When determining the level of public funding for the arts in the U.K., policymakers often couple reductions in support with calls for greater reliance on professionals trained not as artists but as mangers. One result, Robert McDowell, founder … » Read

On May 30 in Helsinki, Finland, the jury at the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition awarded first prize to Inmo Yang, the first Korean violinist to win the prize. Currently pursuing a master’s degree at Hochschule für Musik … » Read

The Rake’s Progress provides an unsettling experience. With music by Stravinsky and words by W. H. Auden (working with Chester Kallman), it is the product of perhaps the most illustrious partnership ever to create an opera after World War … » Read

After a canceled 2020 season and a substantially reduced program in 2021, the Spoleto Festival has returned this year with a full performance schedule and a new general director. Mena Mark Hanna, the 37-year-old son of Egyptian immigrants, has … » Read

LOS ANGELES – For all of the progressive ideas coming out of Los Angeles that grab national attention, there is still a lot to be said for what’s happening here in the mainstream. For example, the new production of Aïda that … » Read

After the six winners were announced at the Metropolitan Opera’s Grand Finals Concert on May 1, the culmination of its annual National Council Auditions, I realized that I had already seen one of them in two significant productions. The … » Read

The upcoming weekend of June 3 and 4 was to mark the conclusion of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra’s (SASO) 2021-22 season. Instead, the two evenings usually devoted to music will feature nothing but the darkened Tobin Center for the … » Read

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem has always been political, and never more so than now. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s May 26 performance felt especially topical, conducted as it was by Vasily Petrenko, the orchestra’s Russian … » Read

Music has long been a means of expressing resistance to political and social oppression. Beethoven knew this, so did Verdi and many other composers. And so, too, does Ahmed Al Abaca, a 38-year-old Black, non-binary composer whose Ode to Liberty … » Read

Composer Tom Coult’s new opera Violet is a work whose animating theme of disappearing time proved emblematic of the pandemic that delayed its opening to this year’s Aldeburgh Festival in June. “I didn’t want an … » Read