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Barbican announces programme for summer and next season
12 March 2010
The Barbican has announced its
summer and 2010/11 programme. Speaking on 11 March from a reception at the
centre, which was jointly hosted with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), Barbican
managing director Sir Nicholas Kenyon introduced an eclectic line-up.
Alongside the LSO’s own season, the visiting
orchestral programme will be headed by Dudamel and LA Philharmonic, Rattle and
Berliner Philharmoniker, and Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.
The centre’s ‘101 things to do this
summer’ will include John Adams’ I Was
Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky at Theatre Royal, Straftord
East; Blaze – a festival that will bring a wide range of contemporary music
to venues across East London, and the continuation of LSO Summer Nights and
Barbican Young Orchestra with Sir Colin Davis.
Noteworthy events include Liebestod, on 18 March 2011, in which director
Pierre Audi will stage an exploration of Wagner, Berg and Michel van der Aa
with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and Jeroen Willems. In one of the last concerts
of the season, a stage play named in The Infernal Comedy which takes place on 17 June 2011, actor John Malkovich features as a serial
killer who returns from the dead to launch his autobiography.
Three prominent operas based on the
Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso will
be showcased throughout the season: Handel’s Alcina, (4 December 2010) and Ariodante
(25 May 2011) and Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso
(26 March 2011).
The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total
Immersion series enters its third season in 2010/11 with days devoted to the
life and work of Brian Ferneyhough (26 February 2011), Unsuk Chin (9 April
2011) and Peter Eötvös (14 May 2011).
For more information visit the
official season announcement.
Mayor of London launches Music Education Strategy
9 March 2010, Clare Stevens
The mayor and Julian Lloyd Webber at the Making Music Matter launch
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced a two-year programme of activity aimed at boosting music education provision in the capital, supported by £100,000 of seedbed funding. Making Music Matter: A Music Education Strategy for London 2010-1012, was launched at the Royal Festival Hall on 2 March.
Since the closure of the Inner London Education Authority music service in the 1990s, there has been no London-wide strategic agency for music education. While musical activity for young people is flourishing in some respects, provision is not consistent across the 32 boroughs and some aspects of music teaching, particularly instrumental and vocal tuition, are difficult to access for those on low incomes. While early access is generally good, the increasing pressure on local authority budgets means it is harder to provide free intensive tuition and progression opportunities at intermediate and advanced level.
The Greater London Authority (GLA) Music
Education Programme has grown out of the Lord Mayor’s summit on music education
in January 2009. It will seek to improve the provision of music education in
London by brokering relationships, conducting research and producing advice for
the music education sector in London, with the intention of stimulating growth
and partnerships by 2012, leading to sustained improvement in the longer term.
Speaking at the launch, where he was serenaded on arrival
by children from St Stephen’s Primary School who are participating in Lambeth
InHarmony, Boris Johnson declared his own enthusiasm for music and paid tribute
to the teachers at the Chalk Farm primary school attended by both the foreign
secretary, David Miliband, and himself, who had nurtured that enthusiasm by
putting violin and recorder-playing at the heart of school life. He said that
although the GLA is not a major funder of music education in London, it works
in partnership with a range of organisations to improve the delivery of
cultural services and there was a widespread consensus that it should play a
strategic role in shaping music education in the capital.
For the full report see Classical Music Magazine, 13 March issue.
www.london.gov.uk/rhythmoflondon
Tributes pour in for Philip Langridge
8 March 2010
Philip Langridge, 1939 - 2010Richard Davies
Philip Langridge has died
at the age of 70 after a short battle with bowel cancer.
Perhaps the defining British
tenor of his generation, Mr Langridge was still very much active up to a few
weeks before his death, performing alongside Angelika Kirchschlager and Miah
Persson in the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of Hansel and Gretel in December 2009 and January 2010.
He also had a
number of engagements forthcoming, including Guillot in Covent Garden’s
June/July 2010 production of Manon,
under Antonio Pappano.
