Topic: NEWS performers
Pianist Horacio Gutiérrez has cancelled all his engagements through January 2008 due to a diagnosis of primary gastric lymphoma. "[It] is 90% curable with chemotherapy, which he is undergoing now," his manager, Seldy Cramer, told Playbill Arts. "He plans to return to the stage in January." ...MORE... | BUY Horacio Gutiérrez


MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
As the Met's fortunes began to recover in the late 1930s, the young singer established a distinctive and distinguished career, anchored by her rigorous interpretive standards and unfailingly honest musicianship and abetted by her tall, slim figure, graceful deportment and genial stage presence.
The prolific Swindon-born composer Graham Whettam, who was known for his futuristic piano works, has died, aged 79. He passed away on Friday [18 AUG 2007] at his home in Gloucestershire and since then tributes have been paid to a man known as one of Britain's elder statesmen of music.
Those of us who write about classical music are constantly being bombarded with reports that the art form is dying. We hear about the lack of music education in the schools, the decline in the number of groups touring, and the general lack of interest for it among those who attend performances....
Clarinets and roller-skating don't usually go together, unless you're at a Martin Fröst performance. The Swedish clarinetist -- a serious classical musician with plenty of high-brow credentials -- often glides on in-line skates during performances, dances or dons elaborate costumes and stage make-up, in an effort to bring elements of modern dance and theater to classical
Richard Bradshaw, general director of the Canadian Opera Company and the man who brought an opera house to Toronto, has died.
Leonard Slatkin says he "wants to put the Detroit Symphony back on the map," reports the The Detroit News, but has not yet received a formal offer to become the orchestra's next music director and is still in discussions with the DSO's president and executive director Anne Parsons and artistic adviser Peter Oundjian.
The switch several months ago from an NPR and news-talk format to all classical music at WETA 90.9 FM was swift and abrupt. In other words, not at all like public radio, which tends to agonize big changes over (donated!) catered lunches with community focus groups and several in-house committees. If ratings are an indication, and it’s safe to say they are, WETA’s return to the classics was a great move for the station.
"Under programmes run by the Foundation for the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela (Fesnojiv), Venezuela's pioneering music education network commonly known as "El Sistema", all children in Guarenas have access to a free education in classical music. Demand for the scheme from the local people seems insatiable; there are currently 700 students, and another 600 are on the waiting list."....
Tikhon Khrennikov, a prolific Russian composer and pianist best known in