Category: music

“Classical musicians of African descent have existed on the margins of obscurity for centuries — in the classroom, the concert hall, the record industry, and on the radio,” says Terrance McKnight, evening host at New York classical radio station WQXR. In this radio special for Juneteenth, he talks to Wynton Marsalis, Martina Arroyo (one of the great operatic sopranos of the 1960s and ’70s), composers Alvin Singleton and Leslie Dunner, Nashville Symphony principal oboist Titus Underwood, and other guests as well as listeners about working as an African-American in the classical music industry. (audio) – WQXR (New York City)

Steven Brosvik comes to Utah from the Nashville Symphony, where he was Chief Operating Officer. He has previously worked in management at the Baltimore, Houston, and San Antonio Symphony Orchestras. – Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

The band’s social media accounts and website were changed Thursday to reflect the new name for the band, which is made up of Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines and Emily Strayer. “We want to meet this moment,” read a statement on The Chicks’ website, which also noted that the trio recognizes the name was already in use by a band in New Zealand. – CBC (Reuters)

Jon Batiste, the jazz pianist and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” bandleader, has spent the last three weekends marching in the streets of New York, leading musicians and protesters through hymns and songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Down by the Riverside.” – The New York Times

Lee Pringle, founder of the Colour of Music Festival in Charleston: “The average white orchestra fears that Colour of Music will shine a huge light on the fact that while you can’t put black musicians onstage, this guy in Charleston goes out and finds 89 who are willing to play and have master’s degrees from the same institutions as the white kids. … With 2,000 orchestras, less than 2 percent of the members on those stages are of African ancestry. It is truly the last water fountain for black people to drink from.” – Charleston City Paper

Bahl, who succeeds Thomas Wilkins at the start of the 2021-22 season, becomes the second conductor of color in a row to hold the music director position in Omaha. An Indian-American born and raised in the Bay Area, Bahl has worked as assistant conductor to Kurt Masur in Europe and Christoph Eschenbach in D.C. – Omaha World-Herald

As one development exec for a major company puts it, “During a crisis, it’s not really the time to go out and ask for those five-year campaign pledges. It’s the time to say, ‘how are you’ and ‘how can we as an arts organization be of support during this time?’ ‘Is there anything you need from us?’ ‘What are your ideas and thoughts?’ And among the people we’re close to, that we’re asking those questions of, those who are able to do something are stepping up, in some ways unasked, to support us in meaningful ways.'” Observes another, “People who love opera really love it. You can raise a lot of money from people who love opera because it’s a secular religion.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

“I survived the gun-to-the-head modernism, back when I was a student — you know if you weren’t crunching elbows on the keys and counting up to 12 all the time, you weren’t being much of a composer. I decided I didn’t want to go that way. I came up as [an Episcopalian cathedral] singer and singers don’t often sing in 12-tone technique and things like that. I’ve used it, but it wasn’t a natural fit and so I’ve spent most of my career trying to be honest with myself. I call it ‘authenticism’ — that’s my ‘ism.'” – San Francisco Classical Voice

The 78-year-old renowned conductor said the coronavirus had ‘’destroyed music,‘’ with shuttered venues depriving the world of ‘’spiritual food” as it faced a pandemic that still threatens uncalculated economic repercussions beyond the lives lost. Even during two world wars, Muti noted, theaters stayed open to provide cultural relief except during the worst of the bombings. – Chicago Tribune

From Taiwan to Germany to Spain to Quebec, lockdowns are lifting and orchestras are figuring out ways to make music again. David Patrick Stearns looks into what they’re trying, from Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Beethoven symphony cycle with the (carefully spaced) Orchestre Métropolitain in a largely empty Montreal hall to Prague’s Collegium 1704 performing Baroque music with masks on (even the woodwinds and singers) to an opera in Salzburg where the characters all hate each other so much that they stay socially distanced anyway. – The Philadelphia Inquirer