The Classical Thread.

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zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

So apparently Beck and a bunch of artists (?) have remixed a bunch of Philip Glass? Anyone hear any of this yet?

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 18:53

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 07:09

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Just got to perform all five of Benjamin Britten's Canticles last Sunday. I still maintain that the second one is the most profound and perfect piece of vocal music ever written. It's actually brilliant. Two voices in close harmony creating the voice of God over a simple two-note piano figure and then a little mini opera followed by a beautiful epilogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6pC8XmK3jk (not me)

But I bet it would be particularly effective with a treble singer. I performed it with a mezzo. Got to sing with a proper counter tenor on Canticle IV too, which is also a very, very cool piece. Made for a perfect, hour-long program.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 00:38

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

As a music teacher, I get anxious wondering if I have everything ready for my concerts. This article was like a full blown panic attack every paragraph.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2017/09/13/ambitious-rhode-island-music-fest-ends-chaos/8haudXCj8N05mbm0G63mtI/story.html

quote:

Ambitious Rhode Island music fest ends in failure of �epic proportions�

For a first-time festival, the Newport Contemporary Music Series boasted a program that might make even Tanglewood blush: a star-studded lineup featuring appearances by Philip Glass, four-time Academy Award winner Andr� Previn, and �Lord of the Rings� composer Howard Shore.

The festival hired more than 100 professional musicians to form the Newport Contemporary Arts Orchestra, which over six weeks starting in July was to perform challenging works by some of the titans of contemporary music, including a Previn piece commissioned specially for the occasion.

The man behind it all: Paul Van Anglen, a 25-year-old impresario who managed to present just three concerts before his grand dream cratered amid charges of broken promises, rank amateurism, and an estimated $120,000 in unpaid orchestra musicians fees, plus tens of thousands more for unpaid soloists and other costs.

�This is probably the greatest amateur act the union has ever seen,� said John �Bebo� Shiu, a director on the board of the Boston Musicians Association.

Kate Foss, a bass player from Quincy, called it a failure of �epic proportions that will go down in the Boston freelancing lore of nonpaying gigs.�

Van Anglen, a Portsmouth native who now lives at his mother�s Rhode Island home and offers his services online as a composer for hire, said the festival imploded after key donors failed to deliver.

�[I]t is nothing less than extremely depressing to have to wake up in the morning every day knowing that the series had the outcome that it had,� Van Anglen said via e-mail. �I am doing everything I can to try and right the ship.�

How did it founder?

For starters, Van Anglen tried to net Glass, whose propulsive works have made him perhaps today�s most celebrated living composer. Glass�s producer said she negotiated a $75,000 contract last September with Newport Contemporary Arts Inc., the nonprofit presenting the festival. The Glass engagement was meant to be a weekend celebration of the composer�s 80th birthday featuring performances and talks with Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble.

But the trouble began in October, when Van Anglen missed his first payment, said Linda Brumbach, founder of the production company staging the Glass concerts. Brumbach let it slide after Van Anglen assured her everything was on track.

But another red flag appeared when Van Anglen failed to secure the large concert venues they�d discussed. His solution: Hold the concerts at the Rogers High School auditorium in Newport.

�I don�t usually have the Philip Glass Ensemble performing in a high school auditorium, so I was concerned,� said Brumbach, who sent her team for a site visit in May. �Paul didn�t show up for this meeting.�

Van Anglen soon missed his second advance payment, which prompted Brumbach to pull Glass from the series. She said that she has since written Van Anglen several letters, requesting a cancellation fee.

�He stopped communicating with me altogether,� said Brumbach, who said she�s personally out $15,000 after compensating her team for work they did or gave up to participate. �It was a huge loss.�

Van Anglen declined to discuss the Glass situation in detail, saying he didn�t feel his presence was needed at the site visit and referring a question about the Glass payments to his lawyer, who did not respond to a request for comment.

At the festival�s inaugural concert, Van Anglen was slated to conduct a program including the world premiere of Previn�s �Almost an Overture� and Aaron Copland�s �Appalachian Spring.�

�He chose really challenging pieces,� said Melody Giron, a New York cellist, whose first inkling that something was off came when she didn�t receive sheet music before rehearsals.

But the real shock came when they arrived for rehearsal to find the stage in disarray, missing chairs and music stands. Musicians, some of whom had traveled from as far as Florida, said Van Anglen didn�t even take time to introduce himself to the orchestra.

