The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) will soon be in the market for a new concertmaster. On Sept. 20 the MSO announced that after 25 years in the first chair, Frank Almond will retire at the conclusion of the 2019-2020 season. In a statement … » Read

Anne Midgette, chief classical music critic for The Washington Post since 2008, is leaving the paper. Midgette, known as the first female critic to write for The New York Times regularly when she started there in 2001, has decided to move on. Her … » Read

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and its musicians have reached a tentative agreement, according to a joint statement issued Saturday evening by the musicians and co-signed by Linda Moxley, BSO VP of marketing & communications, and Brian … » Read

Baltimore-based composer Christopher Rouse died yesterday, according to a statement from his publisher Boosey & Hawkes. He was 70. No cause of death was stated. Rouse was a prolific and oft-commissioned composer, with five symphonies and no … » Read

The Metropolitan Opera will bring Fire Shut Up My Bones to an as-yet-defined New York stage in as yet-defined future season. Composed by jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard with libretto by screenwriter Kasi Lemmons, the opera, premiered by the … » Read

The Cleveland Orchesta, which opens the Carnegie Hall season on October 3, has extended the contract of its music director, Franz Welser-Möst, for five additional years, through 2027. The Austrian conductor, now 59, will have been on the … » Read

If you caught Philip Venables’s opera of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis at last season’s NYC Prototype Festival, you’ll know he doesn’t fight shy of harrowing subject matter. Yet although Denis & Katya , which … » Read

BERLIN — Booing can be a badge of honor in Germany’s theaters, particularly when it comes to canonical works. That’s at least one way of regarding the vehement reactions that have greeted Frank Castorf’s new staging of La … » Read

NEW YORK (AP) — More than 60 years after Marian Anderson broke the color barrier at the Metropolitan Opera, black singers still face unique obstacles in building their careers within the industry. "We've made some strides, but not a whole … » Read

German conductor Anja Bihlmaier, recently named principal conductor of the Residentie Orchestra in the Hague, Holland, is to become principal guest conductor of Lahti (FI) Symphony Orchestra in autumn 2020. During the course of her three-year … » Read