Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Charles Ives, Jeremy Denk, Michael Tilson Thomas, New World Symphony, Terry Teachout on July 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Terry Teachout’s July 19th Wall Street Journal article has been sitting in my Google Reader in box for a few days. Only today did I get around to reading it. In the article, he takes to task Joe Queenan’s assertion that the listening public hasn’t liked anything since Schoenberg’s 1899 Transfigured Night. I think most [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Dvorak, Frank Bridge, Rebecca Clark, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Villa Lobos on July 19, 2008 | No Comments »
These glorious summer days are the perfect ambience for Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival at Lakeside School, the lawn dotted with picnickers beforehand, and others arriving with chairs and rugs to listen to the concerts free, sitting on the slope outside St. Nicholas Hall with the music piped out through loudspeakers.
Friday night was no [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Chausson, Jeremy Denk, Maurice Ravel, Mozart, Robert deMaine, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Stefan Jackiw on July 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
This past Monday, I noticed something about the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival. It’s a family affair, or at least people in the audience think it is. I can’t blame them. You attend enough concerts, see and hear the same performers year after year, at some point you are bound to think of Jeremy [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Cross Cut, James McLennan on July 16, 2008 | No Comments »
James Bash, a regular contributor to this site, spoke with Arts Journal founder Douglas McLennan in a Cross Cut piece. The Q&A covers a lot of ground but some of McLennan’s most interesting thoughts come at the end of the piece.
McLennan asks:
People in Seattle say that we are one of the best regional orchestras in [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged 9-11, Aaron Copland, Benaroya Hall, James Conlon, Mark O'Connor, Maya Beiser, Seattle Symphony, Summer Fest, Zemlinsky on July 16, 2008 | No Comments »
Walking to Benaroya Hall this past Thursday night I experienced first-hand the difficulty in holding a summer music festival, in Seattle, indoors. I am grateful the Seattle Symphony started Summer Fest. As I have mentioned before, it is impressive, that in less than year Thomas Philion, and orchestra staff put together a diverse collection of [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Quad City Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Summer Fest on July 16, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Over on Cross Cut, Thomas May has a lengthy article discussing the changes taking place with the Seattle Symphony to reach out to a segmented listening audience.
In the article Philion says:
“We want to position the orchestra a little differently during the summer season and experiment with what kind of programming we might be able to [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA on July 14, 2008 | No Comments »
Courtesy of Arts Journal, the Denver Post has a piece on musician salaries.
It can be particularly difficult in a market like Denver. For example, the Colorado Symphony musician’s core 43-week salary hovers around $47,000 a year, about the same as similarly sized orchestras, such as the Oregon Symphony in Portland.
But section musicians in comparable cities [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Seattle Symphony, Concertmaster, Maria Larionoff on July 13, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Courtesy of The Poly Phonic Blog:
What’s not answered is the question of where Ms. Larionoff sits when one of the other three is present. If she moves to second chair (or even sits home on paid leave), then what really has changed?
And what about tenure? She was tenured as a member of the orchestra. But [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Aaron Copland, Mark O'Connor, Maya Beiser, Seattle Sympphony, Summer Fest on July 12, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Once summer gets its hold on Seattle, classical music disappears as quickly as the city’s trademark drizzle. Until this year, the Seattle Symphony put their instruments away and left the summer music making up to the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s festival. Other festivals, on the Olympic Peninsula, the San Juan Islands, and even Portland, Oregon [...]
Posted in Seattle, WA, tagged Charles Ives, Felix Mendelssohn, James Ehnes, Jeremy Denk, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Sergei Rachmaninov on July 12, 2008 | No Comments »
Four hundred and twenty five people filled the small St. Nicholas Recital Hall on the Ivy-like Lakeside School campus on Wednesday night. It was day two of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival. For six weeks each summer, some of the most distinguished musicians make the trip to Seattle and perform a wide swath [...]
