Sarah Canice Funke's Blog

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

For many classical music fans, a trip to the Boston Symphony Orchestra may only be a rare treat, experienced every once in a while after carefully hoarding up the price of a ticket. But for those who are willing to attend the symphony on a less crowded weekday and to get to the symphony hall a little early, a trip to the BSO is made a more common reality through the affordable Rush Ticket.

Rush Tickets are available for $9 at 5pm on the night of a Tuesday or Thursday performance or at 10am on the morning of a Friday afternoon performance. These tickets are not simply the leftover seats in the farthest balcony, but are often in the very front rows. If ticket prices are the only thing prohibiting a classical music fan from experiencing one of the country's top orchestras, take advantage of the inexpensive but excellent Rush Ticket seats.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The UK lottery fund Awards for All lived up to its name by awarding a grant even to a most unusual group: the Bicycle Belles Orchestra. This group of 30 musicians performs original works for bells and horns, often practicing outdoors. According to Anna Carey, a Bicycle Belles co-founder, these practices are often a great hit: "Our outdoor rehearsals often turn into impromptu concerts as people stop to listen on the promenade."

The bicycle bell players received £1,377, or approximately $2,500 USD, which will go toward turning these happenstance rehearsals into four public performances around Brighton.

The money will also be put to educational uses, as well. The Bicycle Belles Orchestra plans to run workshops at schools and step up recruitment to the orchestra.

The small grant is set to help this group achieve some good, all-around growth: not only should the funds help the Bicycle Belles Orchestra grow its audience, but the money will also strengthen its membership and the ensemble's relationships with schools.

Awards for All, which is the small grants program of the Big Lottery Fund head of the South East region, gave out over £450,000 (over $830,000 USD) in grants to 62 groups in total.

For more information, please read the BBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The BBC has developed a new TV show that follows the same format as ABC's Dancing with the Stars: take a group of celebrities, run them through a rigorous course in an arts-related skill, and set them before a panel of judges to determine which is the best newbie of the bunch.

Maestro, a television show that teaches eight celebrities the intricate ins and outs of conducting, will culminate in a final performance with the BBC Orchestra as part of the summer Proms.

Will the finalists be ready? They've certainly gone through an extensive crash course in conducting, studying with experts such as Christopher Warren-Green, Brad Cohen and Matthew Rowe.

The eight celebrities are David Soul, Katie Derham, Goldie, Alex James, Sue Perkins, Bradley Walsh, Jane Asher and Peter Snow. The show is presented by Clive Anderson, a barrister turned comedy writer. The judges are bassist Dominic Seldis, conductor Simone Young, cellist Zoe Martlew and conductor Sir Roger Norrington.

Unfortunately, the show is only available in the UK. Yet even if you are not on British soil, you can still participate in the interactive games on the website. Try your hand at conducting a full orchestra. It's not as easy as it looks.

For more information or to play the conducting game, please visit the Maestro website.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Classical music has always had its jokesters. French composer Erik Satie wrote compositions with quirky titles such as "Genuine Flabby Preludes (for a dog)." Franz Haydn protested his sponsor's refusal to let the court musicians go home to their families with The Farewell Symphony (during the course of this symphony, musicians leave the stage one by one until only a single musician remains).

Now young composer Carl Schimmel is joining the ranks of composers who liked to liven things up with an odd instrument or two. Schimmel is one of the composers who works at the Yaddo colony for artists and writers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He is known for incorporating unusual instruments into his works, such as squeaky toys and whoopie cushions.

Schimmel has written a work entitled Elemental Homunculi, a Latin phrase which means "little man." The third movement of this composition is scored for tenor saxophone, piano and squeaky toy. While the sax and the piano provide most of the musical material, the squeaky toy chimes in at rather odd moments, sure to provoke a smile on the face of even the most dour listener.

For more information, or to listen to "As Fast As Possible," please visit the NPR Music article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Move over American Idol. No more searching for individual talent. The BBC's new show "Last Choir Standing" is all about rewarding the groups that sing best together, in an effort to find the "nation's favourite choir."

Hosted by presenters Nick Knowles and Myleene Klass, the BBC television show "Last Choir Standing" works in much the same way that American Idol and Dancing with the Stars and a host of other talent shows work: lots of people start out competing in the first few rounds, are judged by a panel of experts and the best ones are sent on to the next round.

