• Zurich Opera Chooses Gatti
• Marin Alsop Re-ups in Baltimore
• Gothenburg Symphony Names New GM
• Mason Bates: MA.com’s New Artist of the Month

• Fertile Ground at the Winter Garden
• Christopher Parkening Competition Concludes
• Also This Week on MusicalAmerica.com...
• BONUS FEATURES

PARIS -- With the Zurich Opera's announcement Wednesday of Daniele Gatti to be its chief conductor starting next season, a puzzle that has preoccupied the European press has been solved. The next move for this 47-year-old artist, one of the top-ranked conductors of his generation, has been open to much speculation since he left the second-tier Bologna Opera in 2007. "A happy moment," declared Zurich's Intendant Alexander Pereira during the press conference, an appointment "intensely desired."

In Zurich, which has been elevated to the top tier of international opera by Intendant Alexander Pereira, Gatti succeeds Franz Welser-Möst, who heads off to be music director of the Vienna Staatsoper in 2009-10.

Marin Alsop, Musical America’s 2009 Conductor of the Year, has signed a new, five-year contract with the Baltimore Symphony, where she will now remain as music director through 2015. Alsop, who has turned the orchestra’s fortunes around completely since her arrival in 2007, is the orchestra’s 12th music director.

Commented BSO President and CEO Paul Meecham, “Marin Alsop is a leader at every level of the organization. From the moment she assumed the music directorship, you couldn’t help but feel her energy, her spirit and passion for the music.” Since Alsop’s arrival, audience capacity at the BSO’s home base, Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, has grown from 59 percent to 72 percent. For her part, Alsop called her work with the BSO “the thrill of a lifetime.”

The headmaster of the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg is to be the new managing and artistic director of the Gothenburg Symphony as of Oct. 1. Helena Wessman, 45, arrives as Music Director Gustavo Dudamel extends his contract through 2011, and most likely beyond. Trained as a trombone player, Wessman comes to the post with the perfect background to carry forward the principles of Venezuela’s El Sistema, the music education system from which Dudamel himself emerged. Wessman succeeds Edward Smith, 60, who writes in an e-mail, “I decided that I either stay in Göteborg for the rest of my career or try something else whilst I still have some marbles.”

My first exposure to the music of Mason Bates was six weeks ago, when the YouTube Symphony performed a section of his B-Sides: Five Pieces for Orchestra & Electronica as part of its debut concert in Carnegie Hall. The work was premiered in its entirety last week by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, to whom it is dedicated.
Nowadays electronic and acoustic instruments are hardly strangers to each other. But when was the last time you heard a symphony orchestra with a driving techno underpinning that sounded, well, natural – even organic?

“I like mixing it up,” Bates confessed in a recent telephone interview. “But I am a classical composer – there is a level of focus at a classical concert that my music needs.”

NEW YORK – There were no cans, although a bit of banging by the Foundry Steel Pan Ensemble kicked off the day with a piece titled “Alloy.” There was also some grinding, thanks to Jeppe Just Christenson’s lighthearted Braun KSM 2, played on amplified coffee grinders. But for the most part, the 22nd annual Bang on a Can Marathon at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden on May 31 was less a tweaking of conventions than a celebration of the music world as it now stands.

MALIBU, California – Judges for the Second Parkening International Guitar Competition, which ended May 30 at Pepperdine University, have chosen Emanuele Buono, 21, as winner of the Stotsenberg first prize, which carries a $30,000 cash award, the largest in the world for classical guitar.

“It feels like a dream. I can’t believe it,” the young artist commented on his victory. Born in Turin, Italy, Buono is currently pursuing a music diploma at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. Additional competition wins in his country include the 33rd International Guitar Competition in Gargnano and the Ruggero Chiesa International Competition in Camogli.

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Cuts for the Dayton Philharmonic
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NYC Opera Ran $11.3 M Deficit in Fiscal 08
Broadway's Three Billys Win Astaire Awards
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Baltimore Symph Names VP, Artistic Planning
Young Violinist Wins Queen Elisabeth Comp
So Long, Amato Opera
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Opera in Cyberspace, 3D and on the Airwaves

“It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”

-Dale Carnegie (American lecturer, author, 1888-1955)

“I enjoy playing the band as the band. I 'be' the whole band and I'm playing the drums, I'm playing the guitar, I'm playing the saxophone. To me, the most wonderful thing about playing music is that.”

-Chick Corea

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Header Photos Courtesy: 1. John Kane/The Joyce Theater 2. George Mott/Glimmerglass Opera 4. Grant Leighton