Classical Post: Shanghai Orchestra Academy Celebrates Fifth Anniversary With Commencement Ceremony
Shanghai Orchestra Academy (SOA) celebrated its fifth anniversary with the commencement of 10 graduates on July 1. SOA is a collaboration between the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO), New York Philharmonic, and Shanghai Conservatory of Music. It provides a new approach in China to train fresh graduates from music conservatories to become professional orchestra musicians through a two-year program and international partnership.
Classical Post
Shanghai Orchestra Academy (SOA) celebrated its fifth anniversary with the commencement of 10 graduates on July 1. SOA is a collaboration between the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO), New York Philharmonic, and Shanghai Conservatory of Music. It provides a new approach in China to train fresh graduates from music conservatories to become professional orchestra musicians through a two-year program and international partnership.
“The greatest thing about this academy is that we have explored a new standardized system in China to bridge between music graduates and orchestra musicians to provide high-quality professional musicians for China and even for the world,” said Long Yu, the SSO’s music director and the SOA’s founding president.
The academy’s curriculum includes vast amounts of practice and performances, and also provides courses like career planning, performance mental health, and how to best avoid fatigue.
In addition to working with academy faculty, the students are also taught by musicians from top orchestras around the world and provided with opportunities to play with them. For example, the New York Philharmonic sends musicians to Shanghai four times per year for master classes, coaching, mock auditions, and seminars.
Deborah Borda, New York Philharmonic’s President and CEO, considers SOA a “very important project and partnership.” She believes that the New York Philharmonic can also learn from the young academy musicians, such as exploring new ways in the digital era to communicate classical music.
The Shanghai Orchestra Academy resumes classes and performances in September.
History
The academy was founded after Long Yu became concerned about the lack of professional classical music performers in 2011, when he saw the classical music scene in China expanding rapidly and in urgent need of more musicians. He entered a discussion with the New York Philharmonic for a long-term partnership, and they both agreed to make the education project a priority and were later joined by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
Shanghai Orchestra Academy began recruiting in September 2014 and has since recruited 75 young musicians. Approximately 90 percent of the graduates have gone straight to orchestras around China and some abroad.
For more information, visit the Shanghai Orchestra Academy’s website.
Classical Post: Grand Teton Music Festival Celebrates Nature In 58th Season
The majestic foothills of the Teton Mountain Range promise a sublime, serene backdrop for the Grand Teton Music Festival’s 58th season, July 3 to August 17. Offering inspiration, rejuvenation, and wonderment for all, the Festival honors the natural environment it calls home and those composers and works that draw inspiration from nature. The Festival’s 2019 lineup includes more than 60 events over seven weeks.
Classical Post
The majestic foothills of the Teton Mountain Range promise a sublime, serene backdrop for the Grand Teton Music Festival’s 58th season, July 3 to August 17. Offering inspiration, rejuvenation, and wonderment for all, the Festival honors the natural environment it calls home and those composers and works that draw inspiration from nature. The Festival’s 2019 lineup includes more than 60 events over seven weeks.
The heart of the Grand Teton Music Festival is the Festival Orchestra, which is led by Music Director Donald Runnicles. Performing Friday and Saturday nights, the Festival Orchestra welcomes world-famous soloists including pianists Yefim Bronfman (July 12-13) and Denis Kozhukhin (August 2-3), violinists Hilary Hahn (July 26-27) and Augustin Hadelich (August 16-17), cellist Alisa Weilerstein (July 19-20), and saxophonist Branford Marsalis (August 9-10). Nature-inspired works run throughout the seven weeks, including Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (August 9-10), Anna Clyne’s This Midnight Hour (August 2-3), Sibelius’ En Saga (July 12-13), and Lyadov’s Enchanted Lake (August 16-17).
Also appearing with the Festival Orchestra will be esteemed guest conductors Rafael Payare, the incoming Music Director of the San Diego Symphony (July 19-20), and Cincinnati Symphony Music Director Louis Langrée (August 16-17).
Pianist, vocalist, and nine-time Grammy Award winner Norah Jones will perform a special one-night-only concert July 21, co-presented with Live Nation. The event sold out online in five minutes. Jones’s appearance is part of the GTMF Presents lineup of showcase events that expand the Festival’s programming.
Other GTMF Presents artists include the Takács Quartet (July 31), the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (July 17), pianist Stephen Hough (July 10), and piano duo Anderson and Roe (August 17). Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth (August 15) and singer-pianist Michael Feinstein (July 3) will bring the world of theater and cabaret to the mountains.
On July 5, the annual Fundraising Gala will feature Maestro Runnicles and the Festival Orchestra in two performances of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Utah Symphony Chorus, the Madeleine Choir School Chorus, and soloists Meechot Marrero, Thomas Lehman, and Sunnyboy Dladla.
Read more here.
WGN: The Juilliard String Quartet
The Juilliard String Quartet plays live on WGN’s Morning News in Chicago.
WGN Morning News
Juilliard String Quartet is widely considered America's most important string quartet. With unparalleled artistry and enduring vigor, the Juilliard String Quartet continues to inspire audiences around the world. They were founded in 1946 and hailed by the Boston Globe as “the most important American quartet in history." The Juilliard draws on a deep and vital engagement to the classics while embracing the mission of championing new works. Each performance of the Juilliard Quartet is a unique experience, bringing together the four members’ profound understanding, total commitment and unceasing curiosity in sharing the wonders of the string quartet literature.
Watch them live in WGN’s studios here.