It went downhill from there.

�He would get lost in very simple things,� said Boston area violist Alexander Vavilov. �His beat was really swimming, really unsteady. We had to ignore him, essentially.�

Musicians said they began whispering meter counts.

�He couldn�t count to four sometimes,� Foss said. �It was the most inept conducting I�ve probably ever seen, and that�s counting grad students.�

The players said they managed to get through the July 1 concert, but only after they cut large sections of �Appalachian Spring� from the program.

�We ended up just doing the end of it,� said Beth Welty, a violinist from Waltham. �He was like a deer in the headlights.�

Although Previn did not appear at the concert, a representative for his publisher said that it �had nothing to do with [the festival],� which had paid him for the commission.

Meanwhile, Van Anglen, who says he studied music in France, blamed his difficulties at the podium on the combined stress of conducting while managing the rest of the festival.

�It�s hard to focus on all those things at once,� said Van Anglen, who was initially scheduled to conduct all of the concerts.

But Van Anglen said an even bigger problem was brewing: A donor, who he said promised a large check, was failing to deliver. �They didn�t at the last second,� said Van Anglen, who declined to identify the donor.

Meanwhile, concertmaster Harris Shilakowsky, who as the festival�s contractor recruited orchestral musicians and served as personnel manager, told musicians they�d have to wait to be paid.

�After the concert I said [to Van Anglen], you�ve got to give me a check,� said Shilakowsky, a violinist. �He said he didn�t have his checkbook.�

Shilakowsky said Van Anglen wrote him a check the following morning for $47,000, which he deposited in his own account.

Shilakowsky repeatedly assured musicians by e-mail that payment was just around the corner, blaming the July 4 holiday and �new banking regulations . . . which create holds and delays on the transmission of funds.�

The check ultimately didn�t clear, said Shilakowsky: It either bounced or was canceled.

At one point Van Anglen did pay Shilakowsky around $14,000, and in late July Shilakowsky wrote musicians that he had �just confirmed the transfer� of the remaining funds to pay them.

�That was an error,� Shilakowsky said. �I misstated myself, and I am embarrassed about that.� Shilakowsky said he�s received around $7,500 for his work on the series and is still owed about $6,000. He said he�s paid a handful of musicians a total of around $6,500.

Meanwhile, the festival ground on with a July 15 concert featuring soloists from the New York-based International Contemporary Ensemble. Ross Karre, co-artistic director of the ensemble, said his group is still awaiting payment for the show.

Several orchestra musicians began reaching out to the Boston union for help. They discovered that although they believed they were signing a union musician�s contract � the contracts mentioned union requirements and promised payments to a union pension fund � Newport was not a union gig.

Edward Plunkett, vice president of the Providence Federation of Musicians, said it was up to the contractor to file with the union. �With a project of this magnitude, not to have a [union] contract under circumstances like that seems terribly na�ve,� he said.

Shilakowsky, who previously ran the Bristol Chamber Orchestra (�never missed a payroll�), called the union issue a mistake.

�I�ve screwed up on a couple of things,� he said. �It was supposed to be a union job.�

As Van Anglen�s debts grew, tensions reached a boiling point at a rehearsal in late July when someone asked about the missing payments.

�What ensued was an hour I can�t even explain,� Giron said. �[Shilakowsky] was super upset � crying, yelling. They�re yelling at each other. [Van Anglen] starts crying. . . . It was like �Mozart in the Jungle� in real life.�

Finally someone put the question to Van Anglen: �Do you have the ability to pay us?� recalled Shilakowsky. �He looked right at everybody and said: �Absolutely.��

Some musicians walked out, but the young impresario�s assurance convinced many in the orchestra to go on � so long as they were paid before the concert, which was to feature an appearance by �Lord of the Rings� composer Shore.

When the musicians returned to rehearse the following morning, however, Van Anglen wasn�t there. Calls and texts went unanswered. He didn�t respond to a Facebook message.

