When Wayne Brown retired as president and CEO of the Detroit Opera at the close of 2023, he ended his long and accomplished career in the city where it had begun five decades ago. Upon graduating from the University of Michigan with a major in … » Read

Esteban Salas y Castro, a humble priest, is today widely considered to be Cuba’s first native composer. Born in Havana on Christmas Day 1725, he would spend much of his life in Santiago de Cuba, on the island’s eastern end, working in … » Read

Robert Spano, music director of the Fort Worth Symphony and the Aspen Music Festival and School, has added the Rhode Island Philharmonic to his plate, in the position of principal conductor, with immediate effect. He succeeds last season's … » Read

South Korean bass Stephano Park has signed with his first management company, Intermusica. Park won the men’s first prize of the Operalia Competition last November in Cape Town, South Africa. He has been a member of the Wiener Staatsoper … » Read

Alice Parker, whose choral compositions and arrangements have long been a staple of the repertoire for ensembles ranging from high school glee clubs to church choirs to professional choruses, died on December 24. She was 98. A native New … » Read

The classical music world lost a wealth of talent in 2023. Here are a number of artists, pedagogues, and administrators who have made significant contributions to the field during the course of their lives. Italian soprano Renata Scotto , whose … » Read

As the annual de rigueur “End of the Year” summary, Musical America focusses not on the big events of the past but on the emerging stars of the future. Discovered in action by our critics, the 12 New Artists of the Month in 2023 range … » Read

On Christmas Day, Russian Minister of Culture Olga Lubimova invited Valery Gergiev, pianist Dennis Matsuev, and three cultural bureaucrats from the Moscow Philharmonic, Russian State Television and Radio (VGTRK), and her own Ministry of Culture … » Read

LONDON—Of all the instruments in an orchestra, the French horn is the most exposed. One crack and the whole audience winces. Listening to a fiendish bit of Peter Maxwell Davies a few months back at London’s Wigmore Hall, it was a … » Read

Aigul Akhmetshina likes to describe herself as “just an ordinary girl from a small village in the middle of nowhere in Russia.” Not quite. Akhmetshina started performing folk songs of her native Bashkortostan while still a toddler. … » Read