Latest news – Page 221
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ArticleUS violin dealer Charles Magby charged with first-degree larceny
American instrument dealer Charles Magby was arrested on 23 August on charges of first-degree larceny. According to police in Guilford, Connecticut, several complaints have been made against the 63-year-old owner of Charles H. Magby Fine Violins Ltd, regarding his selling of high-end custom instruments, including violins, cellos, bows, on consignment. ...
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ArticleNew London festival combines improvised music with art, theatre, dance and film
Cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson (pictured), viola player Max Baillie and all-string group the 12 Ensemble are among the performers at a new ten-day festival in east London next month. The ‘i = u Festival’ will bring together music with dance, art, theatre and film as it explores improvisation ...
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ArticleWebsite launched for orchestral 'music and wellness' scheme
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) has launched a website providing information and resources for organisations looking to devise ‘music and wellness’ programmes. The site brings together advice and experience gained from the PSO’s own programmes, which began in 1999. The programmes involve working with music therapists in facilities such as ...
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ArticleStudy suggests that judgement of music competitions is led more by sight than sound
New research into how music competition performances are evaluated suggests that what judges see matters more than what they hear. Scientists at University College London set out to test the general consensus that sound is the most important element in judging a musical performance. The findings were published in the ...
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ArticleBBC to cut Nigel Kennedy 'apartheid' statement
The BBC has confirmed it will remove a statement made last week by violinist Nigel Kennedy at a Proms concert for its TV broadcast on 23 August. The statement, made from the stage of the Royal Albert Hall, came at the end of a concert by Kennedy and ...
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ArticleViolinist William Hagen awarded Dorothy DeLay Memorial Fellowship
American violinist William Hagen has won the Dorothy DeLay Memorial Fellowship competition at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Hagen, 20, was awarded a scholarship for the 2014 Aspen festival, where he will also give a performance with orchestra. Hagen, who hails from Utah, is a student of Robert Lipsett ...
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ArticleYoung violinist stars in Filipino movie
A film about a seven-year-old violinist has become one of the Philippines’ most critically acclaimed releases of the year. Filmed in 2008, Boses (Voices) focuses on a mute boy’s friendship with a reclusive violin player, and how their shared love of the instrument helps them come to terms with the ...
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ArticleSteven Isserlis to guest edit The Strad
The cellist takes over the October issue and has chosen an inspiring and provocative theme
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ArticleJoshua Bell to judge Miss America contest
Joshua Bell has been named as a judge for the 2014 Miss America competition. The 45-year-old violinist will be one of seven adjudicators for the pageant, taking place on 15 September in Atlantic City, New Jersey.Bell (pictured performing at the 2013 BBC Proms) will be joined by Lance ...
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ArticleDmitry Shebalin (1930–2013)
Russian viola player and pedagogue Dmitry Shebalin has died at the age of 83. For more than four decades he performed with the Borodin Quartet, one of the most acclaimed chamber music groups of the 20th century.Born in 1930, Shebalin was the son of the composer and teacher Vissarion Shebalin. ...
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ArticleAssistant concertmaster leaves Minnesota Orchestra
Another of the Minnesota Orchestra's locked-out musicians has quit the ensemble. Assistant concertmaster Stephanie Arado (pictured) has resigned to take up a teaching post at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. Arado, who joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 1991, wrote in an email to the orchestra's leadership: 'My ...
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ArticleErhu player receives Royal College of Music degree
London’s Royal College of Music (RCM) has awarded its first degree in a traditional Chinese instrument. Singaporean musician Chew Jun Ru, 24, has graduated with a BMus in performance on the erhu, a two-stringed bowed instrument sometimes known as a ‘Chinese violin’.Chew, 24, has principally studied at Singapore’s Nanyang Academy ...
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ArticleEx-Chetham's teacher Malcolm Layfield arrested
Malcolm Layfield, former head of strings at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), has been arrested on suspicion of three historic rapes. The 61-year-old, who quit his post at the RNCM in February, was detained over alleged offences of rape against three girls, two aged 16 and one aged ...
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ArticleFernando Grillo (1946–2013)
Fernando Grillo, the Italian double bassist, composer and teacher, has died at the age of 67. Closely associated with Italy’s avant-garde movement, he experimented with new forms of sound production and collaborated with composers including Salvatore Sciarrino, Harrison Birtwistle, Iannis Xenakis and Luciano Berio. Karlheinz Stockhausen once dubbed Grillo ‘the ...
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ArticleAdrian Shepherd (1939–2013)
Cellist and ensemble director Adrian Shepherd has died at the age of 74. For 20 years he served as principal cellist in the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), but was best known as the founder of the chamber ensemble Cantilena, which mainly comprised players from the orchestra.Born in 1939 in ...
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ArticleArgentina's first stringed-instrument gallery set for opening
A museum in Buenos Aires is to open a new permanent exhibition hall dedicated to stringed instruments in October. Officials at the Isaac Fernández Blanco Museum of Spanish–American Art believe that the new gallery will be the first such exhibition space in Argentina. Among the instruments to be displayed is ...
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ArticleViolinist, 17, wins Schleswig-Holstein competition
Munich-based violinist Louise Wehr has won the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival’s competition for young musicians, which this year was devoted to the violin. The 17-year-old received €5,000 as well as the €500 audience prize at the competition’s final on 3 August.Born in 1996, Wehr (pictured) performed Chausson’s Poème and Bach’s Partita ...
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ArticlePittsburgh Symphony concertmaster joins Carnegie Mellon faculty
Noah Bendix-Balgley, concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO), is to join the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University School of Music in September 2013. The 28-year-old violinist (pictured), who has occupied the concertmaster’s chair since 2011, will coach student quartets. Bendix-Balgley was the first violinist of the Athlos Quartet from ...
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ArticleToby Saks (1942–2013)
Cellist and teacher Toby Saks died on 1 August at the age of 71. A soloist, chamber musician and pedagogue, she founded the Seattle Chamber Music Society in 1982 and served as artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival for more than three decades.Born in 1942, Saks began learning ...
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ArticleColumbus Symphony recruits new concertmaster
The Columbus Symphony in Ohio, US, has named Canadian Jean-Sébastien Roy as its new concertmaster. His appointment ends an 18-month search by the orchestra. Roy, who performed as guest concertmaster with the orchestra in the 2012–13 season, will lead the orchestra from the beginning of the 2013–14 season in October.Roy ...