The "Last Choir Standing" has a judging panel that consists of opera singer Russell Watson, actress, singer and West End star Sharon D. Clarke and choral conductor and director Suzi Digby.

The show began with 27 choirs that had made it past the audition stage and onto the show. Only 6 of these choirs will make it to the final part of the show, when audiences can start casting their votes as well.

For more information, please see the "Last Choir Standing" website.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

If you happen to have a few musical instruments lying around going to waste, put them to good use by donating them to a homeless shelter. Since musical instruments are rather bulky, most homeless have to give up their music when they live on the streets. However, community workers in the Oppenheimer Park decided that no one should be without music.

Oppenheimer Park is located in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver, B.C. and boasts a community center, among other amenities.

With a $500 grant from the Vancouver Foundation and a few donations, community workers have been able to put a piano and a guitar in the park, for anyone to use during the day. The program is off to a good start but needs many more instruments.

Some of the neighborhood talent is so good that they are collaborating on an entry for the CBC's compose a new Hockey Night in Canada theme contest. This contest offers a cash prize of $100,000 and half of the future royalties.

Could the Vancouver program be the start of a good idea to get music access to everyone, regardless of one's housing status?

For more information, please read the CBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The Chinese pianist Lang Lang may be world famous now, but how did he get there? For an in-depth look at the pianist selling out to crowds of tens of thousands, pick up a copy of Lang Lang's new autobiography Journey of a Thousand Miles. With colorful anecdotes and gritty honesty, Lang Lang describes his journey that took him from the small town of Shenyang, China to the world's stage.

The journey wasn't easy. Lang Lang journeyed with his father to the big city of Beijing to try to get into a music conservatory. They eeked out a living on the money his mother was able to send to him while Lang Lang took private lessons from a demanding professor from the Central Conservatory of Music, hoping to be thought good enough to land a place in the school. At the age of 14, Lang Lang's quest for musical greatness brought him to the United States, where he studied under Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

His big break came after three more years of diligent study, when he was ready in the wings to substitute for Andre Watts, who was too ill to perform one evening. Lang Lang performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and sealed his place in the public eye.

For more information, please read the NPR Music article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The BBC Proms Young Composers Competition has some winners! The competition, which runs from March-May, has announced the winners and highly commended composers for 2008 on its website. There are two categories: 12-16 year olds and 17-18 year olds.

For the younger category, the judges recognized three winners: Tom Rose for the composition Moth Lamp, Tom Curran for the composition Searching and Men Gei Li for the composition Triquad Variations.

The older category had two winners: En Liang Khong for the composition Black Rain and Alexander Nikiporenko for the composition Awaiting.

Every year, the BBC Proms Young Composers Competition strives to recognize budding young talent and offer them opportunities to attend workshops and spend time with professional musicians, composers and conductors. Winners and Highly Commended competitors get to attend a special workshop on July 26 and Winners get a special commission from the BBC.

However, even those who didn't win also get a chance to develop their skills: on August 6, anyone who entered the competition will have a chance to work with professional musicians and those in the music industry at workshops held in central London.

For more information, please see the BBC Proms Young Composers Competition website.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

John Cage, known for his experimental compositions that often use instruments in unusual ways or challenge our ideas of what counts as music, gave no instructions regarding just how long "as long as possible" really was when he composed a work by that title in 1985.

The first performance didn't take his title very seriously, executing the work in a mere 29 minutes. The town of Halberstadt, however, has determined to make Cage's music last. The town has decided that modern life is too fast-paced and audiences don't have patience anymore. Everyone wants to get to the end immediately, or at least within their own lifetime, it seems.

Yet harking back to an era when it used to take centuries to build a cathedral rather than months, Halberstadt will take 639 years to perform the Cage's work. Audiences will have to be content knowing that they won't live to hear the end, instead setting up something that will be enjoyed by their descendants.

The piece began in Sept. 2001 and sat silently till the first chord was played in February 2003. Two more notes were played in July 2004. Another change came in July 2005 and another in January 2006.

This new note was played on Saturday, July 5 when Halberstadt officials moved the weights holding down the pedals of an organ in the town's medieval church.

For more information, please read the CBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The Gina Bachauer Young Artists International Piano Competition, a competition known for determining the next generation of classical performers, awarded the top prize of $8,000 to Si Jing Ye.

