September | 2018 | MEMETERIA by Thomas May

September 6, 2018 • 7:58 am Comments Off on Aidan Lang to Leave Seattle Opera for Welsh National Opera

Aidan Lang to Leave Seattle Opera for Welsh National Opera

lang_aidan_205x205

Aidan Lang announced today that he will leave Seattle Opera in June 2019 to become general director of Welsh National Opera.

That means he’ll be departing just when Ludovic Morlot ends his tenure with the Seattle Symphony — although of course Morlot’s successor is already familiar to Seattle, the much-admired Thomas Dausgaard. The SSO also has a brand-new president, Krishna Thiagarajan, who replaced Simon Woods (now helming the Los Angeles Philharmonic), began his post this month.

Aidan Lang began his statement as follows:

“I am writing to share some bittersweet news. My time with you in Seattle will come to an end this June 2019, as I have been appointed as General Director of Welsh National Opera. This decision has not come lightly as I love dearly both this community and opera company. Coming to Seattle Opera was one of the greatest honors of my life and I am still absolutely thrilled to have had created opera with you. Seattle Opera is known around the world for its enthusiastic and generous opera community, for its warmth and welcoming atmosphere for artists, and more recently, for our commitment to racial equity.”

Lang’s complete statement is here.

Filed under: music news, Seattle Opera

September 6, 2018 • 3:13 am Comments Off on Robert Delaunay and the City of Lights

Robert Delaunay and the City of Lights

delaunay_f4

The Kunsthaus Zürich is currently showing the largest Robert Delaunay retrospective to be seen in Switzerland to date. Robert Delaunay and the City of Lights explores the range of this artist’s astonishing originality, framing his inspirations against the backdrop of his beloved Paris and the dynamism of the city in the early 20th century.

The entire exhibit consists of about 80 paintings and works on paper, with especially well-designed displays devoted to his emergence in the heady years before the First World War and to his return to working with abstract color and optical theory later in his career.

Blouinartinfo offers a slide show here.

Filed under: art, art history, modernism

September 4, 2018 • 11:57 pm Comments Off on The Devastating Loss in Brazil

The Devastating Loss in Brazil

From Ed Yong, this assessment of the devastating losses in the aftermath of the conflagration that destroyed the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro:

The museum’s archeological collection had frescoes from Pompeii, and hundreds of Egyptian artifacts, including a 2,700-year-old painted sarcophagus. It housed art and ceramics from indigenous Brazilian cultures, some of whose populations number only in their thousands. It contained audio recordings of indigenous languages, some of which are no longer spoken; entire tongues went up in flames. It carried about 1,800 South American artifacts that dated back to precolonial times, including urns, statues, weapons, and a Chilean mummy that was at least 3,500 years old.

Owen Burdick reports this in a Facebook post:

Incalculable loss:
“There’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.”

Cinda Gonda, translated by Diogo Almeida, about the fire at Brazil’s National Museum.

Filed under: miscellaneous

September 1, 2018 • 10:07 am Comments Off on New Artist of the Month: Nilo Alcala

New Artist of the Month: Nilo Alcala

Credit: Jei Romanes of HyperLoveArt
instagram: @hyperloveart

Congratulations to composer Nilo Alcala, Musical America‘s New Artist of the Month for September. My profile here.

When his Mangá Pakalagián (“Ceremonies”) received its world premiere by the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall in 2015, Nilo Alcala recalls being overwhelmed and humbled by the audience’s enthusiastic reaction…

continue

Filed under: Musical America

September 1, 2018 • 1:48 am Comments Off on 2018 Gramophone Award Winners

2018 Gramophone Award Winners

Gramophone has announced the ten recordings that are the winners of the magazine’s classical music awards for 2018:
—CHAMBER
Dvořák: Piano Quintets
Boris Giltburg pf Pavel Nikl va Pavel Haas Quartet (Supraphon)
—CHORAL
Pärt: Magnificat. Nunc dimittis Schnittke Psalms of Repentance
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir / Kaspars Putniņš (BIS)
—CONCERTO
Bartók: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2
Christian Tetzlaff violin Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Hannu Lintu (Ondine)
—CONTEMPORARY
Dusapin: String Quartets Nos. 6 and 7
Arditti Quartet; Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Pascal Rophé (Aeon)
—EARLY MUSIC
Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol 5
Blue Heron / Scott Metcalfe (Blue Heron)
—INSTRUMENTAL
Brahms: Piano Pieces, Opp. 76, 117, and 118
Arcadi Volodos (Sony Classical)
—OPERA
Berlioz: Les Troyens
Soloists include DiDonato, Spyres, Lemieux; Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra / John Nelson (Erato)
—ORCHESTRAL
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé
Ensemble Aedes; Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi)
—RECITAL
Agitata
Delphine Galou mezzo-soprano Accademia Bizantina / Ottavio Dantone harpsichord (Alpha Classics)
—SOLO VOCAL
Secrets
Marianne Crebassa mezzo-soprano Fazıl Say piano (Erato)

Stay tuned for the announcement of Recording of the Year on 13 September at the London awards ceremony, which will be livestreamed on medici.tv. Also to be named at that time: Orchestra of the Year, Artist of the Year, Young Artist of the Year, Label of the Year, and the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Filed under: Gramophone, music news

« Previous