Today's Birthdays

Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925)
Ernst Krenek (1900-1991)
William Primrose (1903-1982)
Constant Lambert (1905-1951)
Carl Dolmetsch (1911-1977)
Mark Russell (1932)

Gregory Vajda conducts the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival

Gregory Vajda, resident conductor of the Oregon Symphony will be conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival’s performance of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” tomorrow night (Saturday, the 23rd) at the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg. The cast includes Michelle DeYoung, Falk Struckmann, Lance Ryan, André Jung, and the Vienna State Opera Chorus.

Back on April 3rd, I interviewed Vajda, because he has been short-listed for three conducting positions. During our talk, Vajda mentioned that he would be conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg for "Bluebeard's Castle," because the scheduled conductor Peter Eötvös is a composer and his latest opera, "Love and Other Demons" is being given its world premiere at Glyndebourne. So Eötvös asked Gregory to take over the conducting at Salzburg while he is away.

In any case, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic has got to be one of the greatest thrills that any conductor can experience. Vajda will be back in town next week to join batons with Carlos Kalmar in conducting the Oregon Symphony at the Waterfront concert (August 28th). Tomorrow night the OSO gets a tune up at Mt. Scott Park at 7 pm. Brett Mitchell, assistant conductor at the Houston Symphony, will lead the OSO in this concert. Also, at 5 pm at the Waterfront concert, you can hear the Portland Youth Philharmonic under its new conductor David Hattner.

Today's Birthdays

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Ivry Gitlis (1922)
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928)

and

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)

Today's Birthdays

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
Count (William) Basie (1904-1984)
Tommy Reilly (1919-2000)
Dame Janet Baker (1933)

Murry Sidlin brings Defiant Requiem back to Terezín

Murry Sidlin, former resident conductor of the Oregon Symphony, will conduct a multi-media concert of Verdi's Requiem at the former Nazi concentration camp in Terezín, Czech. This will undoubtedly be similar to the special Oregon Symphony concert that he created and directed back in 2002 (and was broadcast on PBS).

Sidlin and the Berkshire Choral Festival (which is tied to this effort) are looking for singers who would be willing to do this concert. Here's the blurb from the web site:

The Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, a Concert Drama
In a concentration camp called Terezín (or Theresienstadt), one hour outside of Prague, there were sixteen performances of the Verdi Requiem during the years 1943-1944. Determined not to allow the Nazis to crush their spirit, the inmates there used music, poetry, and art to survive their circumstances. Although the Requiem successfully bolstered the spirits of singers and listeners at Terezín, the tragic reality of their final doom was felt. Of the 140,000 inmates, including 17,000 children, most did not survive.

Conductor Murry Sidlin has created a brilliant multi-media concert drama with actors, chorus, soloists, orchestra and video projections which tells the story of the conductor Raphael Schaechter and his choruses who learned this great work by rote from a single vocal score. The performance will take place in an old factory building in Terezín, on the afternoon of the Terezín Commemorative Day, following morning ceremonies.

The performance, on Sunday May 17, 2009, is the afternoon featured event of a day long commemorative celebration of Terezín.

For more go to: http://www.chorus.org/prague.php

Thanks to Ralph Nelson and Mark Petersen of the Portland Symphonic Choir for pointing out this opportunity.

Today's Birthdays

Jacopo Peri (1561-1633)
Mario Bernardi (1930)
Dame Anne Evans (1941)
Maxim Vengerov (1974)

and

Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950)
Eero Saarinen (1910-1961)

Today's Birthdays

Georges Enescu (1881-1955)
Allan Monk (1942)
Gerard Schwarz (1947)
Rebecca Evans (1963)

and

Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

Today's Birthdays

Antonio Saleri (1750-1825)
Basil Cameron (1884-1975)
Ernest MacMillan (1893-1973)
Dame Moura Lympany (1916-2005)
Goff Richards (1944)

and

Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008)

Oregon Symphony concert update

Last week I talked with John Kroninger, the Oregon Symphony's director of customer services (and a former professional tuba player), who said that tickets are selling very well for the opening night series that features Beethoven's 9th Symphony and Vaughan Williams'"Serenade to Music." He mentioned that available seats for the Saturday evening performance are become scarce, but there are some good seats to be had for the Sunday and Monday performance.

I'll be singing with the Portland Symphonic Choir in both works and am looking forward to it. Featured soloists in the Beethoven include two of the very best Portland Opera Studio singers tenor Brendan Tuohy and mezzo-soprano Hannah Penn. Also, Kelly Nassief, a Portland State University-trained soprano will also be front and center. Back in 1995 Nassief won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions - the whole enchilada. She has since sung several times with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, and with many opera companies, including Chicago Lyric and Portland Opera.

Kroninger also said that the special Lang Lang concert on October 3rd is selling well, but there are good seats still available. Lang Lang recently helped to open the Olympics and he is featured in a New Yorker article (page 52 in the August 4th issue), which was written by David Remnick. The article is still available on The New Yorker's web site here.

