DOS Orchestra #33 - 8 March, 1995

News from the world of professional orchestras.
Copyright 1995, International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians

Topics

American Arts Alliance on the Web

From the American Arts Alliance:

In response to the imminent threat to the survival of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the American Arts Alliance is pleased to announce the creation of an "advocacy homepage" and gopher site accessible to the millions of Internet users. The homepage provides advocacy information and tools for arts supporters to communicate the need for continued federal support of the arts to their senators and representatives. This information, which includes our 900 number, a sample letter, NEA facts and general information, greatly advances the the arts community's continuing efforts to generate support for the NEA through local grassroots contacts with elected officials. In addition to educating the public and expanding the base of potentially interested parties, computer users can easily transform the data into a uniquely personal letter to send to their leaders in Washington. The American Arts Alliance is available on the Arts Wire WWW site. The URL: http://www.tmn.com/0h/Artswire/www/aaa/aaahome.html This information is also available on the Arts Wire gopher: Address: gopher.tmn.com Once there choose Menu Item #5, Artswire. At the next menu, select American Arts Alliance For those gopher developers who want to link, here is pertinent path information: Type=1 Name=American Arts Alliance Path=1/Artswire/www/aaa Host=gopher.tmn.com Port=70

The American Arts Alliance Advocates for the Arts 1319 F Street, NW Suite 500 Washington, D.C. 20004 Phone: 202-737-1727 Fax: 202-628-1258 Email: aaa@tmn.com Member organizations: American Symphony Orchestra League, Association of Art Museum Directors, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA, Opera America, Theatre Communications Group, representing 2,600 Non-profit Arts Institutions.

Charlotte Symphony: Arts Council Wins Major NEA Grant

The National Endowment for the Arts announced on February 27 that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Arts & Science Council has been awarded the largest NEA grant of 1995, a challenge grant of $800,000. The Arts & Science Council, which was awarded a $1 million challenge grant by the NEA in 1990, becomes the only group in NEA history to win two grants from the prestigious NEA Challenge Grant Program, which requires recipients to raise matching funds of $3 for every $1 from the NEA.

Council president Michael Marsicano told the Charlotte "Observer" that "this says that Charlotte has arrived on the national arts scene. Arts organizations are restructuring all over the country, but this is a vote of confidence in the path we've taken since launching the Cultural Action Plan in 1990."

The Arts & Science Council plans to use the grant to help achieve its goal of raising a $25 million endowment, $20 million of which has already been pledged or donated. The endowment will reportedly be the first unified endowment to support countywide programs in the United States, and is regarded by Lee Dennison, NEA Challenge Grant Program director, as "really a model for local arts agencies."

Concertgebouw to Host Mahler Festival

The Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) will sponsor a Mahler Festival, featuring performances of all of Mahler's orchestral works by the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, from May 1-17, 1995.

The festival marks the 100th anniversary of the appointment of Willem Mengelberg as conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Mengelberg gained fame as a Mahler advocate and interpreter.

Two local museums will participate in the festival with special exhibits. The Municipal Archive will produce a show on Mahler's relationship to Amsterdam, while the Stedelijk Museum will feature an exhibit of contemporaneous Austrian art.

Grammy Awards

The Chicago Symphony's recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Four Orchestral Pieces, Op. 12, with Pierre Boulez conducting, won the award for Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance at the Grammy awards ceremony on March 1. The award for Best Engineered Recording (Classical) went to William Hoekstra of RCA Victor for his recording of the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin conducting works of Aaron Copland.

Other awards to orchestras included Best Classical Performance - Instrumental Soloists with Orchestra to Yo-Yo Ma and the Baltimore Symphony with David Zinman for their recording of works of Albert, Bartok, and Bloch, Best Opera Recording to the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera de Lyon under Kent Nagano for their recording of Floyd's opera "Susannah" with soloists Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Cheryl Studer, and Best Choral Performance to the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir with John Eliot Gardiner for their recording of Berlioz's "Messe Solennelle."

In an unusual "two-fer," two members of the Chicago Symphony, principal clarinet Larry Combs and principal horn Dale Clevenger, shared the award for Best Chamber Music Performance with music director Daniel Barenboim and Daniele Damaiano and Hansjorg Schellenberger of the Berlin Philharmonic for their recording of quintets by Mozart and Beethoven.