National Review: A Maestro-Ambassador, Gerard Schwarz
Gerard Schwarz is an exemplary musician. He was a hotshot trumpeter — one of the best in the world. Then he became a leading conductor. For many years, he led the Seattle Symphony, and also the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. He has led other institutions too. Now he is going to the Palm Beach Symphony. I joke that this is a “hardship post.”
National Review
Jay Nordlinger
Gerard Schwarz is an exemplary musician. He was a hotshot trumpeter — one of the best in the world. Then he became a leading conductor. For many years, he led the Seattle Symphony, and also the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. He has led other institutions too. Now he is going to the Palm Beach Symphony. I joke that this is a “hardship post.”
In addition to being a superb player and conductor, he is an outstanding — really good — talker about music, and teacher of music. There is more than a little Bernstein in him. (He knew the late maestro and played under him in the New York Philharmonic.)
Listen to the Q&A session between Maestro Gerard Schwarz and Jay Nordlinger here.
Gramophone: Gerard Schwarz, July 2019 Cover
Benstein, Barber and buddies were terrific symphonists, but what about their lesser-known 20th-century compatriots? Gerard Schwarz flies the flag for music that deserves wider acclaim.
Gramophone
The hidden giants of American Music
Benstein, Barber and buddies were terrific symphonists, but what about their lesser-known 20th-century compatriots? Gerard Schwarz flies the flag for music that deserves wider acclaim.
Read the article covering the music of Paul Creston, William Schuman, Alan Hovhaness, David Diamond, Howard Hanson, Peter Mennin, and Walter Piston in Gramophone’s July issue available here.
Gramophone: One to Watch – Nicolas Namoradze
The Georgian pianist Nicolas Namoradze, the winner of the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, has already impressed pianists of rare knowledge and experience. Like the two Honens winners before him (Pavel Kolesnikov in 2012 and Luca Buratto in 2015), Namoradze will make his debut recording for Hyperion.
Gramophone
The Georgian pianist Nicolas Namoradze, the winner of the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, has already impressed pianists of rare knowledge and experience. Like the two Honens winners before him (Pavel Kolesnikov in 2012 and Luca Buratto in 2015), Namoradze will make his debut recording for Hyperion.
Read more in the June issue of Gramophone available here.
The Guardian: Mahan Esfahani – ‘The harpsichord is like the posh, pretty boy in prison’
Mahan Esfahani was nine when he first heard a harpsichord. He and his parents were visiting Iran, the country where he was born, and which his family had left for the US five years before. “An uncle gave me a bunch of cassettes,” he says. “One was of Karl Richter [the German conductor and harpsichordist] playing Bach. Well, I listened to it, and I thought: ‘This is what I’ve got to do.’ I don’t mean in terms of a career. I just thought my life would be well spent in the company of this instrument. I thought I would get a profession, which is what every Iranian parent wants for their child, and that – once I was a doctor or lawyer – I’d be able to buy a harpsichord, and play at home.”
The Guardian
Rachel Cooke
Mahan Esfahani was nine when he first heard a harpsichord. He and his parents were visiting Iran, the country where he was born, and which his family had left for the US five years before. “An uncle gave me a bunch of cassettes,” he says. “One was of Karl Richter [the German conductor and harpsichordist] playing Bach. Well, I listened to it, and I thought: ‘This is what I’ve got to do.’ I don’t mean in terms of a career. I just thought my life would be well spent in the company of this instrument. I thought I would get a profession, which is what every Iranian parent wants for their child, and that – once I was a doctor or lawyer – I’d be able to buy a harpsichord, and play at home.”
Was it like falling in love? “Yes, absolutely it was.” Can he describe how the sound of it made him feel? He thinks for a moment: it’s hard to put into words. “When I played the flute or the violin, which I did seriously, it was as if there was a hand over my mouth. The second I played a harpsichord, it was as if the hand had been removed. This was the sound I’d been looking for to express myself.”
Read more here.
KUSC: Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers on Respecting the Old and Welcoming the New
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers believes in respecting the old and welcoming the new. In this recent conversation with Jim Svejda, they discuss several of her recent commissions.
KUSC
Jim Svejda
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers believes in respecting the old and welcoming the new. In this recent conversation with Jim Svejda, they discuss several of her recent commissions.
Listen below or here.
Musical America: Gerard Schwarz Headed to Palm Beach
Having been appointed to the faculty of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami last month, conductor Gerard Schwarz is planting further roots into the Florida sands by accepting the post of music director of the Palm Beach Symphony. He starts next season, succeeding Ramón Tebar, who held the job for eight years.
Musical America
Nicholas Beard
Having been appointed to the faculty of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami last month, conductor Gerard Schwarz is planting further roots into the Florida sands by accepting the post of music director of the Palm Beach Symphony. He starts next season, succeeding Ramón Tebar, who held the job for eight years.
Read more here.
The Irish Times: What makes Marc-André Hamelin so special? Different class
There are any number of ways you could attempt to explain what makes Canada’s leading living pianist Marc-André Hamelin special.
The Irish Times
Michael Dervan
There are any number of ways you could attempt to explain what makes Canada’s leading living pianist Marc-André Hamelin special.
He’ll turn 57 in September and he’s been recording since he was in his 20s. So you could point to his extensive discography, which runs to over a hundred CDs. His recordings for the Hyperion label alone run to over 900 pieces.
But to look at the extent would be to miss the point. Other pianists have copious discographies. Alfred Brendel’s complete Philips recordings were issued as a set in 2015 and ran to 114 CDs, and the recordings he made earlier in his career add a further 35.
Read more here.