Opera star Beverly Sills dies of cancer at 78...
Topic: MILESTONESJun-Dec07

Brooklyn, NY, May 25, 1929 — Manhattan, NY, July, 2, 2007

Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world, died Monday [2 JUL 2007] of cancer, her manager said. She was 78. It had been revealed just last month that Sills was gravely ill with inoperable lung cancer. Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, the coloratura soprano made her opera debut in 1947 in Philadelphia in a bit role in "Carmen." She became a star with the smaller New York City Opera, where she first performed in 1955 in Johann Strauss Jr.'s "Die Fledermaus." She was acclaimed for performances in such operas as Douglas Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe," Massenet's "Manon" and Handel's "Giulio Cesare." She didn't appear at the Met until 1975, shortly before her retirement from singing, which made it surprising when the Met asked her to sit on its board in 2002.

...MORE, International Herald Tribune... | ...MORE, CBS News
SILLS on CDs | SILLS on the WEB
Carol Burnett comments | SILLS on DVDs | Metropolitan Opera Obit

Topic: NEW MOVIES

Pianist MATTHEW KENNEDY found his calling sharing music with world... Film honors Jubilee Singers director.

 In the aftermath of a documentary film his daughter created, Kennedy's accomplishments are finding their place in history on film. Matthew Kennedy: One Man's Journey tells the story of a man who in the 1940s was known worldwide as a classical concert pianist — garnering rave reviews in France, Canada and Italy — but remained largely unknown back home.

When his teacher in Americus taught him all she knew, she referred him to a teacher in Macon, who persuaded his mother to move him to New York and try to get him into Juilliard. After graduating with a Juilliard piano diploma in 1940, he entered Fisk that same year and began touring with the Fisk Jubilee Singers...    Beverly Keel story

Topic: NEWS performers
From birth, pianist Jonathan Biss lived in a world of music. His mother, the Romanian-born Miriam Fried, is a globe-trotting violinist who also performs and records with the Mendelssohn String Quartet. His father, violinist Paul Biss, teaches at Indiana University's prestigious School of Music in Bloomington, where Jonathan spent his childhood. Furthermore, his grandmother, the acclaimed Raya Garbousova, earned the highest praise from legendary cellist-conductor Pablo Casals, who called her the "finest cellist" he had ever heard. Samuel Barber wrote his cello concerto for her, and she performed its world premiere in 1946.

Chicago Sun-Times | GOOGLE: Biss | Biss on CDs

The doyenne of British clarinetists, Thea King, died on June 26 in London at age 81. No cause of death was reported.
Topic: MILESTONESJun-Dec07
King was a noted champion of obscure clarinet works of the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly those of Bernhard Crusell, Franz Krommer, Louis Spohr, Carl Stamitz and Carl Maria von Weber. An accomplished pianist, she won a piano scholarship to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music, where she was a pupil of Arthur Alexander and clarinetist Frederick Thurston. "In those days it helped if you played two instruments, however poorly," The Daily Telegraph quoted her once saying. At the piano King often accompanied her clarinetist peers, including Gervase de Peyer and Colin Davis.
...MORE PLAYBILLarts... | ...GOOGLE LINKS... | Thea King on CDs

Now Playing: NEW....from BRIDGE Catalog JULY 2007
Topic: NEW CDs
Dorothy Maynor in Concert at the Library of Congress (1940); Great
Performances from the Library of Congress, Volume 24; Dorothy Maynor,
soprano; Arpad Sandor, piano; Handel: Oh Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave
Me?;
Beethoven: Der Kusse, Op. 128; Adelaide, Op. 46; Schumann: Du bist wie
eine
Blume, Op. 25, No. 24; Brahms: Meine Liebe ist grün; R. Strauss:
Wiegenlied,
Op. 41, No. 1; Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten, Op. 19, No. 4;
Schubert:
Ave Maria; Debussy: Beau Soir; Bizet: Adieux de l'hôtesse arabe;
Charpentier: Depuis le jour; Gabriel Grovlez: Guitares et mandolines;
R.
Nathaniel Dett; My Day; S. Coleridge-Taylor: She Rested By the Broken
Brook;
Thou Art Risen, My Belovéd; Cecil Cohen: Epitaph for a Poet;
Spirituals:
Lead Me To the Water; I'm Seekin' For a City; I'm Goin' to tell God All
My
Troubles; Ride On, Jesus, Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit; Were You There.

BRIDGE 9233 ADD

This release of this newly re-mastered 1940 recital by the great
Dorothy
Maynor is cause for celebration. Historian Rosalyn M. Story writes, "In
the
history of American singers, Dorothy Maynor stands out as an artist
endowed
with the power to exalt, to transport the hearer above the realm of the
ordinary and beyond the limits of normal expectation." A discovery of
Serge
Koussevitzky, who called her, "a musical revelation," Maynor quickly
established herself as one of the great talents of the era. This
recital
program contains riveting interpretations of songs and arias from the
German
and French and American repertoire. Maynor's last group, and her
encores
focus on Negro spirituals. Writing in the Washington Post, Paul Hume
called
Maynor's voice, "a star-spangled glory; its effortless beauty haunted
audiences that came to love the singer as much as the song." It was
that
kind of communication that endeared Maynor to audiences, and made her
one of
her country's greatest singers.



