Latest news with #ChicagoSymphonyOrchestra
New York Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
He Reinvigorated the Met Opera's Chorus. Next Stop, Chicago.
When Donald Palumbo departed his post as chorus master of the Metropolitan Opera last year after nearly two decades, he could have easily taken a break. But Palumbo, 76, wasn't finished. 'I knew it was not a retirement situation for me,' he said. Now Palumbo has lined up his next position: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced on Tuesday that he would serve as its next chorus director — only the third in the choir's 67-year history — beginning an initial three-year term in July. 'I love this chorus,' Palumbo said in a telephone interview from Chicago, where he was rehearsing the chorus. 'I love this city.' Palumbo was a fixture at the Met from 2007 to 2024, helping turn the chorus into one of the most revered in the field. He could often be seen during performances racing around backstage, working with singers to refine bits of the score. He was chorus master at Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1991 to 2007. At the Chicago Symphony, he said, he hoped to work with the singers on 'creating an identity as a chorus from the way we sing, and the way we devote ourselves to the music.' Jeff Alexander, the Chicago Symphony's president, said that Palumbo had built a close relationship with the chorus during guest appearances over the years, creating 'an atmosphere of collaboration that yielded exceptional artistry.' 'We knew this would be the ideal choice to build on the legacy of this award-winning ensemble,' Alexander said in a statement. Palumbo, who lives in Santa Fe and will commute to Chicago, is already at work with the Chicago singers. He will serve as guest chorus director this month for Verdi's Requiem, working with Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony's former music director. In July, he will begin his tenure as chorus director with a performance of Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony at the Ravinia Festival, led by the festival's chief conductor, Marin Alsop. While Palumbo has forged a close relationship with Muti, he said, he was still getting to know Klaus Mäkelä, the Chicago Symphony's incoming music director, who begins in 2027. (Palumbo said he has been watching videos of Mäkelä on YouTube: 'Everything he does musically is exciting,' he said.) Palumbo said he hoped to stay in Chicago beyond the end of his initial term in 2028. 'I certainly am not planning on having a cutoff point,' he said. 'I intend to keep working.'
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: We knew Deborah Rutter at the Chicago Symphony. She did not fail the Kennedy Center.
When Deborah Rutter became president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2003, she inherited an institution with debt from a massive renovation project and that was suffering a serious drop in attendance and thus box office revenue. By the time she left in 2014 to assume the presidency of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the CSO was 'on its most solid financial footing in years, with one of the world's most renowned conductors, Riccardo Muti, serving as its music director to raise the artistic bar while drawing large audiences to programs at Symphony Center and beyond,' reported Heather Gillers and Mark Caro in the Tribune that year. Here is what Rutter said to those reporters about her job in the nation's capital: 'Fundamentally what we do is we care and nurture for music and musicians and try and steward an institution to serve an audience, so at the very core it's exactly the same job. But the world around us changes.' The sting was in the tail of that quotation. Boy, did it ever change. Probably far more than Rutter possibly could have anticipated. After a decade in her new job, she was effectively fired by a president of the United States, bound and determined to move the arts center in a direction in line with the priorities of his administration. Trump did not just say 'thank you for your service and we are going in a new direction,' which arguably was within his right to do, given the unique relationship the Kennedy Center has with the federal government. He attacked Rutter for what he called her 'bad management,' accusing her of programming stuff he personally did not want to see (to each his own) and of wasting millions of dollars. 'I don't know where they spent it,' Trump said last week. 'They certainly didn't spend it on wallpaper, carpet or painting.' The last time we were in the Kennedy Center, just a few weeks ago, we did not witness a problem with the decor, but we did appreciate the programming. Indeed, the verdict on Rutter's tenure when we were there was that she had been a highly effective arts administrator and the polar opposite of a narrow ideologue. Look at what she told NPR after her firing: 'I am a professional arts attendee. I am a believer in the work of the artist. I am not a propagandist. I am not a politician. Art speaks for itself. Art sometimes doesn't make you feel comfortable, but it is telling the story of who we are and all artists, as all Americans, have the freedom of expression.' Indeed they do. Indeed they must. As all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, should understand. Those words match our long experience with Rutter in Chicago, when she was a distinguished steward of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of our most precious civic assets. We were sad to lose her in 2014 and regret that her important work in our nation's capital had so unpleasant an ending. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
Chicago Tribune
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: We knew Deborah Rutter at the Chicago Symphony. She did not fail the Kennedy Center.
