In July 2011, a successful Mexican musician residing in Germany was abducted by gunmen while on holiday in northern Mexico.
36-year-old Rodolfo Cazares is a Mexican pianist and symphony conductor, leader of the Bremerhaven city orchestra in Germany.
While visiting his parents in northern Mexico, Rodolfo Cazares was sleeping in bed with his wife when masked gunmen burst into the house and shook them awake. Within hours, the gunmen kidnapped 18 members of the same family. The children and the conductor’s wife Ludivine Barbier were released a few days after the crime.
RTWT and if you want to read more there are links below that article.
With their hands full of flutes, violins, violas, oboes, mallets and trombones, the 60-plus symphony members are left with their feet to keep time.
It’s a tangle of tapping sandals, hiking boots and Converse All-Stars. One woman taps with the front of her red satin flats, a man across the stage uses the heel of his wing-tips. A few in flip-flops tap with just their big toes, and a violinist in the throes of a finale arches her feet like a ballerina.
Well, if they are all tapping they have a nice additional rhythm section there, eh? ;-)
“Ahhh … there’s a skill to this conducting malarky.”
(Warning: I think there’s one f-bomb. And yes, I mean “think” … I can’t hear it clearly. Stupid ears. And there are two s**ts there too. So if your ears hurt from this sort of thing, skip it!)
Stephen P Brown today announced that he will give away closely-held secrets of the music conducting profession to more than 100 radio listeners who may not be regular classical music fans. Why would anyone want to give away secrets for free? “It’s simple,” says Brown, Artistic Director of the Jubilee Orchestra in New York City and now a resident in the Tampa Bay area. “Once people understand that there is much more to music than just the music, they’re going to tell their friends about it. Plus, they can discover how to truly experience live music in ways they may have forgotten or never even experienced before.”
Who knew there were “closely-held secrets”, anyway?
Yep. It can happen to anyone. But first Muti and now this:
The Royal Opera House auditorium was cleared last night after 83-year-old conductor Sir Colin Davis suffered a fall as he mounted the podium steps.
Orchestra members rushed to his aid and an ambulance was called when Sir Colin tripped and tumbled, bashing the back of his head, as he prepared to conduct Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The audience saw him lying on the floor, but the paramedics were not needed and he stood and walked from the pit himself.
He drank some water and a message was broadcast throughout the Covent Garden building that he was fine. But it was decided as a precaution that David Syrus, who was on hand and already scheduled to conduct performances of the opera next week, should take over.
At his home in Highbury today, Sir Colin told the Standard: “I’m fine. I have had heart troubles. It’s been a bad year on the whole, but I’m still abreast, so to speak.”
Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin, 35, has withdrawn from what were to have been his debut concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, citing “personal reasons.”
Remember when I wrote about the conductor who walked out right before a concert? She’s now been fired. But of course she said she wasn’t coming back if one player wasn’t gone, so I suppose she really quit since he wasn’t removed.
Ugly stuff.
(I went to the orchestra site. It’s rather strange. I couldn’t even find an orchestra roster.)
The principal conductor of Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra has walked out and is refusing to return unless one of her ‘disrespectful’ musicians is removed.
I don’t know the story. I don’t know the conductor, the musicians or the orchestra. I do know other things though.
I know musicians can be horribly disrespectful.
I know conductors can be horribly disrespectful.
I know musicians can play poorly because of disrespect.
I know conductors can conduct poorly (usually because of lack of talent, but not always).
(I know more than that, too. But I’ll stop here.)
It’s a tricky thing, playing for a conductor when one has little or no respect for her. But it does have to be done. I have a few rules for myself when it comes to this. Most of the time I manage to keep them.
The conductor is the boss.
Obey the boss
Don’t talk back
Now inside I might be seething, but I have to play my best no matter who is on the podium. I have to show respect in that I don’t argue. If I do think something is so wrong I struggle horribly doing what he/she asks, I approach that carefully, attempting not to look as if I’m mocking the conductor (so many have such fragile egos, even while they are so egotistical … I guess you have to be quite egotistical to stand in front of a large group and boss ‘em around, eh?).
I try not to say too many negative things about a bad conductor, but I will confess that my colleagues and I do sometimes moan and groan. A lot. Sometimes it’s just necessary to keep our sanity! Really.
So while I don’t know the whole story with Natalia Luis-Bassa and the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra, I do know there are many possibilities to this story. The sad thing is seeing it make the news. We all try to keep things like this very private. No one needs to know the orchestra inside scoop.
But hey … little thought here! … these days people love to air dirty laundry. Other people like to gather ’round to see and hear it. Maybe orchestras should publicly air all of this. Maybe it’ll draw in the crowds, eh? Hmmm. Or maybe not.
I did a little search for the conductor and came up with some videos … (hmmm … an issue with Mr. Oboe there at the beginning?):
In the next video you can see the conductor better as she conducts the “Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra” … hmmm. Anyone else see a problem calling it that? I’ve seen that orchestra before on YouTube, and it appeared to be full of, well, youths. But this?
It appears that this is the era of the young conductor, eh? Young, hip looking conductors. Young, hip looking, male conductors, that is.
I’m trying to imagine SSV announcing a conductor (not that SSV is considering this). Would it be this sort of production? Would our mayor be there? Would there be any sort of crowd? Hmm. I honestly don’t know!
With its continuing focus on youth this season, 17-year-old Ilyich Rivas, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s BSO-Peabody Bruno Walter assistant conductor, will make his subscription concert debut at the Music Center at Strathmore.
Rivas will command the podium, presenting an ambitious evening’s repertoire that showcases Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture,” Mahler’s “Blumine,” the Shostakovich Symphony No. 1 and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Prodigy Markus Groh will perform on piano.
RTWT
I couldn’t find any videos of him conducting, but I found one of him talking …
… and an even younger conductor. (I’d put the video up, but the “embedding is disabled by request” … rats!) Please do watch it! Hmmm. Is someone’s parent a conductor? Seems like maybe. What I like is that he has a tent to retreat into after … don’t you think most conductors should have one?
Not only did illness force Riccardo Muti to withdraw from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Symphony Ball concert Saturday night at Orchestra Hall, it will force the CSO music director to cancel the remainder of his fall residency weeks with the orchestra.
The Italian conductor, 69, is “suffering from extreme gastric distress” and, on the advice of local physicians, “must fly home to Milan to consult with his doctors,” according to a statement released by the orchestra on Sunday. The release did not elaborate on the seriousness of Muti’s condition.
“I cannot express the depth of my regret that I am unable to complete this first residency as music director,” Muti said in a statement. “I have had the privilege of making marvelous music together with this great orchestra, and I am confident that we will continue to do so when I return again.”
Barry Jekowsky, the founder and music director of Walnut Creek’s esteemed California Symphony, will not be at the podium for the 24th-season opener at the Lesher Center on Oct. 3.
The symphony and Jekowsky “are going their separate ways,” according to symphony board President Mike Soza, who confirmed Wednesday to the Contra Costa Times that the symphony had decided to terminate Jekowsky’s contract.
