HIGHLAND PARK, IL—The lecture-recital needle is a tough one to thread. Go too broad, and the lecturer risks condescending to listeners. Go too narrow, and the program ends up sounding like a paper talk at a musicology conference. Pianist … » Read

The Nashville Symphony has hired Jeff vom Saal as its chief operating officer (COO), effective in September. Vom Saal was for eight years the executive director of the Spokane (WA) Symphony, the most recent of a number of management positions … » Read

The Walla Walla (WA) Symphony, which traces its origins to 1907, has installed Dina Gilbert as its new music director, as of July 1. The successor to the late Yaacov Bergman, Gilbert, assistant conductor of the Montreal Symphony, first led her … » Read

SALZBURG—I wasn’t planning on seeing Don Giovanni , staged by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Teodor Currentzis, but curiosity to watch a train wreck got the better of me, and I made a late hour decision to check out the first act … » Read

Eberhard Friedrich, 66, chorus master at the Bayreuth Festival for some 25 years, has resigned, one year prior to his anticipated retirement in 2025. The move is characterized by local media as “unnecessary,” or at the very least … » Read

Pianist Christopher O’ Riley, the longtime host of NPR’s famed From the Top , took on the Mount Everest of keyboard literature on August 18 at Brooklyn’s Bargemusic: J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier Book I, comprising the … » Read

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which leads a kind of nomadic life playing across the state in five different venues, has announced a new, dedicated home base, scheduled for completion by Spring of 2026. The new, 550-seat facility is to be … » Read

In a recent article, composer Anna Clyne describes how she came to purchase--and ultimately play--her first violin. It all began in a thrift store in Oxford in 2008, where she had been browsing through second-hand CDs and LPs. Her eye fell upon … » Read

The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University is in the process of adding new orchestra and opera faculty, bringing Cristian Macelaru, an alumnus, on board as a distinguished visiting artist from fall 2025 to spring 2028, and Patrick Summers, … » Read

The Spoleto Festival appears to be experiencing issues that can often arise from a change in leadership. Since taking over from Nigel Redden as general director in 2021, Mena Mark Hanna has made major changes in staff , having vowed at the start … » Read