When Deborah Rutter became president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2003, she inherited an institution with debt from a massive renovation project and that was suffering a serious drop in attendance and thus box office revenue. By the time she left in 2014 to assume the presidency of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the CSO was 'on its most solid financial footing in years, with one of the world's most renowned conductors, Riccardo Muti, serving as its music director to raise the artistic bar while drawing large audiences to programs at Symphony Center and beyond,' reported Heather Gillers and Mark Caro in the Tribune that year. Here is what Rutter said to those reporters about her job in the nation's capital: 'Fundamentally what we do is we care and nurture for music and musicians and try and steward an institution to serve an audience, so at the very core it's exactly the same job. But the world around us changes.' The sting was in the tail of that quotation. Boy, did it ever change. Probably far more than Rutter possibly could have anticipated. After a decade in her new job, she was effectively fired by a president of the United States, bound and determined to move the arts center in a direction in line with the priorities of his administration. Trump did not just say 'thank you for your service and we are going in a new direction,' which arguably was within his right to do, given the unique relationship the Kennedy Center has with the federal government. He attacked Rutter for what he called her 'bad management,' accusing her of programming stuff he personally did not want to see (to each his own) and of wasting millions of dollars. 'I don't know where they spent it,' Trump said last week. 'They certainly didn't spend it on wallpaper, carpet or painting.' The last time we were in the Kennedy Center, just a few weeks ago, we did not witness a problem with the decor, but we did appreciate the programming. Indeed, the verdict on Rutter's tenure when we were there was that she had been a highly effective arts administrator and the polar opposite of a narrow ideologue. Look at what she told NPR after her firing: 'I am a professional arts attendee. I am a believer in the work of the artist. I am not a propagandist. I am not a politician. Art speaks for itself. Art sometimes doesn't make you feel comfortable, but it is telling the story of who we are and all artists, as all Americans, have the freedom of expression.' Indeed they do. Indeed they must. As all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, should understand. Those words match our long experience with Rutter in Chicago, when she was a distinguished steward of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of our most precious civic assets. We were sad to lose her in 2014 and regret that her important work in our nation's capital had so unpleasant an ending.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jazz legend Herbie Hancock to perform in Rockford in fall 2025
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Legendary jazz musician Herbie Hancock will perform in Rockford in Fall 2025. Hancock began his career as a pianist at age 11, playing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His first album, 'Takin' Off,' was released in 1961, after which Hancock worked with Miles Davis for five years. Recognized as one of the greatest pianists of all time, Hancock explored the use of electronic instruments in his music. In 1983, his single 'Rockit' became a hit on MTV. He also wrote the scores for several films, including Blow-Up (1966), Death Wish (1974), and Round Midnight (1987), for which he won an Academy Award. Hancock has won 12 Grammy Awards over the past 2 decades. Hard Rock Live announced that Hancock will perform at the Hard Rock Casino Rockford on Friday, October 24th. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 4th, on and at the Hard Rock Live box office. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sofia Gubaidulina obituary
When the composer Sofia Gubaidulina, who has died aged 93, began to include overtly religious ideas in her concert music, it proved a provocative step to take in Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union of the late 1960s. These ideas were expressed through titles and a kind of dramaturgy that she called 'instrumental symbolism'. Switching from one instrument to another, or between different parts of the same instrument, she suggested extra-musical and even theological ideas, rather like an acoustic equivalent of the geometrical distortions and symbolism familiar from the icons of the Eastern Orthodox church that she loved so much. With works such as Introitus (1978) for piano and chamber orchestra and In Croce (1979) for cello and organ, she acquired a reputation in the world of non-official Soviet culture, inspiring for enthusiasts but irritating to the old guard of the Composers' Union. She refused to be intimidated. The violinist Gidon Kremer took the concerto Offertorium (1980) to orchestras abroad, and Gubaidulina's music began to feature in concerts and festivals around the globe. Commissions followed, such as Alleluia (1990), for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and and vocal forces conducted by Simon Rattle; the Viola Concerto (1996), for Yuri Bashmet and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and the violin concerto In Tempus Praesens (2007), for Anne-Sophie Mutter. In 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gubaidulina moved to Appen, a village outside Hamburg, in Germany, seeking the peace and quiet that seemed to have gone from Moscow. There she spent the last three decades of her life, composing in every medium that