The young musician, originally from China, currently lives in New York City. In order to win the prestigious prize, he had to compete against a total of 29 contestants. When the panelists had narrowed the competition down to six finalists, Si Jing Ye performed the well-beloved (and difficult) Tchaikovsky's Concerto in B-flat Minor and was declared the winner on Saturday, June 28.

The second place winner, Kenric Tam of Los Altos Hill, Calif., received $6,000 and the third place winner, Jonathan Floril of Spain, received $5,000.

The 10-member jury included chairman Douglas Humphrey of the United States, Rolf-Dieter Arens of Germany, Paola Bruni of Italy, Alan Chow of the United States, Mirian Conti of Argentina, Mieko Harimoto of Japan, Faina Lushtak of Russia, Thomas Schumacher of the United States, Zhe Tang of China and Veda Zuponcic of the United States. The competition took place in the Jeanne Wagner Theatre of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

For more information, please read the Desert News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Back in 2004, Deborah Voigt had a dazzling career playing lead roles in opera houses round the world. Did it matter if she was heavy if she had a voice that soared? Apparently in today's weight sensitive culture, even the "fat ladies" at the opera are under scrutiny. And when Voigt was denied the lead role in the Royal Opera House's Ariadne auf Naxos because she couldn't fit into the black dress that would serve as Ariadne's costume, the trend was confirmed publicly.

Voigt underwent gastric bypass surgery and lost 135 pounds. Though she stated that she lost the weight for health reasons, she still felt that our culture's attitude toward obesity was "the last bastion of open discrimination in our society." The sopranos who will get what Voigt describes as the "pretty-girl parts" will be the ones with the slim and trim waists.

The weight loss has allowed Voigt to return to the role once denied her: she will be performing in the Royal Opera House's 2008 production of Ariadne auf Naxos, in the same black dress once too small for her figure. However, her new body size has affected her voice and caused some adjustments to the way she approaches singing.

For more information, please see the CBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The International Rostrum of Composers, a forum composed of radio broadcasters, released the results of this year's deliberation on Friday, June 13 in Dublin. The group shifts through more than 60 new works each year in order to narrow the decision down to the final Top Ten.

Pieces are submitted to the forum by national radio networks, in order to publicize the new music composed within the last five years.

Nicole Lizée, born in Winnepeg and currently living in Montreal, finished "This Will Not Be Televised" in 2005. The CBC commissioned the piece, which is written for seven turntables and a chamber orchestra.

The work combines a sine wave, a chorus of nuns from The Sound of Music and the vocals of rock artists such as Van Halen's David Lee Roth, the Wu-Tang Clan and Duran Duran.

Accompanying the electronic sounds are two violins, a viola, violoncello, bass and percussion section.

"This Will Not Be Televised" is not Lizée's first composition with turntables. She also included them in works such as RPM and King Kong and Fay Wray.

For more information, please read the CBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Get ready for singing cowboys: Brokeback Mountain will be turned into an opera in a few years.

The 1997 short story by Annie Proulx won three Academy awards when turned into a film in 2005. Now composer Charles Wuorinen has been commissioned by the New York City Opera to set the story to music.

Wuorinen says that he has been fascinated by the story, which explores the relationship between two cowboys who fall in love when they meet on the fictitious Brokeback Mountain.

The opera will premiere in 2013. It is the second opera the New York City Opera has commissioned from Wuorinen. His first work for the NYC Opera was opened in October 2004. Called Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the work was based on a Salman Rushdie novel.

For more information, please read the Times article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Earle Hagen created many television worlds: the whistling town of Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show, the cheerful and playful Dick Van Dyke Show and the intense if campy underworld of The Mod Squad. In all, he composed music for over 3,000 television episodes, plots or TV movies.

The quick turnaround and pressing deadlines of TV may be stifling to some, but Hagen enjoyed the creativity of composing for the small screen. He enjoyed being able to hear freshly composed music mere days after putting it to paper. He often tried to incorporate "exotic" or "ethnic" sounds in the music, chosen to reflect the adventures of the characters. Once, he hired Greek musicians for episodes that took place in Greece.

Hagen's talent in composing for television was recognized in 1968, when he won an Emmy for the adventure series I Spy, which starred Bill Cosby.