Today's Birthdays

Henri Tomasi (1901-1971)
George Melly (1926)
Edward Cowie (1943)
Jean-Bernard Pommier (1944)
Heiner Goebbels (1952)
Artur Pizarro (1968)

and

V. S. Naipaul (1932)

Today's Birthdays

Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861)
Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937)
Jacinto Guerrero (1895-1951)
Ralph Downes (1904-1993)
Bill Evans (1929-1980)
Sarah Brightman (1959)
Franz Welser-Möst (1960)

Portland Opera announces new director of arts administration

Portland Opera just announced that Clare Burovac is its director of arts administration. According to the press release, Burovac's duties include "the oversight of the Portland Opera Studio program, negotiating artists’ contracts, researching and recommending artists, acting as primary liaison between the Company and its chorus and orchestra, negotiating performance rights, among many other activities."

Burovac has extensive experience in opera management and production, and she has played a big part at Seattle Opera since 1994.

Again from the press release:

"Ms. Burovac, who has 19 years of experience producing and managing opera, received her Bachelor’s degree in violin performance from Bowling Green State University. As a violinist she performed with the Toledo Symphony, Ohio Light Opera Orchestra, and other groups in the Cleveland area, in addition to teaching violin and viola. A recipient of an OPERA America Fellowship in Opera Production in 1993, she has been a guest stage manager for San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, among many others. She joined Seattle Opera in 1994 as an Assistant Stage Manager, taking on a variety of increasingly demanding positions. Most recently she has been Seattle Opera’s Production Stage Manager and Ring Production Coordinator. She is a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists."

Here's a the press release. Click on it to enlarge.

Today's Birthdays

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Jaques Ibert (1890-1952)
Leon Theremin (1896-1993)
Lukas Foss (1922)
Aldo Ciccolini (1925)
Oscar Peterson (1925)
Rita Hunter (1933-2001)
Anne Marie Owens (1955)
James O'Donnell (1961)

and

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
Julia Child (1912-2004)

New York Times article critiques the tricky French horn

Ron Quiring, a good friend of mine and former French horn player, brought my attention to this New York Times article, which points out how difficult this instrument is -- even for players in the best orchestras.

Today's Birthdays

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876)
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988)
Ferruccio Tagliavini (1913-1995)
Georges Prêtre (1924)
Yuri Kholopov (1932-2003)
Cecilia Gasdia (1960)

Kalmar teams up with Lisitsa to wow Chicago

These reviews of a recent concert at Grant Park contain high praise for Kalmar who chose an intriguing program that contained Bohuslav Martinu's "Memorial to Lidice," Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4 ("The Inextinguishable"), Edvard Grieg's Concerto in A Minor with pianist Valentina Lisitsa. (The normally reliable Wynne Delacomma in the Sun-Times wrongly attributes the Nielson to Sibelius.)

For the review in the Chicago Tribune, click here.

For the review in the Chicago Sun-Times, click here.

Today's Birthdays

Sir George Grove (1820-1900)
John Ireland (1879-1962)
George Shearing (1919)
Louis Frémaux (1921)
Don Ho (1930-2007)
Sheila Armstrong (1942)
Kathleen Battle (1948)

and

Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850)

Marzena - Bob Priest - presents concert series dedicated to Messiaen

Composer Bob Priest and his ensemble Marzena will present three evenings of music in September. Priest studied under Messiaen in Paris.

Here are the details from the press release:

Songs of Heaven and Earth: Celebrating the music of Olivier Messiaen
on the occasion of his 100th birthday

The weekend of 19-21 September 2008 in Portland, Oregon
Free Admission (donations welcome)

Concert I - Friday, 19 September (8 pm)
Free Marz String Trio - Anniversaries
Music by former Messiaen students; George Benjamin,
Bob Priest, Thomas Daniel Schlee and Fabian Watkinson
Other works by Canetti, Gorecki, Lutoslawski and Penderecki
Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St.

Concert II – Saturday, 20 September (8 pm)
Tamara Still (organ) – Heroes of France
A complete performance of Messiaen’s monumental
9 meditations for organ, La Nativite du Seigneur
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 147 NW 19th Ave.

Concert III – Sunday, 21 September (8 pm)
Fear No Music – Fear No Messiaen
Program includes excerpts from Messiaen’s piano masterpiece,
Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant Jesus, Quartet for the End of Time
and Joan Tower’s tribute to Messiaen for cello and piano
Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St.

Festival performers include Ines Voglar (violin), Joel Belgique (viola),
Justin Kagan (cello), Jeff Payne (piano), Charles Noble (viola), Jun Iwasaki (violin), Molly Barth (flute), and Jean Sherrard (actor).

Today's Birthdays

Heinrich Biber (1644-1704)
Buck Owens (1929-2006)
Huguette Tourangeau (1940)
David Munrow (1942-1976)
Pat Metheny (1954)
Stuart MacRae (1976)

and

Robert Southey (1773-1843)
William Goldman (1931)

General Manager - job opportunity - Portland Chamber Orchestra

The Portland Chamber Orchestra would like to hire a general manager - as a part-time position. The pay starts at $22 per hour. The application process is easy and straightforward - basically a resume and letter of interest, submitted by hard copy or e-mail. Click here, if you are interested.