Finally, Shilakowsky received a text, which he read aloud: �Let the musicians go: I don�t have the money to pay them if we proceed,� recalled Giron. �We�re all just like: Are you kidding me?�

Late that evening, Van Anglen sent a long, apologetic note to the musicians, acknowledging that �people are upset they have not been payed yet (and rightly so).�

�I can fully understand if this comes across as completely dysfunctional and a joke,� he continued. �I personally feel that I have completely failed in what I was promising to the community, what I was promising to you as musicians, and what I was promising the visiting artists and composers. I don�t think I could possibly be more ashamed.�

Orchestra musicians said they�ve had very little communication since from Van Anglen, and none of those contacted by the Globe said they�d been paid since the festival�s demise.

Roughly 10 musicians have filed small-claims suits against Van Anglen, and Shiu, whose Boston union is helping members cover costs, said many more plan to file.

Van Anglen said he took no money for his work on the festival and sold about 330 tickets for the three concerts he staged. He said he�s doing odd jobs, trying to raise money, and hoping to reschedule the canceled shows �after everything is taken care of.�

�It�s basically going to come from private donors or some kind of mix between private donors and a bank loan,� he said. �I would hope to [make payment] in the next month or so, but I�m not 100 percent on that.�

I don't even know where to start or what parts to bold because everything is just... :psyduck:

I don't want to drag this kid's name through the mud because the dude's pretty hosed every which way, but...dude. I mean, I got to perform with a professional orchestra once and it was intimidating as hell because those guys come to loving play (and get paid big money) so you better have your poo poo together, but this guy was organizing everything AND conducting?? What do you even cut from Appalachian Spring? You're going to get Philip Glass AND Howard Shore? Also lol at $75,000 for Philip Glass, I mean, come on. I wonder how much that Andre Previn commission cost. And then imagine rehearsing beautiful Appalachian Spring and somebody just raises their hand and goes: "Hey where's our money??"

Anyway, I just needed others to experience the rollercoaster of emotions I did when reading this article.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 13:51

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

It sounds like he started a nonprofit, put up a flashy website, and gave the artists/musicians a great sales pitch, along with hiring a reputable concertmaster/personnel manager with connections in New England. Rhode Island has a pretty happening arts scene so it's not that outlandish that some pop-up would come along and put on a series of concerts. What they didn't know was that the organizer had no experience doing any of this. If he had any sense, he would have separated the administrative and artistic teams instead of shouldering it all himself, that's really standard procedure. I imagine being a nonprofit he's filed Chapter 11, but his reputation as some sort of impresario is definitely ruined before his career even started. Although, someone in the comments in the Boston Herald mentioned that Wagner went bankrupt around the same age, so hope springs eternal I guess!

re: Conducting, I ended up on the spot sight-reading some of Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy this summer and at some point you just conduct beat patterns through the changing meters and give the players something clear to follow. Seasoned musicians will be subdividing like crazy anyway. OTOH, contemporary, ESPECIALLY new music, you need to be clear as hell because players have no frame of reference. But if you're constantly chasing down donors, that eats into valuable time better spent on score study.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2017 20:16

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

The March Hare posted:

Hi thread, I've been really enjoying Veljo Tormis for the past week or so after learning that he had passed earlier this year and wanting to get more of a feel for him. He did a lot of work from and or inspired by Finnish epics (I think he was Estonian though), but the songs I've been listening to so far all have a really great feel to them. Has been nice to listen to some contemporary (western) choral music that isn't explicitly in the Christian tradition and or corny as gently caress. Anyone else have maybe some slightly more fringe stuff they could share that is in a similar vein?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJMLIZjpKmw

This isn't really in a similar vein and I have no idea if this is up your alley, but this old dude is the poo poo and is still making music.

Epitaph For Moonlight - R. Murray Schafer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzUXzu7JYFc

Lots of cool tone clusters and his scores are awesome to look at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOlxuXHWfHw

# ¿ Oct 3, 2017 01:08

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Saw Britten's War Requiem performed tonight and the performance was sadly underwhelming... it just wasn't as visceral as it should have been, especially the tenor soloist and the choir. The baritone was world class though and the children's choir was great too. Oh well, it's a huge undertaking, so kudos to them. It just didn't grab me like I thought it would.

Also I never noticed how Britten quotes himself during the Abraham and Isaac bit. Goddamn Britten is good.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2017 05:03

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

I just sang Mahler 2 and that cadence at the end is loving massive, Goddamn.

# ¿ May 4, 2018 00:29

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Happy 100th birthday, Leonard Bernstein.

