The 55-year-old Costa Rican conductor, currently completing his 16th and final season as music director of the Nashville Symphony, takes over the summer music festival next year. 2025 will also mark the start of his tenure as music director of the Sarasota Orchestra in Florida. - WFMT (Chicago)
"(Kaija Saariaho's) Innocence is about the aftermath of a school shooting, and the blood table was where the makeup crew applied stage blood to the performers. (There) were squirt and nozzle bottles, as well as baskets with blood packs, which would later burst onstage, each basket labeled with the name of a performer." - San Francisco Classical Voice
The tyranny of choice can make the comparatively limited days of the in-car CD player, or multi-disc changer, if you were fancy, seem highly attractive. Hold on to them if you’ve got them: from now on, car manufacturers in the UK will no longer include CD players on new models. - The Guardian
"(Management) has invited the problem at least partially by asking audiences to ... engage with their cell phones during visits. Tagging the ensemble on social media has long been encouraged. Signs at one recent performance asked patrons to bypass printed programs and instead read their program notes online." - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Lalovavi, set in the year 2119 and with a score by composer Kevin Day, was to premiere next June but has been postponed one year to 2026 due to delays with Tifara Brown's libretto. The work is the first of three commissioned by the company for its Black Opera Project. - AP
"This was a natural response to an unprecedented level of stadium-level artists on the road today. We now have another home for them to perform." - CBC
“In an escalation after months of labor talks, the musicians walked off the job on Friday for the first time since 1978.” The strike lasted for three and a half hours. - The New York Times
Under those rules, streaming services that are not Canadian-owned and have more than CAD $25 million (approx. USD $18.5 million) in revenue in Canada annually are required to pay 5% of that revenue into funds that subsidize Canadian content and creators. - Music Business Worldwide
Ophélie Gaillard's 1737 Francesco Goffriller cello and antique bows were taken at knifepoint in 2018; the thief later returned them, smashing a car window nearby and leaving them inside. This week, a thief broke into her home — while she was there — and made off with the cello and bows. - The Strad
Plaintiffs Clevie and Steely are seeking remuneration for a series of songs that not only sample “Fish Market,” but that interpolate or copy its rhythmic pattern and any of the derivative works that came after “Fish Market.” - Pitchfork
Annilese Miskimmon, English National Opera's artistic director and a native of Northern Ireland, sees enough similarities between the original story (a young 17th-century woman forced into a convent after bearing an out-of-wedlock child) and Ireland's now-notorious Magdalene laundries that the resetting makes perfect sense. - The Guardian
Elliott Encarnacion, a Chorus member and AGMA governor, accused the Symphony of “severely mishandling their funds,” particularly regarding the handling of the strike that forced the cancellation of Verdi’s Requiem last week. - San Francisco Chronicle
The plan for a new recital hall is especially puzzling because, in addition to the building’s own Zellerbach facilities, the Civic Center area is flush with performance venues. - San Francisco Classical Voice
Last fall, David Hayes stepped in as conductor on 48 hours' notice when then-music director Dirk Brossé ran into visa trouble. So the orchestra asked Hayes (who knows it and the city well) to succeed Brossé at the helm. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