fascinated her, from vast oratorios to the tiniest pieces for solo double bass or unaccompanied voice. As she grew older, her deep and emotional mysticism, rooted in her passionately held religious convictions, became ever more concentrated and fiercely eschatological – concerned with the end of history and the world – in tone. However, in every piece she always seemed to begin anew. She delighted in treating every new day of her life as an opportunity to search for something fresh and undiscovered and she was never afraid to take artistic risks, as with In the Shadow of the Tree (1998) for Japanese solo instruments and orchestra, and The Wrath of God (2019), for orchestra. Gubaidulina's music reflects and embodies her unquenchable lifelong devotion to artistic freedom: not merely the freedom of composers to write what they write, but the freedom of performers to play what they play ('in joy', as she used to put it, with a childlike smile), and the freedom of every listener to hear what they hear, and not what someone else has told them to hear. Born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the USSR, midway between Moscow and Kazakhstan, Sofia was the youngest of three sisters. She grew up in the Tatar capital of Kazan, on the river Volga. Her mother, Fedosia (nee Elkhova), was a schoolteacher of mixed Russian-Polish heritage, and her father, Asgad Gubaidulin, a land surveyor, from a Tatar family. Both were strong supporters of the communist order and Soviet values. Sofia was especially devoted to her father, though he could accept neither her choice of career nor her religious beliefs. She recalled him talking quietly in the Tatar language with his friends (she never learned it, as the family spoke Russian), and of accompanying him into the countryside on his work where his long silences, she said, 'taught me how to listen'. Gubaidulina's elder sisters were musical and there was a small grand piano at home. When her own lessons began, she made swift progress. Disliking 'the impoverished little pieces' she was given to study, she quickly taught herself to improvise, a skill that remained of lifelong importance; relief came when her teacher introduced her to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. The household was atheist, but while still small, she saw an icon in someone's home – 'and I recognised God'. She was proud that her paternal grandfather, Masgud Gubaidulin, had been a mullah and she kept on her desk a photograph of him in his turban, though she had no memories of meeting him. After five years of undergraduate study at the Kazan Conservatory, in 1954 she moved to the postgraduate course at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where her teachers included Nikolai Peiko and Vissarion Shebalin, both unusual composers. On one occasion, when one of her examiners publicly criticised her 'mistaken path', another, Dmitri Shostakovich, quietly told her to 'continue on your mistaken path'. She was admitted to the Union of Soviet Composers in 1961 and finished graduate studies two years later. At the tail end of the Khrushchev thaw, Moscow was a cauldron of new artistic ideas. With her contemporaries, who included the composers Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, from Estonia, and Valentin Silvestrov, from Ukraine, she was fascinated by everything she could lay her hands on from the musical and intellectual world beyond: 'In the west, information and recordings and scores were easy to come by, so you could take it for granted you would always find it later. But for us every scrap of information was precious, so we threw ourselves on it hungrily.' Most inspiring for her were her encounters with European religious music of various kinds, and her first impressions of 20th-century modernism, whether in the form of Webern, Berg and Stravinsky, or the later 'avant-garde' generation of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono and Iannis Xenakis. Through a friend she also discovered the instruments and sounds of various indigenous cultures, especially those of the far east of the USSR. Even from early on there were hints of what was to come: a certain purity of sound and a fondness for ecstatic incantation. The Soviet Union supported a huge cinema industry, which provided employment for composers. Gubaidulina's output of movie music was prolific. She worked at enormous speed, noting: 'I write film music for six months, take a month off to recover my health and then write my own music for the rest of the year.' Though she scored many kinds of films, ranging from the teen drama Chuchelo (Scarecrow, 1984) to The Cat That Walked By Herself (1988), she was especially proud of her music for children's cartoons. Film music was not subject to the same political controls as concert music and popular music, and proved a good place to experiment and learn discipline. Of her encourager Shostakovich she observed: 'He could make the deepest darkness shine with the brightest light!' The same could be said of the music with which she found her distinctive voice. I first met her after arriving as a graduate student in Moscow in 1984, at a concert of electronic music where her Vivente – Non Vivente (Alive and Dead, 1970) was played. She was immediately open and warm. In 1956 she married Mark Liando, a geologist and poet, and they had a daughter, Nadezhda. The marriage ended in divorce, as did her second, to the mystic and dissident Nikolai, later Nicolas, Bokov. In the 90s she married the pianist and theorist Pyotr Meshchaninov. He died in 2006; Nadezhda had died two years earlier. Gubaidulina is survived by two grandchildren. Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, composer, born 24 October 1931; died 13 March 2025
