Paging All Musicians
Das Lied von der Cellphone
Three upcoming initiatives are casting the widest possible nets for emerging musical talent. In
Despite a 2003 law by the New York City Council banning the use of cellphones in performance halls, few concerts actually come off without electronic accents. Performers generally ignore the interruption, though, “because addressing it is sometimes worse than the disturbance itself.” This is what Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic, told his January 10 audience after stopping the orchestra thirteen bars before the end of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony because of a cellphone ring in the front row that persisted for six minutes. The incident was widely discussed—everywhere from Philadelphia composer Daniel Dorff ’s tweet “Changed my ringtone to play #Mahler 9 just in case” to YouTube recordings of Mahler’s Ninth with the ringtone superimposed. The patron, who later apologized, has been an orchestra subscriber for twenty years; he explained that he had gotten an iPhone the day before and was mortified to have upset “the very enduring and important bond between the audience and the performers,” he later told The New York Times.
January, Carnegie Hall announced the first-ever National Youth Orchestra of the U.S.A., which will meet for three weeks each summer beginning in 2013, before heading off to Washington, D.C.; Moscow; St. Petersburg; and London under the direction of Valery Gergiev. Carnegie is accepting audition videos from musicians ages 16 to 19 at carnegiehall.org/nyousa from June 1 through November 1. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is also accepting video applications for a new concerto competition, with the winner set to receive $10,000 and a performance with the PSO at Heinz Hall in November or December. While the date to submit videos, March 22, has passed, the public can pick favorites from twenty semifinalists through April 30. The top four finalists will audition in person for Pittsburgh Symphony Music Director Manfred Honeck on June 11. Finally, composer Lisa Bielawa is hoping to showcase some 600 amateur musicians in a September 2012 performance of her 60-minute piece Tempelhof Broadcast at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, site of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift. A call for musician-participants is included on the project’s tumblr site, tempelhofbroadcast.tumblr.com/news.
Ice, Ice, Baby Courtesy The Juilliard School
americanorchestras.org
Chronic Creative
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Alexander Mickelthwate during the orchestra’s 2012 New Music Festival
For its 21st annual New Music Festival, from January 28 to February 3, Canada’s Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra looked north—way north, to Iceland. Co-curated by WSO Music Director Alexander Mickelthwate and Composer-in-Residence Vincent Ho, the event featured works by Icelandic composers Kjartan Sveinsson, Daníel Bjarnason, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Atli Heimir Sveinsson, among other composers. The final tally: five world, four North American, and three Canadian premieres, as well as recent works by the likes of Kaija Saariaho and Nico Muhly. Sponsored by IMRIS, the festival attracted more than 8,000 new-music fans, including many from Winnipeg’s Icelandic community. Several of the concerts are available online; visit the Winnipeg Symphony’s website for links. In May of 2014, look for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as part of Spring for Music, the annual festival that spotlights highly creative programming at North American orchestras.
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