Yet TV was not Hagen's only claim to fame. Born in 1919, this TV music composer was a man of very diverse talents. Hagen also played trombone with the likes of jazz legends Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey and composed the classic Harlem Nocturne (1939).

In addition, Hagen was one of the first to write a textbook on composing film music.

He had been suffering from ill health for several months when he passed away in his home in Rancho Mirage, California on Monday, May 26. His memorial service will be held on June 1, 2008.

For further information, please read the CBC News article or the Earle Hagen website.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

It may be a long-standing joke that the football teams and the science/business departments are the ones that get all the money at universities, while the musicians languish in the basement. However, that sorry tale is no more. The University of Manitoba has recently received a hefty $20 million gift just for its music department.

The donor, Manitoba businessman and alumnus Marcel A. Desautels, wanted to put his money where his heart was, and his passion led him to give his alma mater its largest gift ever. Although Desautels made his fortune in the credit industry, he had once considered a career in opera.

To be paid out over the course of five years, the $20 million will bolster the music department and the students it can support. Half will go toward building a new department and the other half will help create more scholarships. Not only will more students be able to attend the university, but they will have better facilities when they get there.

The faculty at the University of Manitoba have big dreams for the money. Steve Kirby, who heads the jazz program, wants to see his program become a serious competitor of the Juilliard School of Music's Institute for Jazz Studies.

For more information, please read the CBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Leyla Gencer was a frequent performer at the prestigious La Scala Opera House, appearing in over 70 productions. But the singer and teacher will no longer grace the Milanese stage: the 79-year-old Gencer passed away on May 10, 2008 after experiencing respiratory problems and heart failure.

Gencer was born in October, 1928 in Istanbul, Turkey and began studies at the Istanbul conservatory, only to switch to private lessons from the Italian opera singer Giannina Arangi Lombardi in Ankara.

Her career spanned over 30 years and included roles ranging from The First Woman of Canterbury in the world premier of Pizzeti's "L'Assasinio nella Cattedralle" (Murder in the Cathedral) to Elisabetta in "Don Giovanni."

Both the Turkish and the Italian miss this singer: La Scala Opera House and the Turkish Prime Minister expressed admiration for Gencer and regret over the loss of such a moving soprano.

Gencer retired over 20 years ago in 1985, in order to search out new talent and train young singers. She died in her home in Milan and her funeral was held in that city on May 12. Her will called for her body to be cremated and the ashes scattered over the Bosporus in her native Turkey.

For more information, please see the article in the Turkish Daily News.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Depending on how talks go between the Manchester City Council and the Royal Opera House, Covent Gardens, tourists to the east side of England's textile city could be watching kings and queens sing on stage rather than counting the royal figures in a deck of cards.

Manchester is looking for a way to rejuvenate the east part of the city and plans for a casino have been tossed. Instead the city councillors are interested in using opera to renew the area, especially because the Royal Opera House's performance of a circus opera--Monkey: Journey to the West--opened Manchester's 2007 International Festival.

The circus opera, a collaboration between the band Gorillaz and opera director Chen Shi Zheng, suggested the possibilities of making opera relevant and engaging for modern audiences.

So far, talks haven't reached the nitty-gritty stage of determining how many jobs would be created or how much revenue would be generated. But the Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House, Tony Hall, is excited about the future potential for opera such a project might suggest.

Will hip programming bring in more revenue and create more jobs than gambling? The answer remains to be seen, but we may get a chance to find out if the Royal Opera House comes to Manchester.

For more information, please read the BBC News article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Henry Brant, a U.S. avant-garde composer, died at the age of 94 on Saturday, April 26 in his Santa Barbara, California home. His death was due to natural causes.

Born in Montreal in 1913, the composer was the son of American parents and eventually moved to the US. As a composer, he experimented in order to find a new music that reflected the hodge-podge collection of sounds in daily life. Simply by walking down the street, the average person can hear jazz from a restaurant, rap from a car stereo and someone's own collection of favorite hits coming from an upstairs apartment.

He was also a composer who liked to put musicians in their places. At least, he enjoyed exploring acoustical space and the effects of placing musicians in different parts of a performance venue. A work such as Horizontals Extending entails two ensembles placed widely apart and a trapset (percussion) on stage; all three groups of musicians then play in a different time.

He played instruments ranging from the tin whistle to the organ and violin. He studied at McGill University in Canada and later in New York. He has also taught at the Juilliard School, Columbia University and Bennington College.

