Gustavo Dudamel at the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky (photo by Rich Copley)

Get off your high horse, you might say, but the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the very definition of "elite," came to the Bluegrass State this week.  Apparently it was no problem for the picky Viennese. who, incidentally, have their pick of conductors, too, hiring only the world's best on a guest-conductor-only basis.  The Vienna Phil's pick this time was Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel, today's hottest young conductor.  While in Kentucky, Dudamel and the orchestra members rubbed shoulders with attendees of the World Equestrian Games, being held for the first time outside of Europe in, where else?  Kentucky.
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Cincinnati Music Hall

Cincinnati's 132-year-old Music Hall is beautiful.  It has enviable acoustics.  It is a beloved icon for the Cincinnati community.  However, as the performance home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, it has a fatal flaw.  It is too big.  On Jan. 7, 2010, CSO music director Paavo Järvi announced that he will leave the orchestra at the end of the 2010-2011 season.  Did Music Hall have anything to do with it?  Would Dr. Demento have had something to say?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viTUhOT4d3I

Re-posted from Feb. 23, 2009.

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Many people paid tribute to Erich Kunzel as he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame May 7 in Cincinnati.  One of them was Charles Manning, Pops Pianist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, who headed East over I-74 to join a festive crowd in Memorial Hall, home of the hall of fame in historic Over-the-Rhine.  Manning's perceptive and eloquent remarks are those of someone who played under Kunzel from 1982-2002 while he served as ISO Pops Music Director.
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Do newspapers  matter?  According to a new study by economists at Princeton University based on evidence from the closing of the Cincinnati Post in December, 2007, they can have "a substantial and measurable impact on public life."  After the Post closed, fewer candidates ran for public office in Cincinnati's Northern Kentucky suburbs, where the Post was historically dominant.  Incumbents were yielded an advantage and voter turnout fell.  The March 2009 study from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs may be found at http://wws-roxen.princeton.edu/wwseconpapers/papers/dp236.pdf
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What can Cincinnati's arts organizations do to help themselves and each other during these straitened economic times?  Much, based on a simple premise:  connect the dots. Some thoughts and observations on how it could have and might still be done.
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Charles Coleman

New York composer Charles Coleman has some thoughts about the ubiquitous term "accessible" as applied to new music.  Must music be "primarily simple with a tuneful nature" to be "accessible?"  Bah, humbug.
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Collaboration and mutual reinforcement will be increasingly necessary if arts groups are going to survive in today's straitened economy.  Having seen opportunities for mutual benefit go unrealized in the Greater Cincinnati community, it was rewarding to find a small glimmer of hope on the Music Hall calendar in November.  "Stargazing and Late Night in Spain," a ticket being offered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's young professionals group, will draw attention to both the CSO and Cincinnati Opera. 
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promotional illustration for Cincinnati Ballet's "Dracula"

Which is scarier, Dracula the ballet or ballet with canned music?  I found out at the world premiere of Cincinnati Ballet's "Dracula" Oct. 31 at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.  Choreographer on just 5 1/2 months' notice was Cincinnati Ballet associate artistic director Devon Carney. 
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Manuel Brug, a journalist with Germany's Die Welt, visited Cincinnati in March in advance of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's visit to Germany as part of its 2008 European tour (now underway).  Here are his observations about the city, the CSO and music director Paavo Järvi as published in Die Welt April 4. English translation by Mary Ellyn and John Hutton.
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World premiere led by Tan Dun of his "Water Passion after St. Matthew" in Stuttgart in 2000

Holy Week in the Christian faith -- Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday -- is always the occasion for great music, especially by Johann Sebastian Bach. West meets East this year in Cincinnati with the regional premiere of Tan Dun’s “Water Passion after St. Matthew," to be performed by the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Chamber Choir, Percussion Group Cincinnati and guest artists Elizabeth Keusch (soprano), Stephen Bryant (bass) and Yuanlin Chen (electronic sampler) at 8 p.m. March 15 in CCM’s Corbett Auditorium. Joining them will be CCM instrumentalists Kuan-Chang Tu, violin, and Amy Gillingham, cello. CCM's Earl Rivers will conduct.   - [Read more]

Main Building, Tartu University, Tartu, Estonia, where students placed Estonia's blue-black-white striped flag during its War of Independence (1918-20) (photos by Mary Ellyn Hutton)

The Republic of Estonia is 90 years old in 2008. Elam Pitkjaan, president of the Estonian Heritage Association of Cincinnati, delivered this address at a birthday lunch held by the association on the country's 90th birthday Feb. 24 in Florence, Kentucky.
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Music in Cincinnati received a beautiful letter from Greenup County, Kentucky resident Vera Virgin, who accompanied her music teacher to Cincinnati in the 1930s to hear the great violinist Fritz Kreisler perform at Music Hall.  Vera, an accomplished pianist who still plays for church services at Oldtown Church of Christ in Oldtown, Kentucky, was a teacher and school administrator in the Greenup County schools for 42 years.
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An eloquent tribute to arts patroness Patricia Corbett from Cincinnati Opera general director Patricia K. Beggs. 

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What was newsworthy, noteworthy and mysterious in 2006 for Music in Cincinnati.   - [Read more]

Endings there will be, but one cannot always plans them, especially when it comes to people we love.  Five who left in 2006.
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