Mambo and America are two of the most exciting dance sequences on film. West Side Story is a beautiful movie, I could pause the movie any moment and make a poster out of it and put it on my wall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e2igZexpMs

I love how in Mambo the dance begins with the squarest music possible. Also that camera movement when Riff throws his jacket is so good. Mambo loving rocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kokbJvSEMUY

Here's Dudamel's take on Mambo (the tempo marking in the score is simply "fast")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEs8yqhavtI

I love Jose Carerras, but casting him as Tony in the WSS recording with Bernstein is kind of bananas. Makes for some funny outtakes though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoKZlcidbms

Here's a nice arrangement of Simple Song from his Mass that I did in the Spring. It's very beautiful. His Mass has some really cool moments, though I never really cared for the staging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr6XgVJMsWk

And here's the man himself conducting the overture to Candide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn5bhJ5YX6U

From Candide, Make Our Garden Grow with Jerry Hadley, Renee Fleming, Samuel Ramey, and Frederica von Stade (loving hell, that's an amazing cast).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHlnE25aJbU

If anybody is new to classical music, his Young People's Concerts are a great primer for ANY age. There's a whole trove of Bernstein videos on YouTube from his Harvard lectures to conducting masterclasses.

Thanks, Lenny.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2018 20:20

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Not always thrilled by Haydn but I recently performed the Harmoniemesse which has some nice moments in it. Some of those fugues are pretty wicked.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 21:42

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

BWV posted:

The Bayreuth festival is currently streaming their production of Tannhauser. I find it a bit of a snooze fest but they set design/staging is loving wild and they are currently singing in a burger king with a prostitute, some clowns and a little person.

https://www.br-klassik.de/concert/ausstrahlung-1816820.html

German opera staging is loving crazy. I saw the ring cycle when I lived in Hannover and it was buckwild. The Valkyrie was set in suburbia and the valkyries were on motorcycles, Wotan was jogging in shorts and t-shirt with a bunch of bodyguards and there were a ton of naked people... but I kept looking at the house Siegfried was in and there was this weird growth on the ceiling, and I was like... wtf is that, that kind of looks like... is that... a vagina?? And then Siegfried pulls the sword from it and all this green goop falls out on him and he's singing covered in this vagina goop and Act 1 ends and the whole theater loving erupts in boos and jeers like Rite of Spring style, it was nuts.

Boheme was set on the moon, Rigoletto gave birth to his daughter... I've seen some poo poo, man.

ahahah, found a picture

# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 13:08

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Goddamn that Amazon commercial with Ave Maria drives me loving bananas with her American Rs.

Not as bad as that car commercial with Der H�lle Rache I guess.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2019 00:56

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Yeah, it's real good. I wish I was a bass so I could sing all the bass arias.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiLJC6p3sjM

John Mark Ainsley loving shreds this though. The tempo is ridiculous, but whatever. His coloratura is insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8PBKf2m5ps

# ¿ Nov 6, 2019 04:18

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

That's a bummer. I enjoy watching him conduct, very much in control but still expressive. He made some lovely comments about women conductors, which was a bummer coming from someone like him, but he did kind of walk it back.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2019 21:30

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

The Met is streaming operas for free every day until they reopen and they're available for 20 hours after the broadcast. Tonight is Carmen and tomorrow is Boheme. Sunday is Yevgeny Onegin conducted by Valery Gergiev :getin:

They're all old broadcasts but still nice if you haven't seen them yet, or even if you have.

Unfortunately they're website's getting hammered and all I'm getting is 503 lol

# ¿ Mar 17, 2020 01:42

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Trying to watch it and it should be available for another 2 hours, but it keeps bringing me to a bunch of previews and not the full stream... I've gotten it to work before, anyone see this?

Edit: nm they're not previews, it's the tracklist lol I'm dumb

zenguitarman fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Mar 18, 2020

# ¿ Mar 18, 2020 18:31

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

gently caress

https://operawire.com/metropolitan-...7zRuW2bnqrcDaMc

quote:

The Metropolitan Opera has laid off all of its union employees.

According to NPR�s Anastasia Tsioulcas, this includes musicians and chorus members (OperaWire has reached out to the Met for further comment and will update this story with any new developments).

