Alba, Italy Music Festival

I am currently working with the Artistic Director at SMCM on getting together music students for our annual two week Music Festival in Alba, Italy. This is the 10th season, and my 6th time traveling to Alba.

To give you some background:

The Alba Music Festival is an international music festival that takes place over a dozen days at the end of May (sometimes spilling a few days into June). The City of Alba and faculty at St. Mary’s College of Maryland join forces with renowned artists and ensembles from around the world and a cohort of students to create a festival of between twenty and twenty-five orchestral, chamber and solo concerts throughout the city and the immediate surrounding region.  The Artistic Directors for the Alba Music Festival are Larry Vote, Jeff Silberschlag, and Giuseppe Nova.

A partial list of the past guests of the festival includes:

Jean-Jacques Balet, pno (Switzerland)
Joe Burnam, trb (Italy)
Zachary Borachevsky, tenor (USA)
Sylvano Bussotti, composer (Italy)
Davide Cabassi, pno (Italy)
Bruno Canino, pno (Italy)
Ercole Cerreta, tpt (Italy)
Giorgio Costa, pno (Italy)
Ning Feng, vn (China)
Catrin Finch, harp (England)
Robert Gibson, composer (USA)
Jonathan Haas, perc (New York)
Mark Hill, ob (USA)
Michele Johnson, sop (USA)
Louis Karchin, composer (USA)
Hilary Kole, jazz singer (USA)
Boris Kralijevic, pno (Montenegro)
Maxence Larrieu, fl (France)
Antonello Lerda, composer (Italy)
Federico Longhi, baritone (Italy)
Nicholas Masters, baritone (USA)
Christopher Muscat, composer (Malta)
Jeffrey Mumford, composer (USA)
Aiman Mussakhajayeva, vn (Kazakhstan)

Valery Oistrakh, vn (Russia)
Yoshimi Oshima, fl (Japan)
Riccardo Piacentini, composer/pno (Italy)
Giacomo Platini, composer (Italy)
Giampiero Sobino, cl (Italy)
Istvan Vardal, vc (Hungary)
Rino Vernizzi, bn (Italy)
Olivia Vote, mezzo sop (USA)
John Wallace, tpt (Scotland)
Scott Wheeler, composer (USA)
Haydn Trio Eisenstadt (Austria)
Bulgarian Philharmonic
Quartetto Cermona
Roumanian State Orchestra
Ni Ensemble (Scotland)
Royal Conservatory Glasgow Chamber Orch (Scotland)
Berlin Philharmoniker String Quintet (Germany)
Prague Virtuosi (Czech Republic)
Salzburg Chamber Soloists (Austria)
I Solisti di La Scala (Italy)

Recent orchestral and chorus-with-orchestra concerts, with students added as performers into the professional ensembles, have included Dvorak’s 8th Symphony, Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony, the Requiems of Verdi and Brahms, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mahler’s 4th Symphony, and several world premieres. It is safe to say that this is a top of the line International Music Festival. Further, our festival attracts more than 10,000 people each year and has been called “the little Spoleto of Piemonte” (la Repubblica).

So, my job as of now has been the prep for this coming season. I am currently working with the travel agency and booking flights for students and faculty. Another huge job includes being the librarian. I have been purchasing and renting music from various music publishers (national and international) and will make sure that everything travels well.

There are many steps, and I cannot wait until I am sitting outside at a cafe with an espresso (or two) and brioche. Until then, I look forward to the arriving time in Turin to be…

 

This is the link to the Festivals website. There is an Italian and English version.

Production for SMCM Choir and Orchestra Concert

It’s been a while since the last post, so I will try to catch up with some short ones while still pressed for time.

April 6, 2013:

The SMCM Choir and Orchestra had a concert at Leonardtown High School (L.H.S.) and presented a pretty demanding program for all of those involved. I sat in for Principal Trombone and we played

Rimsky-Korsakov’s -Capriccio espanol

Stravinsky’s -Firebird 1919 Suite (I nailed the trombone gliss)

Mozart’s -Requiem with Guest Soloists:

Joan McFarland, soprano; Linda Maguire, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Baumgardner, tenor; Jeffery Tarr, bass (Tuba Mirum with Mr. Tarr also went well).

