Resonate

(Photo by Terrence McCarthy, courtesy of  the San Francisco Opera)

Pamela Rosenberg — the first American and the first woman to act as administrative director of the Berlin Philharmonic — announced that she will leave her post when her contract expires in 2010. According to a spokesman for the orchestra, Rosenberg will work on individual projects once she leaves the orchestra.

Rosenberg, 63, has been at the Berlin Philharmonic since 2006. Prior to that, she was general director of the San Francisco Opera.

The show must go on, right? Like all employees, musicians frequently have to work when they’re not feeling well. They try hard to suppress coughs and sneezes while on stage, but sometimes they’re too sick to continue performing. Such was the case for tenor Vladimir Kuzmenko on Tuesday night.

Kuzmenko began to feel sick just before his scheduled performance in the leading role of Radames in the Pittsburgh Opera’s performance of “Aida.” The opera company arranged for the Metropolitan Opera’s Eduardo Villa to fill in for Kuzmenko, but Villa’s plane was delayed.

Kuzmenko successfully made it through the first three acts, but by Act IV he could not go on. And so the opera’s conductor, Antony Walker, saved the day, singing the tenor’s part from the pit while continuing to conduct the orchestra. Meanwhile, Kuzmenko acted the part – mute — on the stage.

Violinist Janine Jansen is attempting to build a large audience for herself without using her attractiveness to her advantage — or at least not too much. It seems to be working, too.

An article published last week in the (Canadian) National Post compared the Dutch violinist’s strategy for broadening her audience with that of Vanessa Mae. If you’ve ever seen Mae play, you know that she’s not exactly interested in our still-somewhat-stuffy expectations of classical music.

Unlike Mae, Jansen uses her attractiveness in a subtle way. As the article says:

Jansen’s commercial engine is clean and sophisticated, even when it’s outright manipulative. Her website, for example, features prominently displayed press releases that include supportive statements like, “Yet Janine Jansen (29) has more to offer than just a beautiful body. She is the most exciting violinist of her generation.”

So while Jansen won’t make a prurient spectacle of herself, we’re reminded that she could (and pull it off, visually, like Mae did) if she wanted to.

That’s quite a bold statement, calling herself the most exciting violinist of her generation! My question is, how do other women feel about (even subtly) exploiting their looks to attract listeners?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Ask Eve Queler for directions; she should be able to get there with her eyes closed at this point.

Queler led the Opera Orchestra of New York in her 100th performance in Carnegie Hall on Thursday. Singers young and old, famous and not, came to honor her.

Queler is known for championing the performance of Russian and Czech operas in the United States. She was the first to perform Janacek’s music in America in Czech, for example.

Renee Fleming, tenor Marcello Giordani, soprano Krassimira Stoyanova and mezzo Dolora Zajick all performed to honor Queler.

Today I want to examine a review of pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s performance with the Czech Philharmonic in New Jersey on Friday. Bradley Bambarger,  music writer for The Star-Ledger, did something unusual: He gave Dinnerstein a bad review. (Critics tend to love her.)

Bambarger suggests that Dinnerstein is a modern-day, musical Cinderella. She wasn’t a big name in classical music until <poof> one day in 2005 she releases a recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.”

But Bambarger seems to think maybe Dinnerstein should stick to playing “Goldberg.” He rips into her rendition of Beethoven’s ”Emperor” Concerto for not using enough dynamic contrast.

While he isn’t overly harsh in the review, there’s one thing I need to pick on him for:

The program had been listed for months as featuring Dvorak’s Piano Concerto, a piece not played nearly as often as the Czech composer’s concertos for violin or cello. But she switched at the last minute, not feeling prepared.

Here is an instance of a music reviewer forgetting that he is also a journalist. If someone is going to write an assertion such as “not feeling prepared,” it needs to be attributed to someone. If she didn’t say she felt unprepared, and neither did anyone with the orchestra or her management, then it is an assumption of why she switched concertos.

Journalists can’t make assumptions, of course. Without some sort of attribution, it makes it seem as if Bambarger has it out for Dinnerstein. So music writers, look at the Medill School of Journalism’s controversy with the dean and take something away from it: attribute, attribute, attribute.

Ever wonder why classical musicians and the cats that play jazz seem completely different? Well, there might be more than just a difference in their alcohol and drug intake (I’m sure there are sober jazzers out there somewhere).

In a statement released this weekend, Johns Hopkins University researchers announced that there’s something different going on in jazz musicians’ brains while they’re improvising.

Supposedly, jazz musicians’ brains turn off parts that are linked with inhibition and self-censoring while they’re playing:

The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, [researcher Charles J.] Limb suggests.

The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.

Musicians rarely get public recognition for helping eachother. But this weekend French musicians helped the London Symphony Orchestra avoid a minor disaster.

The LSO was in Dijon, in eastern France, to perform Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. The only problem? A strike by French ferry workers kept the orchestra’s instruments, sheet music and clothing from reaching Dijon.

Kathryn McDowell, the orchestra’s managing director, announced that the concert would not be canceled and began requesting that French musicians and music schools loan nearly 100 instruments to the orchestra.

The orchestra received the instruments they needed — more or less. The tuba players had to play on a different type of tuba from their usual, as did the bassoonists. And the principal flutist made do with a tin flute.

But perhaps this paragraph from The Times describes the most interesting part:

A third of the players went on in jeans and T-shirts. Midway through the symphony the violas found a page missing in their hastily printed scores and were forced to improvise.

Sounds like quite an interesting rendition of Mahler!

Catherine Barnes, a percussion student at Northwestern University, teaches how to play the pandeiro, a Brazilian instrument used to accompany the fighting dance called capoeira:

Elaine Rinaldi, founder and conductor of the recently formed 40-piece Orchestra Miami, did not always expect to lead an orchestra.

She studied piano as a child, and went on to receive a master’s degree in performance from the prestigious Mannes College of Music. A year after finishing school, she was hit by a car while riding a bike. Although she recovered, she could not play piano the way she used to.

And so she switched to conducting.

This week’s article about Rinaldi in the Miami Herald underplays the emotion behind this career switch. All we hear about it from the conductor’s lips is: “It was very bad.”

This woman had devoted her whole life to piano and then had her instrument taken away from her. “Very bad” does not capture that. Perhaps Rinaldi did not want to talk about how hard it was to leave behind her old career, but if a reporter is going to write about it, she needs to somehow explain the emotion behind it. Otherwise, the article appears flippant.

When we think of women conductors, we tend to think of Marin Alsop and Xian Zhang — and really, that’s about it. But there are quite a few women conducting orchestras in this country. It’s just that, for whatever reason, they’re not on the national radar.

 Diane Wittry, music director and conductor of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania, will premiere her 13-minute orchestral piece, “Mist,” with the Allentown orchestra next weekend.

“Mist” is Wittry’s first major finished work. The Morning Call explained why Wittry recently began composing:

”I didn’t compose because I felt I had nothing to say,” says Wittry from the home in West Orange, N.J., she shares with her husband, artist Rick Peckham. ”There’s such a legacy ahead of people who have had things to say. The last few years I wasn’t finding new music. I was hearing things in my head that I had to put down because no one else was writing the same way.”

It should be interesting to hear what “way” she’s speaking of. I hope that — assuming the piece has something new to offer — the Allentown orchestra and the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra (the Connecticut orchestra Wittry conducts) aren’t the only orchestras to perform the piece.