“You are the last orchestra and the most important orchestra where I have been music director. Your memory will accompany me in my heart to the end of my life. You, Chicago, are the Symphony of my heart. Grazie.” - New City
"Lenny was feverishly finishing music even as the premiere was approaching. I remember hearing that Alvin Ailey would be waiting for the next piece of music that would involve dance so that they could rush to put it together." - MSN (The Washington Post)
The concert itself was cancelled, but that doesn't mean the orchestra didn't perform: instead, these musicians from the capital of the rebellious 13 colonies played a two-piece tribute to Her Majesty that moved just about everyone. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
This year's iteration of the popular and somewhat rowdy celebration of British patriotism was to have happened on Saturday evening. Friday's concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra was also called off. - The Guardian
"I’ve tried to play Mozart well for 60 years now. When I started I had little clue. How fast should it go? (There are no metronome marks as in Beethoven.) What kind of sound? What note lengths were implied by the various editions? But by 1970, luckily for my generation, help was at hand." - The Guardian
Hobart Earle, who's currently helming the orchestra on a special visit to Berlin: "I never imagined that I would be a long-term music director. And I certainly never planned on being a music director in a time of war." - The New York Times
This summer an activist loudly objected to a no-guns rule at Atlanta's Music Midtown festival (in Georgia, no event on public property may ban firearms) and drove organizers to cancel the entire thing. He then tried the same tactic with the Savannah Jazz Festival — which, actually, has no such rule. - SaportaReport (Atlanta)
The competition was intense. In the first pair of performances, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra eked out a slight advantage over the Philadelphia Orchestra in terms of ticket sales and the octane of its playing — but hold on to your opera glasses. In a grand upset, the Cleveland Orchestra arrived. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Dutch maestro is also music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic; he leaves both positions in 2024, as he starts on a five-year contract term as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic. He succeeds Osmo Vänskä, who's leaving the turbulent orchestra after only three years. - The New York Times
Even after the Soviet Union crumbled, Russia was able to keep up its classical strengths—and attract artists from all around the world. But now its musicians are leaving, and Western ones have stopped arriving for guest performances. - Foreign Policy
In response to the Second Vatican Council's reforms, the monks of the Abbey of Keur Moussa set about Africanizing their worship, researching traditional music and adapting it to their liturgy. It was when they discovered the kora that everything clicked — and even got them a recording contract. - The New Yorker
"(He) was the influential missing piece in American music, (with) a profound impact on Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Broadway from the 1930s to the 1960s. The Communist overtones in his work that polarized 20th-century listeners ... plus the circumstances of his 1964 death, ... make him all the more intriguing." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
For those blessedly anchored in the real world, here is a brief summary of a case that began as a passionate-yet-niche dispute between scholars and has reverberated—or been manufactured—into a broader referendum on academic and free speech in the United States. - Van
"Indiana University for the last 40 years has been trumpeting early performance practice. Now there are maybe 20 or so extraordinary pockets of incredible culture, from Texas up to Seattle and from Maine down to Miami. I think Juilliard is now the cutting edge, standing like a beacon." - Early Music America
Historically, songs were employed by labor unions to create a sense of solidarity and move labor rights forward against overwhelming odds. If music can be a salve and a rallying cry, is the opposite true? - 3 Quarks Daily
