Tag: 07.12.06

Oh, And They Need To Know How The Music Goes, Too

What makes a great conductor? Musicianship plays a role, certainly, as does effective stick technique. But most musicians will tell you that they form their first (and often their last) impressions of a new conductor inside of a minute, so there’s clearly something else in the mix. “The greatest conductors have an energy that extends beyond the podium to engage the farthest chorister and the last viola player,” and the very best manage to be firmly in charge without ever betraying a shred of personal ego.

Finally, A Social Activity For Music Geeks!

“It is called a listening party. It is a loosely directed but passionately devised gathering held purely for the love and discovery of music. New music. Old music. Loud music. Music played at volumes you can’t even enjoy in your car without blowing out the sunroof and messing up your hair and drowning out all the urban sirens. But it is not solely about volume. It is about quality. It is about range. It is, perhaps more than anything else, about surprise.”

NAC Gets New Board Chair

Canada’s National Arts Centre has named prominent Ontario arts supporter Julia Foster as its new chair. Foster is credited with being a key presence in the turnaround of the Stratford Festival a decade ago, and has served on the boards of the Toronto International Film Festival and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The Secret Competition

Imagine winning a piano competition you had no idea you’d entered. Now imagine that your victory comes with $300,000. The Gilmore Artist Award, presented every four years and won this year by Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter, might be the most labor-intensive competition in existence, but more for its organizers than the contestants. “Six jury members travel the world, listening to pianists identified by an international panel as exceptionally gifted and deserving of a higher profile. To get an idea of the pianists’ range, the jury members attend orchestra concerts, recitals and chamber music performances, without ever telling the pianists they are being considered for the award.”

Arts Slashed In Wake Of NJ Budget Impasse

“In the late-night frenzy to craft a budget deal this week, lawmakers cut the budget of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts an additional 5 percent, to $19.1 million, while adding money to pet projects in Montclair, Camden and Newark… Organizations currently receiving state aid should expect cuts of more than 15 percent as less money will be shared by more groups.”

Michener: We’ve Lost A Major Artist

Charles Michener mourns Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. “On Monday, July 3, the most luminous voice I’ve ever heard was extinguished when the American mezzo soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died at the age of 52. Everything this astonishing woman did was almost too much to bear. As with Maria Callas, whom she matched in eruptive intensity, Hunt Lieberson’s performances took you so deeply into what she was singing about that the experience verged on voyeurism.”

Trudeau, The Opera

Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was an operatic figure with a very big life. And now there’s to be an opera about him. “Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path is being written by librettist George Elliott Clarke and jazz composer D.D. Jackson. Clarke, a poet acclaimed for his Whylah Falls and author of the novel George and Rue, has written two earlier operas: Beatrice Chancy, about slaves in Nova Scotia, and Québécité, which is the story of interracial lovers.”