In 2002, Brant was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his composition Ice Field. Brant received two Guggenheim Fellowships and won the Prix Italia, becoming the first American to take home that prize.

For more information, please see the CBC News Article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Most tenors at the New York's Metropolitan Opera House sing an aria and get on with the music. But on Monday, April 21, the audience attending the Met's performance of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment were treated to something that hadn't happened in 14 years. The tenor Juan Diego Florez encored an aria in response to the crowd's enthusiasm, bringing the production to a halt while he whipped through another 9 high C's in "Ah, Mes Amis."

Purists of the modern age would be disgruntled by the action-stopping showmanship. In fact, the reason encores are so rare is that the Met regarded requests for an encore in the same vein as flash photography.

But the disdain for encores is a more modern phenomenon. Back during the 17th-18th centuries, opera divas were quite willing to encore a favorite aria. Some singers became so associated with a particular number that composers would write that signature piece into the score.

But all that changed with the reform of opera. By the late 18th-century, composers like Gluck were fed up with opera theatrics. Singers must be subordinate to the music, not the other way round. Gradually, doing whatever you wanted to do on stage fell out of fashion.

But post-modernism has been chipping away at the crusty exterior and Peter Gelb, who became the general manager of the Met in 2006, has been loosening some of the rules. Maybe someday we'll forget the plot all together (always rather thin in an opera anyway) and simply create the opera sing-along, in which the audience joins voice with the singers in chorus after chorus of favorite hits.

For more information, please see the NPR article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

In the 1800s, Richard Wagner had a dream to create an all-encompassing, multi-media art experience combining music, art and drama into the ultimate artistic expression. But his plans outstripped the capabilities of 19th-century theaters and he built his own in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. In 1876, Wagner founded the Bayreuth Festival in order to premiere his colossal four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. Based on Norse mythology, the cycle consists of the following operas:

• Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
• Die Walkure (The Valkyrie)
• Siegfried
• Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods).

Over 125 years later, the Bayreuth Festival remains a prestigious affair, still run by Wagners. For the last 50 years, Richard Wagner's grandson Wolfgang Wagner has directed the show. Now 88, he is finally showing signs of retiring. Wolfgang Wagner appears to be ready to hand direction of the festival over to his daughter by a second marriage, 29-year-old Katharina Wagner.

Yet many, including the Richard Wagner Foundation, feel that the younger daughter lacks the know-how to bear such a responsibility. They favor Wolfgang Wagner's 62-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. Eva Wagner-Pasquier is an experienced arts and culture manager and would be able to step into her father's shoes quite easily.

One might expect such a rivalry to result in a bitter feud, but the two sisters appear to be making a deal. They are working on a proposal, due April 29, which will outline a plan for the festival's future.

For more information, please read the CBC Article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The CBC is planning to get rid of its Radio 2 orchestra and fans aren't happy about it. Classical music fans protested across Canada on Friday, April 11 in an attempt to prevent the public broadcasting company from dropping its radio orchestra.

Playing music and holding signs proclaiming "Save our CBC," "Classical Music Rocks," "My CBC includes the CBC Radio Orchestra," protesters gathered for an hour in front of CBC branch locations.

But the protests aren't limited to single hour demonstrations: a Facebook group (now the popular way to organize people for social change) has attracted 13,000 supporters.

The CBC, however, cites its decision as one that will enhance musical diversity on its stations, claiming a need to represent more genres on Radio 2. Classical music will still get the most air time, but there will now be room for jazz, folk, roots, R & B and singer-songwriter styles.

The classical music fans, however, disagree. People go to a particular genre station because they want to listen to a single genre. Mixing genres is just a way to make everyone unhappy.

What do you think about the CBC's decision? Should Radio 2 stay true to its classical music fans or branch out in the name of peace, harmony and musical diversity?

For more information, please read the CBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Ralph Vaughan Williams may have been dead for 50 years, but his popularity in his native land lives on, evidenced by the strong support he received through Classic FM's recent Hall of Fame poll.

Vaughan Williams was a British composer through and through, taking much of his compositional inspiration from early English folk music.

Apparently the English public appreciate his dedication to promoting, preserving and championing their cultural history, as radio listeners of the UK's Classic FM radio show have voted one of his works the "best classical piece of music" for the second year in row.