For this concert, like the one we played at Great Mills High School, I reserved the venue, worked with the band director and events coordinator at L.H.S. for equipment needs, scheduled the piano tuner, advised interns on stage set-up, contacted the guest artists for bio information and schedule of payment, advertised for the concert through school wide email blasts and social media, and finally also produced the programs .

Joan McFarland, soprano

Jeffery Tarr, bass

Linda Maguire, mezzo-soprano

Joshua Baumgardner, tenor

Orchestra Musician: It's Not a Cush Job

Reblogged from Brian Lauritzen:

• 
• 
• 
• 

A couple of days ago, an article appeared in Bloomberg that was so misinformed, so short-sighted, so petty, so ignorant, and so utterly ridiculous that to let it go unchallenged would be irresponsible.

The article came from Manuela Hoelterhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor for Bloomberg Muse and author of Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli…

Read more… 1,095 more words

A great piece on the critique of a petty article describing the situation happening at the San Francisco Symphony. A trustworthy post.

“Donor Fatigue” an Excuse for Poor Fundraising Practices – NPQ – Nonprofit Quarterly

GREAT article on ‘Donor Fatigue.’ “Its not the asking that fatigues me. I’m tired of the insufficient love I get from you.” http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/management/21961-donor-fatigue-an-excuse-for-poor-fundraising-practices.html

San Francisco Cancelled East Coast Tour

From the press release that came out today, the San Francisco Symphony has cancelled their three city east coast tour. They were supposed to depart for these concerts this coming Thursday.

The Musicians of the symphony had rejected the federal mediator’s proposal to resume playing concerts while the collective bargaining agreements continue. The tour was ment to include Carnegie Hall on March 20 and 21, New Jersey Performing Arts Center on March 22, and The Kennedy Center on March 23. A quote from the San Francisco press release describes the money issue at hand:

Several proposals by the administration have been rejected by the musicians’ union.  The most recent proposal offered increases in musician compensation to achieve a new annual minimum salary of $145,979 with annual increases of 1% and 2% for the latest two-year proposal.  Contractual benefits also included a $74,000 maximum annual pension, 10 weeks paid vacation, and full coverage health care plan options with no monthly premium contributions for musicians and their families for three of the four options.  Additional compensation for most active musicians also includes radio payments, over-scale, and seniority pay which raises the current average pay for SFS musicians to over $165,000.

I’d like to say this is extremely interesting process to follow. I think that when all of this information that comes out as a result of an organizations issues, it makes them more transparant to the public than during a well functioning year, unfortunately. This is an extremely sad process however, and I am rooting for the musicians and management to come to an agreement soon. I am glad they are fighting and sticking ground.

Also, I am personally a bit annoyed at this issue in particular because I had bought two tickets to see their performance of Mahler’s 9th at the Kennedy Center. Now, I’ll probably end up staying home for a lazy Saturday night!

Thanks a lot…

Kurt Vonnegut

Just a great quote about the arts from his book “A Man Without A Country.” Pretty inspiring.

P.S. It is also interesting to note that a lot of people take out the beginning of the actual sentence, which is, “If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay…” How do you feel about that?

Emerging Arts Leaders: Keep the High Energy and Flow of Ideas

Even though there a quite a number of orchestras with the spot light on them over their financial troubles and labor disputes, it is probably the most exciting time to be an emerging leader in this “music world.”

Even still, we have many orchestras-generally smaller ones-that continue to thrive. In that sense, it almost seems like a case of a lot of failing name brand business, but the guys over in their apartment  producing a successful start-up company are hitting the ground running.

I feel like many emerging arts leaders can look at their roles in any organization they are in and actually see the environment changing.  The work is messy, uneven, and different everywhere you go, giving it reason why this is the most innovative time this field has seen in 20 years. If you love what you do, put in the extra time, ask questions, and continue to think in innovative ways for problem solving (but no quick fixes) like the start-up guys, I think you can learn a lot, and go far.

Orchestras are getting more community oriented; meaning less of the classic transactional based processes, and steering at more ways to look at creative programing and community interactions i.e. social media and simultaneous streams of live concerts. This is why I think that the future is still looking bright for this field. There are so many opportunities to work together to move into an era that is so diverse, that there is no way that this music scene will crumble. Too many people are already showing they care.