Los Angeles Philharmonic: Toyota to Sponsor Youth Concerts

Toyota will sponsor the Symphonies for Youth concert series next season, Shinki Sakai, president of Toyota Motor Sales (US) announced on February 27. The five-concert series at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is a production of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Philharmonic Managing Director Ernest Fleischmann said of the sponsorship, "Toyota's $150,000 sponsorship will ensure the continuation of the orchestra's education programs despite threatened cuts in government spending. It is vitally important to introduce children to live orchestral music is we want this great art form to survive. We need more enlightened corporations like Toyota that understand the need for art education in today's world."

The Toyota Symphonies for Youth program is designed for children ages 6 to 12. The concerts also feature workshops and participatory activities for the children.

Louisville Orchestra: Fund Established to Help Orchestra

The musicians of the Louisville Orchestra have announced the formation of the Robert and Clarita Whitney Fund. The following information is from the musicians:

The Robert and Clarita Whitney Fund is intended to create a permanent, independent voice to foster the symphonic arts in Louisville. With its independent position, the whitney Fund anticipates using both persuasion and funding to encourage innovation and cooperation among the community forces necessary to develop a strong cultural environment for the city of Louisville.

The Problems the Whitney Fund Will Address:

The motivating force for the establishment of the Whitney Fund is a current dispute over the determined efforts of the Board of Directors of the Louisville Orchestra to radically cut the number of full-time musicians and with that move, accept a vast departure from the vision and goals that have always propelled the Louisville Orchestra.

The short-term goals of the Robert & Clarita Whitney Fund are to:

Memphis Symphony: Board Member Killed

The Memphis Symphony dedicated its concerts of the weekend of March 3 to the memory of Emily Klyce Fisher, a member of the orchestra's board of directors who was stabbed to death in her home on February 27.

Mrs. Fisher, 52, a certified public accountant, was also a classical guitarist who co-founded the Memphis Classical Guitar Society. In addition to her service on the symphony board, she also served on the boards of the Memphis Youth Symphony, Theater Memphis, Memphis Ballet and Art Today, and was a charter member of the Salvation Army Auxiliary and a volunteer with the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association Meals on Wheels program. She is survived by her husband, a daughter, a son, two sisters and a brother.

The Memphis Symphony has established a memorial fund in her name.

Milwaukee Symphony: New Concertmaster

Frank Almond has been appointed the new concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony, orchestra officials announced on March 8. National auditions were held for the position in November 1994, which resulted in an invitation to Almond to perform with the orchestra for two weeks in January as concertmaster.

Almond, 31, is currently the concertmaster of the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra. He has won awards at the Tchaikowsky Competition and the Paganini Competition, and has performed as soloist with the Moscow State Symphony and several American orchestras. He has also appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Ravinia Festival and the Aspen Music Festival, and has recorded for several record labels. He is a graduate of the Julliard School

Almond replaces David Taylor, who returned to the Chicago Symphony after one season with the MSO. Taylor, who announced his resignation in the midst of the MSO's labor dispute in January 1994, cited the orchestra's financial instability as his major reason for returning to the Chicago Symphony, where he was on a one-year leave from his position as assistant concertmaster.

Roger Frisch, assistant concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, and Anne DeVroome Kamerling, MSO assistant concertmaster, have been splitting the concertmaster duties since Taylor's departure at the end of the 1993-94 season.

Paris Opera: New Not-Music Director

James Conlon has been appointed principal conductor of the Paris Opera on March 6, company director-designate Hugues Gall announced on March 6. Conlon, who is music director of the city of Cologne and chief conductor of the Cologne Opera as well as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival, will serve as music advisor to the company beginning May 1 and become principal conductor on August 1, 1996. His contract as principal conductor runs through 2001.

Conlon follows in the footsteps of ex-music director Myung-Whun Chung, who was fired by Gall in a dispute that was nominally over compensation and contract terms but that the New York Times described as having "every appearance of a power struggle." Conlon will not, however, hold the title of music director, a position eliminated by Gall in the aftermath of the Chung firing.

Conlon, a graduate of the Julliard School and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic for eight years, has conducted extensively at the Metropolitan Opera and is reported to have a repertoire of 50 operas. He told the New York "Times" that he didn't want the music director title that Gall eliminated. "What matters is the quality of collaboration with Hugues Gall," he said. Gall told the "Times" that Conlon was his "first and ideal choice" as music director.

