Classical Music

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.