by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ENTRIES:
. Locals Gabriella Haigh, Randall Fusco, and Joela Jones featured on Charnofksy’s radio show
. Girls join John’s choir at Cambridge U., new comic opera at Glimmerglass, Rhiannon Giddens “reweaves” Silk Road Ensemble, update on Afghanistan Music School
. Almanac honors Canadian composer & environmentalist R. Murray Shafer
ON TODAY:
From 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm you can catch the next edition of “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music,” when host Eric Charnofsky. features Suite: Remembered and Imagined, string quartet by Hannah Lash, Messiaen’s Sept Haïkaï featuring pianist Joela Jones and the Cleveland Orchestra, String Quartet #3 “Tapas” by Marc Mellits, a symphony titled “The Rescuing of Andromeda by Perseus” by Dittersdorf, and Tre Canzoni Spagnole by Elsa Sangiacomo Respighi, featuring NE Ohio-native performers Gabrielle Haigh (soprano) and Randall Fusco (piano). WRUW, Case Western Reserve University. Click here to listen to the internet feed.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Breaking a 350-year-old tradition, three girls were recently admitted to the celebrated Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge. While other Anglican chapel, cathedral, and church choirs are setting up parallel opportunities for girls, John’s choirmaster Andrew Nethsingha decided to mix the young voices who join undergraduate countertenors, tenors, and basses to sing daily chapel services.
Nethsingha, who will take up a new job at Westminster Abbey in the new year, talked to The New York Times about responses he’s received about the change. “At least one part of the choral world isn’t deliberating the implications of mixing: the children doing the singing. Last year, when Nethsingha told his boys that girls would be joining them, he said he braced himself for a ‘barrage of complaints.’ Instead, the boys asked just four practical questions — including one about whether they had sufficient toilets for new joiners — then ‘went bouncing off to their lessons,’ Nethsingha said. ‘They didn’t have any of the baggage that adults have,” he added. Read the story here. (Photo note: New choristers receive their white surplices after passing their probationary period.)
Glimmerglass Opera has addressed the dearth of comic opera titles in the repertoire by launching its own “jukebox” opera, repurposing music by Rossini for Tenor Overboard. In a New York Times article, music director Joseph Colaneri said that “Fans should be reassured that they will laugh with Rossini, not at him. ‘We are seeking to perform these pieces with all the musical integrity necessary to make them come off. We’re taking it all musically very seriously, and putting a spin on it.” Read the article here.
Oberlin graduate Rhiannon Giddens, who took over direction of the Silk Road Ensemble from its founder, Yo Yo Ma, is reweaving the group for its second iteration. Ma told Washington Post critic Michael Andor Broudeur that ‘She’s an original thinker, and she’s also a fantastic communicator with oodles of talent. I’m now a listener, an appreciator. I want to see what new people she brings on, I want to see how organizationally it will change. I’m really curious! I’m a fan.’ Read the article here.
INTERESTING READ:
“The students of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music fled after the Taliban seized power. Now they are trying to remake their school, and their dreams, in Portugal.” Read the New York Times article here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today we celebrate World Listening Day created in honor of Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist Raymond Murray Schafer who was born on July 18, 1933 in Sarnia, Ontario.
Administered by the World Listening Project, the goal is to educate and raise awareness of our sonic environment both as a source of information and aesthetic enjoyment. In addition to his World Soundscape Project, Schafer also coined the term schizophonia which he used to describe the splitting of an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction.
In 1987 he was the recipient of the first Glenn Gould Prize. His honors list includes two JUNO Awards, the Walter Carsen Prize, and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts. In 2013, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada “for his contributions as an internationally renowned composer of contemporary music, and for his groundbreaking work in acoustic ecology.
In 2003 Schafer served as artistic director of Coimbra Vibra! In Coimbra, Portugal, which celebrated music and the acoustic environment and attracted 1200 musicians and over 10000 spectators. Schafer was also a champion of graphic notation. He died of complications of Alzheimer’s on August 14, 2021.
