News and music to start your week!
Congratulations to Akiko Fujimoto (pictured above), the first woman to be named Artistic Director of the Mid-Texas Symphony. Last season the ensemble had a public audition process to find the new director, with four finalists each leading a concert. Fujimoto was a somewhat familiar face as she was associate conductor for the San Antonio Symphony from 2012-2017. Read on here.
We are happy to unveil (drum-roll, please!): our newly updated database of 500 (plus) Operas by Women! It has been a popular page on our website, but has needed expanding and updating. It will always be a work-in-progress, so please take a look, and let us know what you think!
And, as ever, listen in to The Daffodil Perspective’s weekly show, which includes some wonderful but neglected works by Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée.
Nonagenarian Thea Musgrave continues to make waves — her Trumpet Concerto was commissioned and premiered by the Cheltenham Festival, where virtuoso trumpeter Alison Balsom is shaking things up as the Festival’s Artistic Director. She was also the soloist in the July 6 premiere of the exciting new Concerto. The performance received this upbeat review in The Telegraph. The work, based on five paintings by Victoria Crowe, of trees in different seasons, begins
with mysterious dark rustlings, as of a seed slowly burgeoning into a sapling, which gradually took harmonic shape. Suddenly the mistiness dissipated … with playful phrases from the trumpet answered by the orchestra in an elegant exchange that was part-dance, part-conversation. … The piece developed as a … give-and-take between these two worlds, capped at the end by a coup de théâtre [with] an off-stage trumpeter [playing] in dialogue with Balsom.
The concert also was reviewed in the London Times, but it is behind a paywall 🙁 If you have access, please slip us some quotes! 😀 In 1956 Musgrave was the first female composer to be commissioned by the Festival, so the event was also a celebration of 63 years of her creativity!
Also, explore Into the Light which offers excerpts from the long-running radio show, hosted by Kathryn Mishell. Be sure to also try your hand at the monthly listening quiz! Always exciting and worthwhile!
Be sure to let us know what you are listening to! [email protected]