Women Conductors Still Have Tough Time In UK

“The reasons that conductors’ gender is still an issue for us are twofold: there are still too few female conductors in charge of orchestras (apart from Jane Glover at the Royal Academy of Music, there are no women currently in posts high up the orchestral or operatic hierarchy anywhere in Britain), and the methods and opportunities for training conductors here are pitifully patchy.”

What Ails Jazz In The UK

“As many feared, jazz gigs in pubs have significantly diminished since the 2003 Licensing Act, with its cumbersome and bureaucratic new licence requirements for live performers. The news that the government was finally thinking of modifying it to exempt small venues got an audible sigh of relief.”

John Eliot Gardiner At 66

“It is evident that he likes to be in control – whether it be his own farmyard, his own opera productions or his own CD company, which Isabella, a former recording executive, runs for him. That may explain why he has never held a position with a conventional orchestra or opera company for long. Musicians accustomed to democratic structures are turned off by his exacting standards and a dictatorial style that has bordered on rudeness in the past.”

How Alan Gilbert Is Changing The New York Philharmonic

“It’s one hell of a gamble. Not only is the 42-year-old Gilbert still, in conducting terms, a baby, he is also virtually unknown, having spent eight years in the relative sticks of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. And yet the mission he has been given is to transform the orchestra and return it to the world-class form that it enjoyed under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. No mean feat.”