Vaughan Williams' popularity is strong enough that his piece "The Lark Ascending" not only received the number one vote, but his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis was voted into third place.

Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 came in second. The bastion of the classical repertoire, Beethoven, took 4th and 5th place.

Classic FM's list of top classical works covers some 300 compositions, twelve of which were written by Vaughan Williams. Understandably, Mozart, Beethoven and Bach have the most representation, but even Paul McCartney made it on the list this year for Ecce Cor Meum.

For more information, please read the BBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

With a price tag of $3.9 million USD, the Guarneri del Gesu violin sold at auction in February is not surprisingly kept safely stowed and not brought out just for any old house party entertainment. In fact, the violin hadn't been played for over 70 years.

However, all that changed when the violin's new owner, Russian lawyer and businessman Maxim Viktorov, hosted a private concert in Moscow over Easter weekend. Viktorov arranged for violinist Pinchas Zukerman to perform on the violin, considering the virtuoso to be the one worthy enough to coax music out of the world's most expensive instrument.

Israeli-born Zukerman also plays a Guarneri violin himself. Only 150 violins made by the Guarneri family survive today. The Italian family was one of the top violin makers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Viktorov's violin was built in 1741 and previously owned by Belgian Henri Vieuxtemps, who played for Tsar Alexander II. Viktorov hopes to restore Russia to its great cultural history and make it a country that once again attracts top artists, but the concert met with lack-luster enthusiasm. Zukerman didn't even receive a standing ovation, but the audience did muster up a round of applause for Max Bruch's Violin Concerto in G Minor.

For more information, please read the CBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The 78-year-old Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott died on Wednesday, March 12, bringing to a close a relationship with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales that had spanned seven decades. To honor this partnership, the National Orchestra of Wales is planning to name its new home Hoddinott Hall (in the Wales Millennium Centre).

Hoddinott was a Welshman through and through. Born in Bargoed, Caerphilly, he graduated from Cardiff University and lectured in music at the Welsh College of Music and Drama before becoming a lecturer at his alma mater. His hometown in later life was Gower, Swansea, where he died in the city’s Morriston Hospital.

His appeal reached through the entire United Kingdom: he was called upon to compose music for the wedding of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles. He had also composed music for the Prince’s 16th birthday.

But he was especially loved in Wales. In 1997, Hoddinott received the Glyndwr Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales during the Machynlleth Festival and in 1999 was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arts Council of Wales.

Hoddinott has also worked to foster music appreciation among his countrymen, co-founding and directing the Cardiff Festival. His friend and fellow co-founder of the festival was John Ogdon.

For more information, please read the BBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Forensic artists at the Dundee University offer classical music fans a different face for German composer J.S. Bach (1685-1750). Typically, biographies of the 18th century composer use a portrait of J.S. Bach that depicts the composer as a stern, wigged and large-nosed individual, a bit dusty and far removed from the 21st century.

However, the artists in Scotland have made the Baroque composer seem a little more lifelike. Taking a bronze cast of Bach's skull and scanning it with a laser, the forensic artists were able to use his bone structure to digitally construct facial muscles and skin. Historical records (such as the fact that Bach had eye problems and swollen eyelids) helped to fill in the details. According to the Centre for Forensic and Medical Art's Dr. Caroline Wilkinson, the face is as complete as current science and records can make it.

The completed face will travel from Scotland to Eisenach, Germany (Bach's hometown) where it will go on display in the Bachhaus museum.

To see the recreation of Bach's face or for more information, please read the BBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The New York Metropolitan Opera has seen quite a few shows since it first opened in 1883 on Broadway at 39th. Though it has changed venues since then, hosting over 200 performances annually at the Lincoln Center, the Met's reputation as a bastion of High Culture has never wavered.

To celebrate the 125th season of the Met, the opera house announced that it will feature six new performances and 22 revivals, including a performance using a projection of a set designed by artist Marc Chagall for a 1967 production of Mozart's Die Zauberfloete. New performances include a production of John Adam's Doctor Atomic.

To celebrate the 40 years that Placido Domingo has been with the Met, the opera house will host a gala in March. To honor the one-year anniversary of Pavarotti's death, conductor James Levine will give a free performance of Verdi's Requiem on Sept. 18.

So mark your calendars and be prepared for another good season of opera. If you can't make it to New York, don't worry. The Met has gone HD, offering full-screen versions of its performances at select movie theaters across the country.

