Monday Morning Violin Gossip, Op. 2, No. 11

By Darcy Lewis

Sixty years ago a man in prison started making a violin out of a piece of maple he found. Howard Scott never finished it, and for decades it sat in his closet. On Scott’s 87th birthday, his grandson presented him with the gift of a lifetime: The now-completed instrument he had begun so many years earlier.

Grandson Nolle Pritchard, a cabinetmaker, swapped services with Jess Fox, a student luthier, so that she would finish what Scott had begun.

Read the entire Boston Globe story here

Musician News

3/15/06 – WFIU-FM in Bloomington, IN will air a recording of Prokofiev’s Sonata in D for Solo Violin performed by violinist Vincent Skowronski from his album “Avec et Sans.” Expected air time is 7:10 p.m. Eastern. The station has also scheduled another piece from the same recording, Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess, for 11:35 a.m on March 19. WFIU programming is simulcast over the Internet.

3/14/06 - Violinist Chee-Yun and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, will perform the Brahms Double Concerto with the California Symphony.

3/9/06 – Cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and pianist Shigeo Neriki performed all five of Beethoven’s cello sonatas over two nights at Indiana University.

3/9/06 - The Violin Virtuosi from the IU Jacobs School of Music String Academy embarked on a 10-day concert tour to Sweden and Spain. Director Mimi Zweig and assistant director Brenda Brenner are accompanying the ensemble on their seven-concert tour. Students range in age from 11 to 19. Players on the tour are Yoo-Jin Cho, Caroline Gilbert, John Sanderson, Johna Smith, Thomas Rodgers, Peter Vickery, Julie Wunderle, and Stephanie Zyzak.

3/8/06 - The University of Michigan School of Music has appointed Richard Aaron professor of cello. The appointment will take effect in September of this year pending approval of the regents. Aaron has served on the faculties of the Cleveland Institute of Music and ENCORE School for Strings for the last fourteen years, and has led master classes in the U.S. and abroad. He has also performed as soloist with several leading U.S. orchestras.

3/7/06 - Leila Josefowicz performed Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto with the Marin Symphony.

3/6/06 - Violinist Susan Jacobs, a member of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, served as chair of an important award given by the orchestra. The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra's Musicians' Awards for Outstanding Music Educators honored five area teachers.

Orchestra News

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced $700,000 in grants to support arts organizations in the Gulf Coast region that were affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The grants include $500,000 in support to individual organizations and state and local arts agencies in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas. Additionally, the NEA is funding $200,000 for regional participation in the Mayors' Institute on City Design and Your Town. Funding for arts organizations include a $20,000 grant for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra to support orchestral performances as part of the "We're Marchin' to New Orleans" month-long celebration of the performing arts in the city.

3/7/06 – The Boston Symphony is completing its national tour without music director James Levine, who withdrew after an injury. The tour, with stops in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, and Washington, D.C., is the orchestra's first major American tour in several years. Levine fell onstage at Symphony Hall in Boston and injured his right shoulder.

3/7/06 – The London Philharmonic experienced a similar mishap while performing in Dublin with principal conductor Kurt Masur. The New York Times reported that Masur "fell ill during intermission at a performance with the London Philharmonic in Dublin and was taken to an emergency room on Sunday. A spokeswoman for the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Sinead Doyle, said Mr. Masur, 78, reported heart palpitations and spent the night in the hospital. He was released yesterday and flew to Germany. R. Douglas Sheldon, the orchestra's manager for touring, said that doctors had found nothing wrong with Mr. Masur's heart and that he was suffering from a virus.” Osmo Vänskä, music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, will take charge for the first four concerts of a 16-concert American tour beginning in Santa Barbara, CA.

3/7/06 – The English National Opera has named Edward Gardner as music director. is the English National Opera's new music director. “The American Andrew Litton, much liked by the orchestra, was vetoed by the singing staff who felt he gave them insufficient support. Yakov Kreizberg, the Russian-born American, was top of the search list but he could not find room in a busy international schedule for the seven months a year that ENO required. Mark Wigglesworth, was forced to make a choice between troubled ENO and the comfortable Monnaie in Brussels, where his appointment is expected shortly," reports La Scena Musicale.

