Like other professional musicians and composers on this board, many are happy to share their accomplishments, but not too loudly. But our very own toledobass (Allan), seems to have an opportunity of a lifetime. He performs for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. Congrats, Allan!
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Seven Picked for 2011 Debut of Annual Orchestra Festival
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By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: April 8, 2009
Not this May, not next May, but in the May after that, Spring for Music, an independent annual festival of North American orchestras at Carnegie Hall, is finally to come to life. Long lead times are nothing new in classical music, but they are not always so acutely felt, since there is usually plenty happening in the meantime.
Here, so far, there are only prospects and plans. On Thursday, the festival's creators will announce the seven orchestras selected from 25 applicants for that first outing of May 6 to 14, 2011. They are the Albany, Atlanta, Dallas, Montreal, Oregon and Toledo Symphony Orchestras and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The Albany, Toledo and Oregon ensembles will be making their Carnegie debuts.
The administrators will also announce a grant of $1 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which they say will ensure the first three festivals.
First made public last June, the series is intended to encourage orchestras to program imaginatively, without regard to marketing considerations. The marketing and ticket sales (with most seats priced at $25, a few at $15) will be handled by the festival.
The programs for 2011 will be announced early that year, when tickets go on sale. But in a conversation on Wednesday the organizers — David V. Foster, president of the management firm Opus 3 Artists; Thomas W. Morris, a former executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the artistic director of the Ojai Festival in California; and Mary Lou Falcone, a public-relations consultant — gave two examples to illustrate the criteria involved in the selection process. The main idea is for the orchestras to present programs that have special meaning for them and speak to their individual missions.
The Dallas Symphony will perform a single work, Steven Stucky's "August 4, 1964," an oratorio with a libretto by Gene Scheer commissioned by the orchestra to commemorate the centenary of Lyndon B. Johnson's birth last year. Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra's new music director, conducted the work's premiere in September, and he will be making his conducting debut at Carnegie. (He played there as a violinist in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.)
In sharpest contrast, the Albany Symphony will present a program of 10 works, with George Tsontakis's "Let the River Be Unbroken" and Copland's "Appalachian Spring" framing eight pieces from its Spirituals Project, contemporary settings of spirituals for baritone and orchestra. David Alan Miller will conduct.
Those two programs will account for 10 of the 12 living composers represented in the festival. They also get as far away as possible from the all too standard concert formula: an overture followed by a concerto followed by a symphony. Mr. Morris, in fact, professes to a perverse pride in the complete absence of a three-work program from the festival.
To minimize any suspicion that the playing field might be tilted in favor of their own clients, the organizers have entrusted the selection entirely to Mr. Morris, who once managed the Boston Symphony as well as the Cleveland Orchestra and whose few clients now include the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is in serious administrative disarray. None of those ensembles are so far represented.
Each festival, the organizers say, will cost about $1.5 million. The Mellon grant — $500,000 of which must be matched 2 to 1, by $1 million from the festival — will contribute significantly to the $4.6 million the project will need to carry the festival through four years.
And the vagaries of the economy? "It's either the worst time to be starting something like this or the best time," Mr. Morris said. One way or the other, a lot of financial water is sure to flow under the bridge in the two years before the first note is sounded.
Well, I've already sent Allan a congratulations PM, but even more is needed, I believe, so:
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Now having been to Carnegie Hall several times myself, but even more having eaten in NYC numerous times, and knowing Allan's loving of food - will he show up for the concert or go off eating in the Big Apple - ;) ;D Dave
P.S. Really, a big 'hand shake' and congrats on an accomplishment that you'll likely remember forever!
Howls of approbation here in the Back Bay!
Quote from: Bogey on April 08, 2009, 07:29:09 PM
Here, so far, there are only prospects and plans. On Thursday, the festival's creators will announce the seven orchestras selected from 25 applicants for that first outing of May 6 to 14, 2011. They are the...Toledo Symphony
Score one for the home team! (http://photos.imageevent.com/sgtrock/ngmg/bUTTHEAD.gif)
Sarge
Congratulations Allan!
This sounds like it will be a wonderful opportunity and experience. What a fantastic idea for a festival, I might add! :)
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Congrats, Allan--that's some pretty good company your band's been included among. I imagine it might bring more attention your way, too, by alerting out-of-towners that Cleveland and Cincinatti aren't the only orchestras in the vicinity. Any idea what your program will include?
Congratulations, Allan! :)
Yay Team! Soon the Toledo Mudhens will be in Yankee Stadium! :o
Maybe selling hot dogs, but by gum some day they'll be there!!! 0:)
Quote from: Cato on April 09, 2009, 06:35:41 AM
Yay Team! Soon the Toledo Mudhens will be in Yankee Stadium! :o
Maybe selling hot dogs, but by gum some day they'll be there!!! 0:)
;D
Tony Packo (http://www.tonypackos.com/index.php) hot dogs in Yankee Stadium?!!!?!!!!!
I don't have any other info other than we're going. I'm sure the details will trickle in over the next few days or so. Once I learn more about what is going on, I'll be sure to post more information.
Thanks very much for the congrats folks.
Allan
I am definitely coming down to New York for that event, Allan!
The hot dogs or me in Carnegie?
Why, you in Carnegie, naturalmente!
( I am not a hot dog man. )
Great news, Allan! (And nudge your conductor to bring that Bruckner 8th. :D)
--Bruce
Bruce, I think the three of us must together find our collective way outside some mugs of beer.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 09, 2009, 08:47:16 AM
Bruce, I think the three of us must together find our collective way outside a mug of beer.
;D
Happy to sign on to
that celebration.
--Bruce
Not until after the concert, of course; why tempt Fate? 8)
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 09, 2009, 08:47:16 AM
Bruce, I think the three of us must together find our collective way outside some mugs of beer.
Wish I could tag along...you guys make a quite a threesome and I'd love to meet you in person. Ah, well...another time perhaps, after the stimulus bill has spurred demand for my peculiar talents. ;)
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 09, 2009, 09:25:38 AM
Wish I could tag along...you guys make a quite a threesome and I'd love to meet you in person. Ah, well...another time perhaps, after the stimulus bill has spurred demand for my peculiar talents. ;)
Hey, it's not until
May 2011...who knows what will happen by then? :D
--Bruce
Aye, what Bruce said, Dave!
Quote from: bhodges on April 09, 2009, 09:34:41 AM
Hey, it's not until May 2011...who knows what will happen by then? :D
I'll put it on my calendar! (Who knows, I might even be able to write it off. ;) )
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 09, 2009, 08:41:19 AM
( I am not a hot dog man. )
That isn't what all the girls say down at the malt shop! 8)
So the official email from our management basically says only that we are going. It gives some details as to what the festival is and who is involved, but also says that the program can't be announced until the festival announces it first.
Allan
You need to start reading about the history of the place, Allan. You have some time so start cranking.
Thrilled and happy for you, Allan. Congratulations!
Break a string! ;D Seriously, I'd love to be there listening, but like most, I'd need lots of "economic stimulus" before it would happen. :-\ Knock 'em dead. :D