This year’s Avery Fisher Career Grantees, each of whom gets $25,000, include two chamber groups at opposite ends of the musical spectrum, two violinists, and a pianist. Decided upon by an A-list of mostly east-coast artistic administrators … » Read

Anyone expecting characteristic JACK quartet fare at the group’s concert on March 15—say, something like Helmut Lachenmann or John Luther Adams—was in for a big surprise. After the house lights went down at the Brooklyn … » Read

Subscription sales by performing arts organizations had been on the skids for years before the pandemic acted as an accelerant.  They are no longer a major revenue source. Gone are the days when arts groups could rely on subscriptions to … » Read

Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv could be excused were she distracted by the horrific events in her homeland while she leads performances of Puccini’s Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera this spring. After learning of a Russian missile … » Read

Franco Zeffirelli's 1987 staging of Turandot is the Metropolitan Opera’s most lavish production, with an imperial throne, glittery costumes, and 199 people onstage at one time. Last night, however, it was reduced to minimum proportions, … » Read

The musicians of the San Francisco Symphony have laid down a marker, telling the orchestra’s management and board of directors in no uncertain terms that they don’t want Esa-Pekka Salonen to leave. In flyers distributed to … » Read

The third edition of La Maestra International Conductors Competition concluded last weekend at the Philharmonie de Paris. Fourteen candidates led the Paris Mozart Orchestra before a jury overseen by Nathalie Stutzmann. Bar Avni [pictured], 34, of … » Read

Wayne Shorter, the legendary composer and jazz saxophonist, completed his last composition—the opera ...(Iphigenia) —in 2021, reliant on a team of artists who worked with him to see the work through to its premiere in California in … » Read

Toronto’s classical music world is in the midst of a generational shift. Peter Simon, president of the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) since 1991, will step aside at the end of August 2024 , and is already working with his successor, … » Read

LONDON—When it premiered in 1994, Hans Zender’s kaleidoscopic take on Schubert’s Winterreise gave the critics major conniptions. Up to then, composers had arranged the odd song, but no one had dared to go the whole hog. Worse, … » Read