"Despite its budget deficits and a well-publicized falling out with acclaimed conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the San Francisco Symphony is moving forward with plans for a full makeover of Davies Symphony Hall." (Which is to say, it submitted drawings to the city planning department before a deadline.) - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
"Technically, from the baton, how you beat, Bruckner is very easy. It’s not like Stravinsky’s Sacre or Mahler. … You have to understand that the tempo comes automatically if you understand the context in which it was written, the spirituality that was in the man and his music and to understand that spirituality." - Bachtrack
Or so Spain is telling Katy Perry, whose production company apparently didn’t bother to get permission to film near environmentally sensitive, and protected, sand dunes. - CBC
Jayson Gillham was removed from a concerto performance with the orchestra this week after, at an earlier solo recital, he dedicated a new work to journalists killed in Gaza. While MSO management still maintains that political statements are inappropriate on the concert stage, it acknowledges having made "an error." - The Guardian
“As a composer, getting a musical idea down on the page feels like a butterfly lover who catches this miraculous, beautiful thing. You then stick a pin through it. My job is to take all the incredible butterflies stuck on the page and allow them to start flying.” - San Francisco Classical Voice
Weinberg, a Jewish composer born in Poland, “found refuge in Soviet Russia, but reputation in the West is largely overshadowed by that of his good friend Dmitri Shostakovich” - at least, until now. - The New York Times
By now he can do anything he likes, and he got the first of many job offers five minutes after announcing his departure from the San Francisco Symphony. Salonen says he doesn't want to run another orchestra — but he said that when he left the Los Angeles Philharmonic, too. - The New York Times
Ilya Ram, a 33-year-old Israeli-American, is currently music director of the Akademische Philharmonie Heidelberg, a position he will keep. He begins his tenure in Tennessee this coming season. - Chattanooga Times Free Press
The Royal Opera House's renaming as the Royal Ballet & Opera and concert venue St. John's Smith Square's rechristening as Sinfonia Smith Square — they weren't just a way for some marketing consultant to earn next month's mortgage payment. Here's a look into their considered reasons for making the change. - Classical Music (UK)
It’s more than two years into Russia’s war with Ukraine, and Teodor Currentzis’ “continued presence is frustrating to many, raising uncomfortable questions about what is acceptable in service of music.” - The New York Times
The EP-1320 comes “pre-loaded with a selection of playable musical instruments from the Middle Ages, from frame drums, battle toms, and coconut horse hooves to bagpipes, bowed harps, and, yes, hurdy-gurdies.” - Open Culture
She played in the orchestra, somehow survived, and later helped found the English Chamber Orchestra. And at nearly 100 years old, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has forgotten nothing. - The New Yorker
“Music appears so much earlier in human history than money, let alone the music industry. We’ve found all sorts of other reasons to make music anyway.” - Vox
No, this doesn't mean the piano etudes of Philip Glass. Ludovico Einaudi is the most famous of a school of keyboard composers such as Joep Breving, Nils Frahm, Lubomyr Melnyk, Riopy, and Sophie Hutchings. They draw far more streaming listeners than even Yuja Wang. Beving actually records for DG. - The Guardian
