“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is giving Hartford Stage a $500,000 grant to help stage the world premiere of ‘The Orphans’ Home Cycle,’ the late Horton Foote’s reconfiguring of his nine-play epic, described as an American ‘Odyssey.’ … The grant is one of the largest in Hartford Stage’s history and the largest for a specific production.”
Tag: 03.31.09
Frances Blaisdell, Pioneer ‘Girl Flutist,’ Dies At 97
“Frances Blaisdell, a flutist who played her way into what was then the male world of orchestral music, becoming one of the early women to play a woodwind instrument with the New York Philharmonic, died on March 11 in Portola Valley, Calif.” Chamber Music magazine wrote in 1992: “Every woman flute player in every major American orchestra, every little girl who p[l]ays the flute in a school band, has Frances Blaisdell to thank. She was first.”
At 20, British Label NMC Is Taking Risks In Classical Music
British classical music label New Music Cassettes marks its 20th anniversary “with 96 new commissions, performed in London over four days,” each piece written for only a bottle of wine as payment. And why would composers agree to that? “Because, in the cutthroat record industry, there’s nothing quite like NMC. In the course of 20 years and 150 releases, NMC has recorded the sort of stuff that commercial labels recoil from in terror.”