Conlon comes to a company that has been wracked with labor disputes and very public conflict between the management and the artistic directors. Chung's predecessor, Daniel Barenboim, resigned as music director in 1989 after a few months in the post in a similar dispute over compensation and control.

Philadelphia Orchestra: New Concertmaster

The management of the Philadelphia Orchestra announced on March 1 that Erez Ofer, co-concertmaster of the Bavarian State Radio Orchestra, has accepted the position of first concertmaster of the orchestra. Acting concertmaster William de Pasquale will be given the title of second concertmaster. Pasquale has filled the concertmaster's chair for most of the period since Norman Carol resigned the position he had held for 28 years in September 1993.

Ofer, 29, is an Israeli citizen. He has won several competitions, including the 1989 Francescatti Competition and the 1992 ARD competition in Munich. He auditioned for the orchestra in February at the request of music director Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Ofer will join the orchestra in July for a week of concerts under Sawallisch at the Mann Music Center, and will also serve as concertmaster for the orchestra's tour of Europe in August, although his appointment does not officially begin until September. His contract with the orchestra leaves open the question of how many weeks per season he will actually play with the orchestra.

The search for Carol's successor as concertmaster has lasted almost two years. William Preucil, first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet, was offered the position last year but accepted a similar position with the Cleveland Orchestra instead. The Philadelphia "Inquirer" reported on September 7, 1994, that Sawallisch had offered the position to a member of one of the London orchestra, who also turned it down.

St. Paul Chamber Orchestra: Ordway Head to Leave



Bill Connor, president of the Ordway Music Theater in St. Paul, resigned on February 21 to become senior vice-president of national touring companies for Livent, a theatrical production company based in Toronto that has produced several of the major touring productions that have appeared at the Ordway in recent years. He will remain at the Ordway through the end of his contract on August 1.

Connor's five-year tenure at the Ordway has been highly controversial, mostly on account of Connor's moves to make the theater, originally constructed as the home venue for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, and the Schubert Club, into a venue for touring Broadway shows. During his tenure, the Twin Cities became the seventh-largest market in the nation for touring companies.

Long-standing tensions between the SPCO and the Ordway emerged into the open last fall when the Ordway booked a 15-week run of "Show Boat," a Livent production, that conflicted with dates that the SPCO had previously reserved for the opening of its 1995-96 season. One very vocal critic of the Ordway's decision to evict the principal tenants for most of September 1995 was Kenneth Dayton, arguably the Twin Cities' leading philanthropist, who wrote in a November 30 memo to SPCO president Brent Assink "I want you to know that I am outraged by what I understand the Ordway has done to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. If you have a contract, I hope you will force them to abide by it... to me it is unthinkable that the Ordway would even consider throwing out St. Paul's greatest cultural jewel in order to let New York producers come in and drain millions of dollars out of Minnesota. The economic impact of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is incalculable. What would the city be without it?... as one donor and a former [Ordway] board member, I feel my sizable contribution to its construction has been betrayed."

The Ordway's move into hosting touring productions has met with the approval of city officials, however, who estimate that the 15-week run of "Show Boat" will produce up to $30 million of new economic activity downtown.

Connor recently suffered a setback when local authorities granted master use of two major Minneapolis venues to the Jujamcyn Theatres Corporation, a Minneapolis-based company that had until recently been in partnership with the Ordway to bring touring productions to the Twin Cities. The action effectively split the Twin Cities market for touring shows in two.

Assink told the St. Paul "Pioneer Press" that he hoped that the Ordway board "will take into consideration the needs of the principal users as they develop a search plan" to replace Connor. "I hope they look for a really experienced theater manager with significant prior experience in managing a multipurpose facility," Assink said.

Connor told the "Pioneer Press" that "look, this is an opportunity - the Ordway will have a $35 million operating budget and Livent's touring is $150 million... I grew up with a particular kind of ethic - good theater breeds more theater. And that's what pushed me. So I'm not too far from my theological roots. I came to theater to make change - unlike some people in Minneapolis who do it for the money."

San Francisco: AIDS Benefit Raises Almost $1 Million

A benefit concert for AIDS relief held in San Francisco on February 20 raised nearly $1 million for local human services agencies. The concert began at Davies Symphony Hall with a performance by the San Francisco Symphony under music director-designate Michael Tilson Thomas and then moved across the street to the War Memorial Opera House for the dance portion of the program.

