There is a change of leadership at The Australia Council for the Arts, as CEO Kathy Keele steps down at the end of the year. The government’s central arts funding and advisory body distributes more than $160 million each year in funding for arts organisations and individuals, nationally.
“It has always been known that the greatest pianoforte players were also the greatest composers; but how did they play? Not like the pianists of today, who prance up and down the keyboard with passages which they have practised – putsch, putsch, putsch – what does that mean? Nothing! When a true pianoforte virtuoso played it was…
The New Music Network is calling for proposals for the 2014 New Music Mini Series. The New Music Mini Series is a five-part series of concert events that promote or comprise performances by artists and ensembles of ‘the next generation’ within contemporary art music practice. This includes individuals and/or ensembles which are starting out…
Paul Mealor. On the day I was scheduled to speak to Welsh composer Paul Mealor, based in Aberdeen, Scotland, there was a storm so wild, that telecommunications were disrupted and the call had to be re-scheduled. The elements seemed to conspire to evoke Mealor’s inspirations and memories whilst defying his aspirations to “write music that…
Kasper Holten, the Director of Opera at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden since 2011, has announced that he will be stepping down from this role in 2017. Sydney audiences will be familiar with his work from his direction of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin for Opera Australia in 2014. Read the feature in Gramophone.
Violinist Nicola Benedetti will release a new album, Baroque, on the Decca Classics label on 16 July. This is the first album that the Grammy Award- winning Benedetti has released on a period set-up, including gut strings. She is joined by a leading group of freelance baroque musicians, forming the inaugural Benedetti Baroque Orchestra.
Music has the incredible power to heal and to soothe. Building on this, Dr Catherine Crock, a physician at the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital established the the HUSH Foundation and working alongside other health professionals and musicians, she has curated numerous recorded collections of music that help to calm and soothe young patients, their families…