Wyoming Public Media: Grand Teton Music Festival's New Executive Director Hopes To Connect Community To Music
The Grand Teton Music Festival has picked its new executive director. Emma Kail will lead the organization, which holds a world class orchestra during the summer months and offers other classical music events year round. Kail has a background in music performance and as an administrative leader in classical music organizations across the U.S. Wyoming Public Radio's Kamila Kudelska spoke with her about her vision and hopes for the festival.
Wyoming Public Media
Kamila Kudelska
The Grand Teton Music Festival has picked its new executive director. Emma Kail will lead the organization, which holds a world class orchestra during the summer months and offers other classical music events year round. Kail has a background in music performance and as an administrative leader in classical music organizations across the U.S. Wyoming Public Radio's Kamila Kudelska spoke with her about her vision and hopes for the festival.
Emma Kail: I am a lifelong music lover. I grew up until I was about 10 years old in very rural Kentucky. So, my introduction into classical music was thanks to public radio. We had a repeater station from Western Kentucky Public Radio. And so working on our farm, I heard music from a very early age and fell in love. I ended up studying music. But as I moved along, I began to see more about the other side of music beyond just what was happening on stage. So they need to have support not only backstage, but in the office and in the advocacy for music and how musical institutions connect to a community.
Read more and listen here.
Denver Post: It's OK to Stay Home
I can say, without hesitation, that the July 23 performance of Haydn’s String Quartet in D minor by the Dover Quartet was one of the best concerts I have experienced — ever.
Denver Post
Ray Mark Rinaldi
Live from Vail, the classical show goes on
The Bravo! Vail Music Festival has been attempting the improbable this summer, staging a series of concerts before a live audience during a pandemic that has shut down nearly every other classical fest in the country. It’s an abbreviated season, just a handful of small ensemble-chamber concerts instead of the usual orchestral fare, and there are just a few hundred spectators permitted in an amphitheater that normally seats 2,500…
I can say, without hesitation, that the July 23 performance of Haydn’s String Quartet in D minor by the Dover Quartet was one of the best concerts I have experienced — ever.
Read more here.
My Scena: Nicolas Namoradze, Breakthrough Artist Here to Stay
Born in Georgia but raised in Hungary, the pianist-composer Nicolas Namoradze launched his international career in 2018 when he became the winner of the Honens International Piano Competition. This Calgary-based contest offers one of the biggest prize packages in the world, and has been picking out top talent every three years since 1992. Namoradze, at 28, is the latest laureate, and he has already established himself as an artist who is here to stay.
My Scena
Carol Xiong
Born in Georgia but raised in Hungary, the pianist-composer Nicolas Namoradze launched his international career in 2018 when he became the winner of the Honens International Piano Competition. This Calgary-based contest offers one of the biggest prize packages in the world, and has been picking out top talent every three years since 1992. Namoradze, at 28, is the latest laureate, and he has already established himself as an artist who is here to stay.
Namoradze’s schedule is packed. This summer includes the release of a debut disc for Hyperion, appearances at the Toronto Summer Music festival and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, among others, as well as a recital tour in Japan. Prior to Honens, Namoradze made the bold and unconventional decision to step out of the limelight for four years to find his voice as an artist. For anyone who has ever listened to Namoradze play, the results of his retreat speak for themselves.
Read more here.
San Francisco Classical Voice: If You Can’t Go to Idaho, Sun Valley Festival Will Come to You
Unlike the majority of zillions of summer music festivals, which canceled during the pandemic or switched to online streaming, the Sun Valley Music Festival presents its 36th season, today through Aug. 19, both in person and online.
One of the country’s largest admission-free music festivals, Sun Valley is meeting the challenge of COVID-19 with an extraordinary effort by more than a hundred sound and video professionals, who filmed musicians in homes and stages across 43 cities.
San Francisco Classical Voice
Janos Gereben
Unlike the majority of zillions of summer music festivals, which canceled during the pandemic or switched to online streaming, the Sun Valley Music Festival presents its 36th season, today through Aug. 19, both in person and online.
One of the country’s largest admission-free music festivals, Sun Valley is meeting the challenge of COVID-19 with an extraordinary effort by more than a hundred sound and video professionals, who filmed musicians in homes and stages across 43 cities.
Read more here.
Classical Post: History Silenced the Family Violin, It’s Resumed Through Virgil Boutellis-Taft
Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s playing throughout his debut orchestral album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Incantation, is brilliant, effusive and gripping. He glides above the orchestra while maintaining a core to the tone and unfolding gorgeous intricate phrases. But it is the depth of his relationship with the material, unique combination of works and history behind why he programmed this CD the way that he did that make this album exceptional. History had silenced Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s family violin. Through Incantation, the violin sings again in an unfurling of seemingly contradictory emotions which are all centered around melancholy.