For more information, please read the CBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

A tour that has attracted interest for months, the New York Philharmonic's trip to North Korea raised speculations of potential cultural and perhaps political reconciliation between the United States and North Korea. Would the tour achieve a feat of cultural diplomacy, fostering greater understanding and cultural awareness between East and West, Communism and Democracy?

As the tour came to a close on Wednesday, February 26, musicians and directors were buzzing with enthusiasm. Not only did the New York Philharmonic draw packed crowds to its performances, but the American orchestra got to play with the North Korean state orchestra. Players from the NYP also got to perform with North Korean players. The Americans were surprised at the North Koreans' proficiency in Western music (which makes me wonder, what were they expecting? Many Asian nations are quite familiar with Western music). Both sides were extremely happy with the experience, making the North Korea tour a tremendous success.

For more information, please read the CBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

"Is there a baritone in the house?" When bass-baritone Paul Whelen attended a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at London's Coliseum on Saturday, Feb. 16, he probably expected to stay firmly put in his seat. Maybe he expected to pick up some tips on the role of the pastor Raimondo. After all, he was scheduled to play the same part himself in a month.

But on that particular evening, singer Clive Bayley was struggling with a chest infection. Though he valiently stuck out 40 minutes of his role as Raimondo, Bayley finally decided he couldn't continue. What was an opera company to do with this last minute cancellation?

Fortunately, they called on Whelen. The singer barely had time to run backstage for the second scene. However, there was no time left for costume changes. To avoid disrupting the 19th century world created on stage, Whelen stayed in his 21st century clothes off in the wings. He sang the part from there, while Bayley mimed the action onstage. Together, they brought a memorable performance to a successful close. The audience, of course, loved it.

For more information, please read the BBC article.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Tom Service is a music critic for the Guardian and a regular writer for the BBC Music Magazine, Opera, and Tempo. His voice also appears on the air every Saturday afternoon on the BBC Radio 3's program Music Matters.

The program combines music clips with commentary and interviews of conductors and musicians for a weekly exploration of the contemporary classical world. Classical music fans who want a behind-the-scenes look at how a conductor decides how to perform a symphony or an opera director makes staging decisions will find some fascinating material.

The show explores both the themes of great classical works as well as the historical context and difficulties and choices a conductor/musician must make in performance.

Listeners who don't live in the UK can still enjoy this program by streaming episodes off the BBC Radio 3's website. So if you don't have time on Saturday, you can catch Tom Service and some Music Matters at any time of the day or week.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

You can find anything on the internet these days, including virtual music lessons for a wide variety of instruments. Whether you want tips for perfecting your bowing technique, information on how often to tune your piano or where to find a paying gig, the BBC's Play It Again section on their website offers a little help for both the beginner and advanced musician.

Organized by orchestral family (strings, brass, winds, keyboards, etc.), tips on most of the major instruments are available on the site. In addition to text-based material, video clips are also included (though the clips were not working for me when I visited the site). Even if you can't access the video clips, several useful tips are still available. Especially helpful for beginners or those who simply want to find out a little more about a particular instrument, Play It Again offers advice on everything from the electric guitar to the organ.

For those aspiring musicians who want to take their skills a bit farther, Play It Again also offers several links to music organizations and orchestras, in case you want to join an ensemble, find a paying gig or attend a symphony performance (although these links will be most useful for UK residents).

And above all, don't forget to visit the colorful, kid-friendly Guide to the Orchestra and listen to clips of music by Leonard Bernstein, Beethoven, Elgar and Stravinsky.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Do you get tired of trying to find a good radio station? Are you a compulsive channel changer? If you are having trouble finding some good classical music, than you might want to check out NPR's Music Lists Archives homepage. This webpage provides access to hundreds of MP3 clips that can be streamed with the click of a mouse (clips are opened and played through a radio application run by NPR). Though NPR has assembled several playlists of its own, a listener can click on several clips of his or her choice, arrange them in the player, and sit back and listen to the music cycle through in the order selected. Of course, this method requires a little more hunting and arranging than the sit-back-and-relax method of radio listening, but the results are a highly personalized stream of music.

The "Music Lists Archives" homepage offers the listener access to more than just classical music--all of NPR's featured music ends up here sooner or later. So you can mix a little Rachmaninoff with your Radiohead and your Miles Davis.