3/07/06- The Baltimore Symphony ran a staggering deficit of $7.3 million in fiscal 2005, and expects to tally another $4.5 million in red ink this season, raising the organization's accumulated debt total to a whopping $16.2 million, reports the Baltimore Sun. The numbers represent some of the largest deficits of any American orchestra in the last decade, even though Baltimore's annual budget ($30 million) is considerably smaller than those of orchestras in Cleveland and Chicago, which have faced similar-sized deficits in recent years. The musicians' contract, which already included financial concessions meant to reduce debt, expires this September.

Louisville Orchestra Update

Lots of changes in the works….

3/5/06 – According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, "Robert McGrath, who has been the Louisville Orchestra's general manager since June 2004, has been appointed the vice president and general manager" at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra." Starting March 20, he will "direct all of that orchestra's concert operations, touring and electronic media activities." The paper notes: "Though he is closely involved with the Louisville Orchestra's present fiscal crisis -- he sits at the negotiating table as management's principal number-cruncher -- McGrath said his job change is unrelated to the orchestra's difficulties….McGrath is likely to participate in at least one more mediation session involving the Louisville Orchestra's management, board, musicians and local union representatives, who are trying to reach a contract agreement that will keep the orchestra from filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy."

3/6/06 - The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that the Louisville Orchestra management has rejected a proposal by musicians to cut six weeks from the upcoming season, a move musicians say will save $400,000 in that contract year. “But management believes that the cost savings would be closer to $200,000 because of the loss of potential revenue during those weeks and that the musicians' one-year proposal isn't sufficient to address the orchestra's longer-term needs….Management and the board want to cut the number of full-time musicians from the current 71 to 53, [Executive Director Scott] Provancher said." Provancher comments: "The orchestra will be insolvent after the March 31 payroll and will be unable to pay either its vendors or employees." Adler writes: "The orchestra Musicians Committee sent out a statement yesterday outlining its latest offer, which it plans to present again today. The statement also said that in a secret ballot last week, 'the full orchestra overwhelmingly' supported keeping 71 full-timers ... Clarinetist Tim Zavadil, who heads the musicians' committee, said last night that two of the six weeks the players proposed cutting were vacation weeks. Overall, 'this is another solution that seems to provide the organization the financial relief it needs without jeopardizing its artistic integrity.' "

3/7/06 - The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that "management is now proposing a two-tiered structure with 55 full-time and 19 part-time players. Last month management had offered a plan with 53 full-time and 21 part-time players. Management also offered to pay a $5,000 bonus to each of 16 players who are now full-time but who would become part-timers." Adler quotes Tim Zavadil, head of the Musicians' Committee: "We stand by our proposal that a reduction in weeks would serve the artistic mission of the orchestra much better than a reduction in full-time musicians." Adler adds that orchestra President Joseph Pusateri "said the $5,000 bonuses to the 16 players would increase their pay next season to a range of approximately $25,000 to $29,000. Pusateri said that is about what the 71 musicians would have gotten after the cuts they said they would accept.

3/9/06 - Scott Provancher is resigning as executive director of the Louisville Orchestra. "He declined to elaborate on where he would go next, though a professional-placement 'headhunter' asking about Provancher already has spoken with orchestra board president Joseph Pusateri," according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. Provancher comments: "I'll definitely be staying through the end of March ... but the exact time frame hasn't been developed at this point."

Other News

Effective March 3, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) requires a $200 fee for each letter of non-objection requested by visa petitioners, an increase from the previous fee of $50. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) requires the labor letter for O and P visa applications for instrumental musicians. An AFM memo announcing the change, dated March 3, states that the increased charge is to "defray the considerable labor and material costs" of issuing the letters. All requests received by the AFM must include a corporate check, certified check, or money order payable to "AFM Immigration Processing." The AFM is efficient when responding to requests for letters of non-objection. However, for those petitioners requesting a response within 48 hours, the "expedited" consultation fee is $250.

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