Guest artists included Carol Vaness, Frederica von Stade, 15-year old violinist Tamaki Kawakubo, and Van Cliburn. Senator Dianne Feinstein appeared as guest train-whistlist in "Orange Blossom Special" with fiddler Mark O'Connor, while San Francisco Opera general director Lofti Mansouri made his local stage debut in a performance of "Sue Me" from "Guys and Dolls" with host Carol Burnett.

The performance also featured a new ballet by San Francisco Ballet director Helgi Tomasson and a performance by dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones, who recently announced that he is infected with HIV.

The benefit was produced by the Tides Foundation and Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS. All the performers, including members of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera orchestra, and San Francisco Ballet orchestra, donated their services. The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus also participated in the event.

San Jose Symphony: Music Director Cancels Appearance

Leonid Grin, music director of the San Jose Symphony, canceled two performances of the Mahler Third Symphony with the orchestra on March 3 and 4 because of the death of his mother on February 26. David Stahl, of the Charleston (SC) Symphony, replaced him for the two concerts. Stahl had conducted the work with the Charleston orchestra last season, according to orchestra officials.

Seattle Symphony: Committee Votes to Recommend Hall

The Seattle City Council Parks and Recreation Committee has voted to recommend a public-private partnership to construct a new hall for the Seattle Symphony.

The orchestra will pay $60 million of the total cost of $101 million, while the city will pick up the remaining $41 million. The city will also contribute a maximum of $350,000 per year towards operating expenses for the first three years of the new hall's operation, with the amount declining to $250,000 in future years. The orchestra will lease the facility for an initial 30-year period.

The hall, which has yet to be approved by the full city council, will seat 2,500 and include a 600-seat recital hall, as well as underground parking. It will be called the Benaroya Concert Hall, in honor of the $15 million gift towards its construction by the Benaroya family.

Sony Records: New International Operations Chief

Peter Gelb, president of Sony Classical USA, has been named to head Sony's international classical recording operations, the company announced on March 7.

Sony's roster of classical artists includes Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, Claudio Abbado, and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Gelb succeeds Gunther Breest, who quit in December after six years with the company.

Deaths

Max Rudolph, former music director of the Cincinnati Symphony, former artistic administrator of the Metropolitan Opera, and former head of the opera department at the Curtis Institute, died in Philadelphia on March 1 at the age of 92.

Rudolph was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He made his conducting debut in 1923 at the Freiburg Opera. He left Germany in 1928 to work as a staff conductor at the German theater in Prague under George Szell, and emigrated to the United States in 1940.

Rudolph became music director of the Cincinnati Symphony in 1958 and held the position until 1970, when he left to join the Curtis Institute. During his long career he guest-conducted many of the major American orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic, as well as the Berlin Philharmonic.
Leonard Shure, a pianist whose career covered six decades and who appeared as soloist with many major American orchestras, died on February 28 at his home in Nantucket (MA) at the age of 82.

Shure taught, at various times, at the Mannes College of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the New England Conservatory of Music. He was also a frequent collaborator with the Budapest String Quartet, and accompanied Paul Tortelier, Leontyne Price, and Isaac Stern.

Shure made his debut at the age of 10. He went to Berlin when he was 15 to study with Artur Schnabel, and became Schnabel's only assistant. He made his professional American debut with the Boston Symphony and Serge Koussevitsky in 1934.
John-David Anello Senior, who founded both the Florentine Opera and the Milwaukee Pops Orchestra, predecessor of the Milwaukee Symphony, died on March 6 in Milwaukee at the age of 85.

Anello, a native of Milwaukee and a child of Italian immigrants, began his career as a singer with WTMJ-AM radio in 1932. In 1933, he was asked to direct a local Italian chorus, which became the nucleus of the Florentine Opera, a nationally recognized regional opera company based in Milwaukee. In 1936, he started an orchestra for the Milwaukee Public Schools Recreation Division that became the Milwaukee Pops Orchestra. He also founded the long-running "Music Under the Stars" summer concert series in a local park, at which Arthur Fiedler, Itzhak Perlman, Mario Lanza, and Placido Domingo performed.

Corrections

In an article on the Milwaukee Symphony's new tubist in issue 032, DOS Orchestra incorrectly reported that Alan Baer had done post-graduate work at UCLA. He actually attended the University of Southern California, where he was a student of Tommy Johnson, and is completing his Master of Music degree at California State University, Long Beach, where he is instructor of low brass and director of the University Brass Ensemble.

DOS Orchestra regrets the error.
Copyright 1995, International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians

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