All News articles – Page 248
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Pinchas Zukerman to leave Ottawa orchestra after 17 years as music director
Pinchas Zukerman, the violinist, violist and conductor, has announced plans to step down as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) in Ottawa after 17 years at the helm. The 63-year-old will depart at the end of the 2014–15 season.Zukerman joined the NACO in 1988, assuming the dual ...
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Burglar posing as violinist steals Joshua Bell's watch in Spain
Joshua Bell's hotel room in Zaragoza, Spain, was burgled as the violinist was giving a concert, reports the Los Angeles Times. A thief posing as Bell apparently convinced hotel staff not only to give him a key to Bell's room, but also to open the room's safe. The thief then ...
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Dealer and repairer steps in to help schoolgirl whose violin was destroyed
A violin dealer and repairer in Wichita, Kansas, donated a complete violin outfit to a middle-school student whose instrument had been smashed to pieces, reports the Wichita Eagle. The 14-year-old girl had accidentally left her violin on the ground outside her school, on the day before she was due ...
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UK quartet player's stolen £25k violin is handed in
A stolen violin worth £25k was handed in at a West London rail station on Wednesday 29 February before being reunited with its owner, Brodowsky Quartet violinist Catrin Win Morgan. The instrument, made by Montpellier maker Frédéric Chaudière, was taken from the overhead luggage rack of a London train ...
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1500-year-old wooden fragment could be bridge from Europe's oldest stringed instrument
Archaeologists working on the Scottish island of Skye have discovered the remains of what could be Europe’s oldest stringed instrument. A fragment of burnt wood was unearthed in late 2011 in southern Skye’s High Pasture Cave. Experts who are now studying the object in the Historic Scotland laboratory believe it ...
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Violin made of driftwood from Japan tsunami to tour world
A violin made partly from driftwood from areas devastated in the 11 March 2011 tsunami in Japan is to be played in a musical relay of concerts around the world, reports the Mainichi Daily News. The violin is being made by Muneyuki Nakazawa, a 71-year-old Japanese maker, restorer ...
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Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet to take off in Birmingham
A multimedia performance of Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet has been commissioned from Birmingham Opera Company as part of a new £3.5m digital arts platform in the UK. Arts Council England and the BBC have commissioned 53 projects for The Space, which will run between May and October and be ...
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Violinist Maxim Vengerov takes Royal Academy of Music teaching post
London's Royal Academy of Music (RAM) has appointed Maxim Vengerov to the new position of Menuhin Professor of Music. In his new role, the violinist will visit the RAM every term to work with students in masterclasses and one-to-one lessons. Vengerov will kick off his new professorship on Monday 27 ...
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Man is caught on CCTV taking quartet player's £25k violin
British Transport Police have released CCTV images of a man who took a violin from the luggage rack of a London train at around 8am on 8 February. The instrument, which belongs to Brodowski Quartet violinist Catrin Win Morgan, is a Stradivari copy by Montpellier maker Frédéric Chaudière. Worth ...
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Myung-Whun Chung to conduct North Korean orchestra in joint concert with French orchestra
An orchestra from North Korea will play a concert with the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra in Paris on 14 March, reports AFP. Seventy musicians from the Unhasu Orchestra will join 70 players from the French orchestra to play music by Brahms, and non-classical scores, at the Salle Pleyel. ...
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Royal Academy of Music appoints violinist Margaret Faultless as head of historical performance
Margaret Faultless will become the new head of historical performance at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London in September 2012. The violinist and director will succeed Laurence Cummings in the role. Faultless has been a co-leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment since 1989. For ...
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London Symphony Orchestra to give free Trafalgar Square performance
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) will swap the Barbican Hall for the rather more challenging acoustic of Trafalgar Square when it performs a Stravinsky programme on Saturday 12 May. The event is the first in a new series of annual open-air performances that the LSO will give in association with ...
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Violinist and violist Ida Kavafian to join Juilliard faculty
The Juilliard School has appointed Ida Kavafian to its violin faculty from autumn 2012. The violinist and violist, who studied at Juilliard with Oscar Shumsky, is a longtime member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and former violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio. She teaches at the Curtis ...
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Competition winner gets to record on 300-year-old Stradivari violin
A 16-year-old has won a competition to play and record on a 300-year-old Stradivari violin. Laura Ayoub was chosen to play a piece of her choice at London's SARM Studios. She also received a masterclass with Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, who paid a surprise visit to the recording studio. ...
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Violinist from Nazareth wins 'courage in the arts' award
A 34-year-old violinist from Nazareth has been named as one of the recipients of the 2012 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Awards for the Arts. Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar is a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and is the general director of the Barenboim-Said Conservatory in Nazareth and the Barenboim-Said Music Centre ...
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Paul Watkins to replace David Finckel as Emerson Quartet cellist
The Emerson Quartet has announced that cellist David Finckel will leave the ensemble at the end of the 2012–13 season. His replacement will be the British cellist and conductor Paul Watkins. The personnel change is the quartet's first since 1979, when Finckel replaced original cellist Eric Wilson three years after ...
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Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra launches internet concerto competition for soloist
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) is using the internet to find a worthy concerto soloist for one of its 2012–13 subscription programmes. Violinists, cellists and other instrumentalists can upload audition videos on YouTube in a competition that the PSO claims is the first of its kind by a major ...
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ArticleViolinist David Garrett to star as Paganini in movie biopic of his hero
David Garrett is set to make his movie debut as Paganini in a new biopic of the great violinist and composer, reports Variety. The Devil's Violinist has a budget of between $15m and $20m, and is due to begin filming in Europe this August. The film's writer ...
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US aviation bill creates national policy for instruments on planes
Musicians in the US have cause for celebration after Congress approved provisions for a uniform national policy on carrying instruments on planes. The provisions are included in the Federal Aviation Authority bill, which after 23 short-term extensions since 2007 has now been reauthorised for the next four years. ...
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French violinist Devy Erlih dies in road accident
The violinist, conductor and pedagogue Devy Erlih died in a road accident in Paris on Tuesday morning. He was on his way to the École normale de musique when he was hit by a truck. He was 83 years old. Born in Paris in 1928 to Romanian–Jewish parents, Erlih ...
