David Rudge, the first conductor and music director in the history of the four-year-old Rock Hill (S.C.) Symphony Orchestra, has resigned, expressing concerns that the organization’s safety precautions for the pandemic were inadequate. … » Read

SEATTLE — An unexpectedly last-minute round of musical chairs reshuffled the lineup for one of the most unusual and original programs of the Seattle Symphony season. As a double harp concerto, Hannah Lash’s The Peril of Dreams , an … » Read

When Sarah Ruhl [pictured]wrote her play Eurydice in 2003, she could not have foreseen that nearly 20 years later it would appear as an opera on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. But on Nov. 23, her reimagining of the Orpheus myth, with music … » Read

The recently announced Gilmore 2022 Young Artist Awardees are pianists Janice Carissa and Clayton Stephenson. Carissa, who is Indonesian, is currently studying at the Curtis Institute of Music with Gary Graffman and Robert McDonald. She and … » Read

Michigan Opera Theater is on a roll. A bank roll, apparently, for it has just been given a $5 million grant from the William Davidson Foundation. The company’s largest single gift will go toward updating the century-old Detroit Opera House … » Read

A new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, always big news, is even more noteworthy as the classical music world slowly emerges from the pandemic. On Nov. 19 the English National Opera (ENO) introduces director Richard Jones’s staging … » Read

Edmonton Opera is said to be struggling financially, but that doesn’t seem to have deterred its trustees from jumping into the fire feet-first and hiring an artistic director known for his bold programming ideas. That would be Joel Ivany, … » Read

During the pandemic, Adele Schonhardt and Chris Howlett created the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall (MDCH), which streamed 430 live performances and raised well over $1.6 million for musicians whose normal performance venues had shut down. What … » Read

Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, an alumna of her country’s El Sistema, has challenged last weekend’s  widely reported gathering of 8,100 young musicians to set a Guinness world record. The government, she posits, ordered … » Read

Maybe it’s an after effect of the Trump era, but more orchestras and conductors than ever seem to be making programs that reflect on America and what it means to be American, as demonstrated by four new orchestral recordings. Perhaps the … » Read