only can violinists, clarinetists, harpists or flutists tune their instruments, and even bend pitches in performance, they also, by and large, know much more about how their instruments work.” – The New York Times

Opera is one of those words that contains so much historical and symbolic weight and prejudice that you have to clamber through dense, thorny tangles before you even get to what it might actually be, and if there is anything really left, other than it being a segregated leisure pursuit for the entitled. – LitHub