Last October, when the 2025 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary was heading into the concerto finals round, there were no foregone conclusions, though contrasts in the personalities of the three finalists had steadily sharpened. … » Read

Pianist Jonathan Biss has resigned from the Royal College of Music’s Glenn Gould School faculty seven months after joining it. He cites the school’s failure to respond in a timely manner to a recently revealed, decades-old allegation … » Read

On July 6, 2026, Roger Wilson will bring over 30 years’ experience as a musician, educator, and arts leader to his new post as Head of Music at the Arts Council of Wales. He arrives from Black Lives in Music, of which he is co-founder and … » Read

Marc Minkowski, widely recognized as one of today’s foremost interpreters of early music over his 50-plus-year career, is joining the Boston Baroque as music director as of the fall of this year. He succeeds Martin Pearlman, who founded the … » Read

Orchestras in Budapest and Bournemouth have new leadership. The Budapest Festival Orchestra (BFO) has named Alisa Meves its new artistic director, as of May 2026. She arrives after two years in the same position with the Israel Philharmonic … » Read

LONDON—Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is one of the bleaker evenings in the opera house. A scathing exposé of a societal system that exploits those at the very bottom of the heap by treating them as barely paid menials, canon-fodder, or … » Read

U.S. cellist and composer Joshua Roman is a recipient of the 2026 Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Award, a $25,000 grant to work with research partner Dr. Elizabeth Bast to investigate whether music can ameliorate the lingering … » Read

Timothée Chalamet’s terse dismissal that “no one cares about this anymore” when talking about opera and ballet this past March struck a nerve in many. Some chose to dismiss his putdown as evidence of the callowness of … » Read

Irony of ironies, Beatrice Venezi, named music director of La Fenice in October, despite protests of the house musicians and staff,  has been fired. "The La Fenice Theatre Foundation, through Superintendent Nicola Colabianchi, announces that … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—I had a collection of short reviews from the past week lined up, in varying states of incompleteness, when the news of  Michael Tilson Thomas’s death on Wednesday night upended everything. It’s a huge, almost … » Read