‘Philip
Langridge was one of the most admired artists by every member of the Royal
Opera House family,’ Mr Pappano said. ‘He was family to us. Personally, I had
always dreamed of working with him. He was part of the upper echelon; but when
my dream came true with Das Rheingold,
I found not only the greatest singing actor, but a vibrant, funny and warm
human being. His passing is truly a big loss for the music world.’
ABO announces five-year plan
2 March 2010
Give us sustained investment and support: The orchestra sector speaks
The Association of British Orchestras (ABO) has launched a ‘five-year vision for orchestras’, named A Platform for Success, which it describes as 'laying out the sector’s commitment to taking high quality music to more people than ever before.'
Following up its recent annual conference (full report by Keith Clarke in the 13 March issue), the ABO is calling for the government to make a number of commitments, including guaranteeing music education continues to be delivered across schools, improving the tax system to enhance private giving and giving orchestras nationally and locally the opportunity to be an integral part of the UK Cultural Olympiad celebrations.
A statement from the ABO said:
‘A Platform for Success states the sector’s ambitions to:
- 'Place orchestras within the national celebrations towards the London 2012 Olympic Games and Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.
- 'Nurture home grown talent and attract the world’s best composers, performers and conductors to the UK
- 'Experiment with and push the boundaries of technological and digital innovation to introduce new audiences to orchestral music'
It also states their belief that:
- 'There should be a network of ‘Centres for Orchestras’ across the UK by 2020, building on the success of the pioneering Centre for Orchestra, developed by the LSO, Guildhall School and Barbican
- 'Every child should have the opportunity to participate in creative music making and attend a live concert – regardless of where they live or which school they attend.
- ‘Without sustained investment and support, much of the good work that orchestras are doing on the concert platform, and with schools and communities across the country, will be threatened.’
Tim Walker, chair of the ABO and chief executive and artistic director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, added:
‘We want government to value orchestras, fund us wisely, legislate supportively and make a real commitment to maintaining music education in schools. It is crucial if we’re to give our future generations the opportunity to experience music and reap its social benefits that it must begin from a young age, and be a key part of classroom education.’
Local authorities warned of punishing arts cuts
24 February 2010, Simon Tait
If council arts and cultural offices are to survive the oncoming funding cuts they need to rethink their ways of working, local government arts officers were told at a London symposium.
While local authority spending on the arts may be facing meltdown with cuts of up to 20%, council cultural officials will have to diversify to continue development rather than reduce their activity.
Launching the ‘Outside In’ seminar for the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers, Nalgao chair Lorna Brown told 200 delegates that cultural services ‘which underpin the economic heart and are fundamental to regeneration’ were still waiting for the full weight of the downturn to have an effect, but that national impetus of enthusiasm for the arts offered an opportunity for contracting out and reducing the financial burden on individual councils. ‘Carpe diem indeed,’ she said.
The symposium was called to launch a Nalgao-commissioned report on contracting out local authority arts services that could prove to be the lifeline for community cultural operations.
One estimate reckons that in 2008-9 local authorities spent £220m on the arts in England, which compares with £438m by Arts Council England (not including lottery funding), but the local government income is expected to be cut dramatically in 2011-14 by at least 7% and possibly as much as 20% which will devolve directly on the arts spend - and some estimate it may be even higher.
‘The plates are moving,’ said Martyn Allison, the national advisor for cultural services at the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), but there were positive opportunities in the changes. Les public money led to economy, a greater focus on innovation meant efficiency, and a better focus on sought-for outcomes would lead to better effectiveness.
The report, written by Paul Kelly of Cultural Futures and Rick Bond of The Complete Works, advocates contracting out cultural services, perhaps to independent voluntary trusts, or sharing with other authorities. It was written, said Kelly, to examiner different ways of managing the cuts to come, and cultural services were contracted out ‘to save costs and protect existing services’. Half the authorities interviewed for the report that had contracted out their arts service said that the service would no longer exist, or would be at risk, otherwise.
Derrick Anderson, chief executive of Lambeth Borough Council, said that cultural services had to present themselves as another council service with expertise to offer in community ‘well being’, contributing to health and education programmes as well as funding performances and exhibitions.
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