Latest news – Page 248
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Competition offers UK kids the chance to try a Stradivari violin
Children in the UK are being given the chance to swap their student violin for a Stradivari in a new competition from the ABRSM and PureSolo. The music exam board and the online recording platform have teamed up with Cremona-based restorer and maker Eric Blot to offer one lucky student ...
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Anthony Hopkins pens waltz for violinist André Rieu
Anthony Hopkins has composed a waltz for violinist André Rieu and his orchestra. The star of The Silence of the Lambs was in the audience when Rieu gave the new piece, And The Waltz Goes On, its premiere in Vienna recently. The Oscar-winning British actor has previously composed music for films ...
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Appeal saves London Mozart Players chamber orchestra
The London Mozart Players, one of the UK's oldest chamber orchestras, has staved off the possibility of closure after a drive to raise urgent funds was a success. Two months after news emerged that the chamber orchestra was on the brink, its funding appeal is on track to reach its ...
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Czech violinist Josef Suk dies aged 81
Josef Suk, the Czech violinist whose lineage stretched back to Dvo?ák, has died at the age of 81. Suk was Dvo?ák's great grandson, and the grandson of Josef Suk, the violinist and composer.Born in Prague in 1929, Suk studied violin with Jaroslav Kocian and made his public debut in 1940. ...
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Violinist Paul Kantor to join Rice University's Shepherd School of Music
Violin pedagogue Paul Kantor is to join the faculty of Rice University in Houston next July. He is currently professor of violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where his students have included Caroline Goulding, the winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant earlier this year. Kantor will teach at ...
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Christopher Nupen's documentary on violinist Paganini set for DVD release
Paganini's Daemon, a documentary on the violinist–composer by Christopher Nupen, will be released on DVD on 26 September. The film, which was shown on BBC Four in the UK in February 2010, looks at the legends surrounding Paganini, explores his personality and technical prowess, and features extracts of his music. ...
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Violinist Gidon Kremer blasts Russian leadership
Violinist Gidon Kremer has issued a spirited attack via CNN against Russian authorities over the treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, and Lebedev, his close associate, have been in prison since 2003 on charges of fraud and tax evasion respectively. They were recently convicted ...
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Arts Council England unveils £40m philanthropy fund to help organisations raise private donations
A new £40m fund has been launched with the intention of increasing private giving to the arts. The Catalyst Arts scheme from Arts Council England will give £30m to organisations who already have some experience of fundraising but who need practical help to raise more money. Arts organisations with little ...
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Tchaikovsky Violin Competition announces winners
Narek Hakhnazaryan from Armenia won the first prize and gold medal in the cello division of the International Tchaikovsky Competition. The 22-year-old, who most recently studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston with Laurence Lesser, received €20,000. Second prize went to Edgar Moreau, 17, from France. Belarussian Ivan Karizna, ...
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Detroit Symphony names Kimberly Ann Kaloyanides Kennedy acting concertmaster
Kimberly Ann Kaloyanides Kennedy has been made acting concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for the 2011–12 season. She fills the chair left vacant after Emmanuelle Boisvert announced in May that she was leaving to join the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Kennedy joined the Detroit orchestra in 1998 and has served ...
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Longtime Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Joseph Golan dies
Violinist and teacher Joseph Golan has died in Chicago at the age of 80. Golan, who studied with the violinist and composer George Perlman, joined the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner in 1953 and served as principal second violin from 1969 until his retirement in 2002.
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Russian conductor apologises for remarks aimed at Armenian cellist
A conductor at the Tchaikovsky Competition has apologised for allegedly insulting the nationality and racial origin of an Armenian competitor. Mark Gorenstein was rehearsing the Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra of Russia prior to performing with cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan, when he appeared to refer to the competitor as an 'aul' (a ...
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Artists call for UK visa shake-up
More than a hundred leading authors, artists and musicians have co-signed an open letter to the Home Secretary, calling on the government to make it easier for writers and performers to visit the UK on a short-term basis. The signatories to the letter want short-term visits by non-EU artists ...
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Sony signs violinist Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedy has signed an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical. The violinist's first recordings for the label will include his new work Four Elements, arrangements of music by Duke Ellington, and a new interpretation of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. He will record all these works with his recently formed ...
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MasterChef claims another cellist
After a Scottish cellist made it through to the last eight of the UK MasterChef earlier this year, another orchestral cellist went nearly as far in the Australian version. Craig Young, who plays in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, was the 12th of 24 contestants to be eliminated from the show, ...
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Violinist and teacher Aida Stucki dies aged 90
Violinist and pedagogue Aida Stucki, whose pupils included Anne-Sophie Mutter, has died at the age of 90. Born in Cairo to Swiss and Italian parents, Stucki studied with Stefi Geyer and Carl Flesch before launching her career in the 1940s. As well as performing under conductors such as Hermann Scherchen ...
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Czech state recalls old Italian instruments
Czech musicians have had to return old Italian stringed instruments belonging to the Czech state to the vaults of the National Museum in Prague because of fears they could be impounded abroad. Among those affected are violinist Jan Talich and cellist Petr Prause of the Talich Quartet, who had to ...
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Jonathan Crow next concertmaster of Toronto Symphony
Jonathan Crow has been named as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's next concertmaster. Following a performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony in which Crow was playing as guest concertmaster, the orchestra's music director, Peter Oundjian, made an impromptu announcement on stage about the violinist's impending appointment. Crow, who is still in his ...
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New online lutherie tech journal launches
A new lutherie research resource, the Savart Journal, has been launched online. It gives open access to peer-reviewed articles about stringed instrument science and technology, and is named after the French physicist Félix Savart (1791–1841), a pioneering researcher in the acoustics of stringed instruments who worked with Vuillaume. The ...
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Conductor Charles Dutoit plans inter-Korean orchestra
Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit is helping to lay the foundations for an orchestra of young musicians from the two Koreas. The conductor is in Pyongyang this week with his violinist wife, Chantal Juillet, for talks with North Korean officials about creating such an ensemble. Juillet is artistic director of the ...