Classical Post
Anna Heflin
Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s playing throughout his debut orchestral album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Incantation, is brilliant, effusive and gripping. He glides above the orchestra while maintaining a core to the tone and unfolding gorgeous intricate phrases. But it is the depth of his relationship with the material, unique combination of works and history behind why he programmed this CD the way that he did that make this album exceptional. History had silenced Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s family violin. Through Incantation, the violin sings again in an unfurling of seemingly contradictory emotions which are all centered around melancholy.
Read more here.
The Strad: Bravo! Vail launches re-imagined summer festival following May cancellation
The Bravo! Vail Music Festival has announced a re-imagined summer season from 16 July - 6 August 2020 in Eagle County, Colorado. On the agenda are outdoor concerts in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, a mobile performance stage bringing music to local communities, and online educational presentations. The festival re-launch follows the cancellation of all originally planned events in May 2020 due to coronavirus.
The Strad
The Bravo! Vail Music Festival has announced a re-imagined summer season from 16 July - 6 August 2020 in Eagle County, Colorado. On the agenda are outdoor concerts in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, a mobile performance stage bringing music to local communities, and online educational presentations. The festival re-launch follows the cancellation of all originally planned events in May 2020 due to coronavirus.
The new programme features seven chamber music performances at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, including appearances by the Dover Quartet in Brahms, Haydn, Dohnányi, Mendelssohn and Barber; violinist and founding festival director Ida Kavafian and pianist and current festival director Anne-Marie McDermott in Beethoven’s complete Violin and Piano Sonatas; and violist Paul Neubauer and pianist Amy Yang in Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. All seven of the concerts are open to a limited capacity audience and subject to social distancing regulations.
Read more here.
Classic FM: Virgil Boutellis-Taft with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
A thrilling new arrangement of Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre by Paul Bateman, performed by Virgil Boutellis-Taft and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Classic FM
A thrilling new arrangement of Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre by Paul Bateman, performed by Virgil Boutellis-Taft and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
To watch, click here.
Van Magazine: An Orchestra Plays By COVID Rules
Van Magazine’s Jefrey Arlo Brown spoke with Shao-Chia Lü, Taiwan Philharmonic’s music director since 2010, and executive director Wen-Chen Kuo about the pragmatic art of the post-pandemic concert.
Van Magazine
Jefrey Arlo Brown
Asia is the future of classical music, goes the tired cliché repeated by such luminaries as Simon Rattle. As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes in places like Taiwan and the Republic of Korea, however, that banality becomes quite literally true. East Asian orchestras, supported by competent governments and resilient public healthy systems, are beginning to play for live audiences again—a state of affairs many European and, especially, American musicians can only dream of.
What will that future look like? A series of concerts, both live and livestreamed, on May 24 (the Serenades by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky, and a work by Tyzen Hsiao), on May 30 (Mozart’s “Gran Partita” and Dvořák’s Serenade Op. 22), and June 12 (Beethoven Five and Seven), has allowed the National Symphony Orchestra of Taipei, Taiwan, to feel for a new role in a changed world.
Last week, I spoke with Shao-Chia Lü, the orchestra’s music director since 2010, and executive director Wen-Chen Kuo about the pragmatic art of the post-pandemic concert.
Read the interview here.
Financial Times: When Will the Music Start Again?
When the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan came out on stage to play on Sunday night, it fired the starting gun for concert life to resume. After months of the coronavirus lockdown, here at last was an orchestra playing in front of a live audience in a concert hall.
Financial Times
Richard Fairman
When the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan came out on stage to play on Sunday night, it fired the starting gun for concert life to resume. After months of the coronavirus lockdown, here at last was an orchestra playing in front of a live audience in a concert hall.
Read more here.
The Strad: National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan, Resumes Concerts
The National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan [also known as the Taiwan Philharmonic] is to begin performing again in a series of 3 concerts on 24 May, 30 May and 12 June at Taiwan’s National Theatre and Concert Hall. All three ‘sofa concerts’ will be live-streamed on YouTube and other platforms and will be available to view afterwards too.
The Strad
The National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan [also known as the Taiwan Philharmonic] is to begin performing again in a series of 3 concerts on 24 May, 30 May and 12 June at Taiwan’s National Theatre and Concert Hall. All three ‘sofa concerts’ will be live-streamed on YouTube and other platforms and will be available to view afterwards too.
The first live concert, beginning at 19:30 Taiwan time (12:30 CET/7:30 EDT), includes Dvořák’s Serenade in D minor; Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C Major; and Tyzen Hsiao’s Bang Chhun Hong (‘Longing for the Spring Breeze’), composed in the 1930s.
Read more here.