Since these music clips are available over the internet, you can plug your headphones into your computer at work and enjoy an atmosphere of your own choosing. If you don't get distracted by that beautiful Beethoven, you'll be the happiest and most productive member of the workforce.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Canadian composer Talivaldis Kenins passed away in Toronto on January 22, 2007. Canadian musicologist Paul Rapoport observes that Kenins entered the Canadian classical music scene at a time when Canada was largely dependent on her parent country Great Britain for inspiration. Kenins' central European aesthetic, then, was a distinct voice in 1950s Canada.

This fluency in central European music is no surprise, however, as Kenins was born in Latvia in 1919. In addition, his education also left its mark on his compositional style. Kenins' study at the College de Menton and Lycée de Grenoble, France (where he obtained a "Bachelier des lettres" in 1939) provided him training in neo-classicism.

After completing his studies in France, Kenins returned to Latvia, but only briefly: after WWII, Soviet occupation of Latvia compelled Kenins to flee back to France. After marrying Latvian Vlada Dreimane, Kenins moved with his wife to Canada in 1951, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1956.

Kenins' more notable compositions include his Second Piano Quartet, Concerto for 14 Instruments and Symphony No. 4. He served on the music faculty at the University of Toronto and founded the Latvian Concert Association of Toronto in 1959.

For more information, please read CBC News or La Scena Newswire.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

NPR's recent story on classical music in cartoons demonstrates that this "low-brow" medium has long been used to familiarize American culture with the "classics." Who doesn't associate the Allegro from Mozart's Sonata in C with Tweety Bird? Or Mendelssohn's Spring Song with Bugs Bunny?

The NPR article provided several examples of piano music and orchestral music that shows up in cartoons, but didn't mention where Bugs Bunny seems to end up the most: the opera house.

In the opera house, Bugs Bunny has the most room for upsetting convention, for foiling upper class values and finally giving the slip yet again to blunderers with guns. As Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin might say, the opera offers the perfect place to stage a "carnival," or the reversal of the status quo. "Highbrow" is ridiculous, the underdog wins and "everything is upside down."

Here are some examples of opera gone awry when this rabbit comes to town:

What's Opera Doc? (A parody of Wagnerian Opera, with some ballet thrown in for good measure.)

The Rabbit of Seville (A new take on an old classic. Most of the major themes from Rossini's music is preserved unaltered by anything other than the comic visual graphics.)

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

The BBC Proms is joining forces with the BBC Scottish Symphony in order to encourage children aged 12-18 to attend Composer Labs held in Glasgow.

You may have heard of the BBC's Young Composer competition, and perhaps be thinking that these labs are for the genius kids. But the Composer Labs are open to anyone who wants to attend, on a first come, first served basis. At the Glasgow City Halls, you'll have the opportunity to work with musicians from the BBC Orchestras and BBC Singers, as well as with leading composers.

And who knows? Maybe you'll discover that you do have a little muse in you after all and go on to enter the Young Composer's competition, perform in a Prom, go on to be the next year's top composer.

Does this sound like a good idea to you? Maybe we need orchestras and radio stations teaming up to provide classical music interactivity for kids on our side of the pond.

For more information, please visit the BBC website.

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke

Back in 1722, Johann Sebastien Bach wrote a prelude and accompanying fugue for every single key signature on the piano, just to prove how easy the new well-tempered tuning system. Made common in the 18th century, the well-tempered system meant no more retuning the entire instrument every time a performer wanted to change keys. In 1744 Bach repeated the feat, composing 24 more prelude/fugue pairs.

Now a familiar part of any piano students' repertoire, these two sets of preludes and fugues (entitled the Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II) have inspired several other several composers after Bach to compose sets of preludes and fugues or simply sets of preludes based on patterns of key signatures, most notably Shostakovich and Chopin. Bach had a pedagogical bent and many teachers today use his sets of preludes and fugues to teach keyboard technique. His fugues are especially useful in developing voicing, or the ability to make one phrase or melody stand out over another that is being played simultaneously.

Now every morning at 8am (Greenwich time), the BBC Radio 3 brings the general public one of J.S. Bach's 48 preludes and fugues. Though The 48 at 8 program is nearly 2/3s over, listeners can still listen till January 17, 2008.

For more information, or to listen online, please visit the BBC Radio 3 website.