This comes on the heels of another report from Middle-Class Artist stating that the company would not be compensating its contracted soloists; in this latter report, the Met invoked the Force Majeure clause in its contracts with regards to these cancelations (Middle-Class Artist also has a piece on how the Met Opera was helped by artists taking pay cuts on two separate occasions when the company was facing financial straits). A recent NPR article noted that Met Opera General Manager Peter Gelb made an estimated $2.17 million during the company�s previous financial year. He also signed a contract extension in late 2019 to stay on until 2027.

The company has not yet confirmed the status of its 2019-20 season and whether it will be completed, though this latest situation suggests that there won�t be more opera come April. The Met has officially closed its doors through March 31, but several companies around the world are already taking precautions of shutting down into the summer. The Dallas Opera recently announced that it was done with the 2019-20 season, while the Glyndebourne Festival noted that instead of opening in May, it was pushing back the start of its 2020 festival in July.

The Met Opera recently kicked off a nightly online streaming service in which it allows audiences to check out performances from its Live in HD archives.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2020 17:36

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Man Musk posted:

https://twitter.com/richardscheinin/status/1263167084999045120?s=21

I mean are we talking Bitches Brew Miles or Someday My Prince Will Come Miles? Also what era Beethoven, because I'd think they get down with the presto from op 131. Seeing a lot of holes in this study.

# ¿ May 21, 2020 15:53

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Hieronymus Bosch Naked Bum Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnrICy3Bc2U

Quite beautiful, would program it with Mozart's Leck Mich Im Arsch for a nice evening of butt music.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 19:02

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

I've been in multiple productions of The Magic Flute, in English and in German, and I still don't know what the gently caress it's about.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 13:32

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

But also When The Foeman Bares His Steel is one of the great opera choruses, so just listen to some G&S too, like the Kevin Kline/Angela Lansbury Pirates of Penzance movie.

Actually, there's a lot of great opera in English too. The Crucible by Robert Ward is particularly riveting, especially when Judge Danforth shows up. Benjamin Britten also was a prolific composer in opera (ymmv on Peter Pears' voice though). Albert Herring is funny, Peter Grimes is dark, and A Midsummer's Night Dream is late period Britten strange and beautiful.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 13:55

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Re: Christmas stuff, try looking for specific vocal ensembles, like the St. Olaf Choir. They'll have a bunch of Christmas albums that have the whole spectrum of music from early music to spirituals.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2021 04:44

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

The war in Ukraine is hitting the classical music world. Anna Netrebko leaves the Met and Valery Gergiev is losing gigs left and right. Ballsy of the Met, really. Netrebko is one of the biggest opera singers of the 21st century, but she's said some pretty weird poo poo about Putin in the past. Gergiev has been much more in the mix with Russian politics and art for a long time.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2022 02:13

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

The tenors in No. 2 get to sing the 3rd in that Eb major chord during "Auferstehen - Ja, Auferstehen!" and it feels soooooooooooooo good.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2023 05:02

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

I've posted about seeing Wagner enough in this thread, but yes, hearing the orchestra begin a Wagner opera is chilling.

I got to sing in the chorus for Verdi's Requiem this weekend. That final fugue slaps so hard, but there are lots of little sublime moments throughout besides the Dies Irae. The brass during the Tuba Mirum and before the mezzo solo in the Dies Irae is unreal.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2023 13:10

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

I would always prefer to play in the pit than be on stage. Maybe I should properly learn to play another instrument, but those pit books are tough.

That said, I'm not the biggest Broadway consumer, but I saw Wicked while I was in NYC last weekend and it was really, really, really good. Like, I knew some of the songs, but it just pressed all of the right buttons for me. Amazing show.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2023 15:14

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

Just sang Turandot and man it kinda takes a dive where Puccini died, doesn't it. Otherwise, goddamn that's some good music.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2023 05:14

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

That piano postlude at the end gets me every time.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2023 12:01

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

saladscooper posted:

lol i just got done writing a paper about dichterliebe

good luck, may your A on "herzen" be blessed

Yo, did your paper include this

because what the gently caress, Robert. Why?? Why did you throw that Eb next to the D? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfL5D_MN5bE

My favorite.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2023 03:08

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 07:09

zenguitarman: Apr 6, 2009; Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather

I have a bunch of his weird rear end tunes in my choral library at school, maybe I'll program something by him this spring. RIP

# ¿ Jan 19, 2024 00:58

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > The Classical Thread.