Artur Balsam In Concert at the Manhattan School of Music; Artur Balsam,
piano

Disc A: Franz Joseph Haydn: Sonata No. 60 in C Major, Hob. XVI, 50;
Ludwig
van Beethoven: Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120

Disc B: Johannes Brahms:
Intermezzo in B minor, Op. 119, No. 1; Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118,
No.
2; Capriccio in C-sharp minor, Op. 76, No. 5; Felix Mendelssohn: Lied
ohne
Worte in E-flat major, Op. 67, No. 1; Fryderyk
Chopin: Three Mazurkas, Op. 63; Nocturne in F-sharp minor, Op. 48, No.
2;
Polonaise in E-flat minor, Op. 76, No. 2 Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17,
No. 4;
Variations brillantes, Op. 12

BRIDGE 9226A/B (Two discs for the price of one) ADD and DDD

This exciting release presents the Polish born pianist Artur Balsam
(1904-1994) in concert performances given during the latter part of the
great artist's career. The two-disc set is drawn from three recitals
given
by the pianist in 1982, 1986 and 1987. Balsam's intense musicality and
his
formidable technique remained with him to the end of his life and these
recordings,
crowned by a stunning account of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, show
him
deepening his art to the end.

These other Artur Balsam discs are also available from Bridge- all 2
discs
for the price of one!

Mozart Recordings: Concertos, K. 449, 450, 453, 456; Sonata K. 330;
Rondo K.
511 BRIDGE 9217A/B

Concerto Album: Concertos by Beethoven, Mozart, Hummel, & C.P.E. Bach
BRIDGE
9196A/B

Chamber Music by Dvorak and Chausson BRIDGE 9225A/B

Beverly Sills Reported to Be Gravely Ill
Now Playing: FoxNews reports that she had in fact lost her battle with cancer and had died.
Topic: NEWS performers
The Associated Press is reporting that soprano and arts administrator Beverly Sills is critically ill in a New York City hospital.
The opera diva who won over fans worldwide with her sparkling voice and charming personality and became a powerhouse in the New York arts world, is gravely ill with cancer. The Metropolitan Opera would neither confirm nor deny news of her illness, but people close to her said Sills, 78, was at a Manhattan hospital, with her daughter at her side. Friends and fans around the world are praying for the opera legend and New York megastar. Sills, nicknamed Bubbles for her effervescent personality, is ill from lung cancer. Today, if it can be done, she’ll be transferred from a hospital to her home to live out her final days. She turned 78 on May 25.

playbillarts.com | wikipedia.org

 

Conductor David Stern Named Music Director of Opera de St.-Gall
Topic: NEWS performers

                        

David Stern, the American conductor and son of the
legendary violinist Isaac Stern,

has been appointed music director of the opera house Opéra de St.-Gall, Switzerland ...
             playbillarts.com | imgartists.com

Now Playing: on LIVE365.com MUSIClassical CONCERT
Topic: MUSIClassical CONCERT
Many selections including PLAYLIST 921037:

SMETANA Polka from The Bartered Bride; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; James Levine, cond.
ALBUM NOTES

DAVID DIAMOND [photo] Symphony No. 3; Seattle Symphony Orchestra; Gerard Schwartz, cond.
ALBUM NOTES | BIO and Cdiscography | ...Wiki Bio...

BOLLING Aria from Suite for Orchestra and Trio; Claude Bolling, piano; English Chamber Orchestra; Jean-Pierre Rampal. cond.
ALBUM NOTES

Mac Morgan, 89, Bass-Baritone Who Went on to Teach Voice, Dies
Now Playing: ...regular on NBC Radio?s ?Highways in Melody"
Topic: MILESTONESJun-Dec07
Mac Morgan was an American bass-baritone who sang on radio, television and the stage from the 1940s to the 1970s and who was later chairman of the voice at Boston University, died on June 12, 2007, in Carrollton, Ga., where he lived. He was 89. He died of complications of an appendectomy, said his daughter Anne Morgan. Mac Morgan had been singing in concert halls and on the radio for years when he was asked to be a soloist at the Mass in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross for John F. Kennedy after the president was assassinated. For the first time, he worried he might not make it through Mozart's "Requiem." In 1946 he became a regular on NBC Radio’s long-running series “Highways in Melody.” In 1958 he appeared in the NBC Opera Company’s televised production of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte,”. He sang on “The Bell Telephone Hour” with Joan Sutherland, on a program that included Peggy Lee.
NY Times Obit | ...Boston Globe Obit

Topic: NEWS Industry

Time and again, European orchestral conductors roar into America's side doors, virtually unknown but fully matured and ready to assume major appointments.

Both the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra recently appointed new music directors - respectively Jaap van Zweden [photo] and Manfred Honeck - who came to them as anonymous as guest conductors can be, then inspired knockout reviews and high marks from the players. Going the opposite direction, the even-lesser-known Canadian Yannick Nezet-Seguin is replacing the superstar Valery Gergiev at the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra....MORE...