Thursday, March 26, 2015

News and updates

Heilwig von Königslöw and Aisslinn Nosky
News:
Kudos to Kenji Bunch, who is working on a big piece for orchestra and chorus entitled "Symphony No 3 "Dream Songs." It is a commission from the Grant Park Music Festival and will receive its world premiere by the Grant Park Orchestra under the direction of Carlos Kalmar on June 19th and 20th. Here is a link to the announcement in the Grant Park Music Festival program. (Thanks to Bob Priest for finding this nugget.)

The Chicago Tribune reports that acoustic piano sales are starting to rise again after hitting bottom during the recession.

A week or so ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director Gustav Dudamel and his wife, Eloisa Maturen, are filing for divorce. They have been married for nine years and have a three-year old son.

Updates:
I have written profiles of the 13 winners of Artist Fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission. This includes composers David Crumb and Rebecca Oswald. The profiles are short and sweet, and you can find them on the OAC website here. For the OAC, I also wrote an article on the 2015 Fisherpoets event in Astoria, which you can read here.

I am currently in Boston to attend the Handel + Haydn Society's performance of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" at Symphony Hall tomorrow evening. On Saturday evening, I will hear the Boston Symphony play the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi's"Ascending Light" for organ and orchestra and Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Both pieces will be conducted by Andris Nelsons. The performances and several associated panel discussions are sponsored by ArtsBoston and hosted by the H+H Society and the BSO as part of  writer's institute that features a few members of the Music Critic Association of North America. Tonight I was at a soirée underwritten the H+H where I met its artistic director Harry Christophers and concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky. Christophers is from England and Nosky is from Vancouver, B.C. The photo above shows her and her teacher Heilwig von Königslöw.



2 comments:

bob priest said...

Personally, I don't believe full-time, tenured professors should be receiving these funds. Aren't there other equally worthy artists in our communities for whom these modest funds would REALLY make a difference? Yes, anybody can apply but I feel that it is unseemly to do so when said "anybody" is significantly gravy-trained elsewhere.

bob priest said...

PS
My previous comment relates specifically to the Oregon Arts Commission Fellowships.