SymphonyNow

Are innovation and experimentation becoming the norm for orchestras, rather than the exception? This is the provocative topic to be covered by Elizabeth Merritt during her keynote address launching this year’s League of American Orchestras National Conference in St. Louis on June 18. The session, “Imagining 2023,” is the first of two sessions featuring Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, a think tank that generates ideas, proposals, reports, and dreams about what museums might be. In the Conference’s closing session on June 20, “Taking It Home,” Merritt will participate in an interactive panel discussion during which orchestras will reflect on what their organizations might look like in 2023. More

When faced with a project that appears a bit too ambitious, sometimes all it takes is a little extra push. That certainly seems to be the story behind the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s May 8 Spring for Music Festival program at Carnegie Hall, which pairs Russian composer Giya Kancheli’s “Morning Prayers” from Life Without Christmas with his elder countryman Reinhold Glière’s massive Symphony No. 3, “Ill’ya Muromets.” Naxos had previously tried to enlist the BPO to record Glière’s 110-minute-plus work, Music Director JoAnn Falletta recalls, “and we had been hesitant only because of the size and endurance of the piece.” But keeping in mind the Spring for Music imperative of adventurous programming, and the BPO’s affinity for Russian music, Falletta decided the Glière was the perfect piece to play to the orchestra’s strengths while also challenging them. More

In St. Petersburg, Russia, the long-awaited opening of the new Mariinsky Theatre this week has the city in a bit of a frenzy. The theater has been ten years in the making, and in addition to the giddy opening-week excitement there is a feeling of palpable relief that it’s finally finished. There are also quite natural and inevitable comparisons with the beautiful green original Mariinsky Theatre, just across the Kryukov canal, with all of that building’s  history and splendor. This modern, more ordinary-looking hall serves as a second, additional performance space for operas and ballets by the Mariinsky company, and it is a more practical space. In fact, there has been a lot of discussion in St. Petersburg on whether the design is too plain-looking or not. As company director Valery Gergiev and the hall’s architect, Jack Diamond, explained repeatedly, the idea of the hall is to feel comfortable and not too fancy, and keep all the excitement focused on the acoustics and on the stage: they want something that works. More

There’s nothing quite like the buzzing energy of a roomful of excited fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders, at least to judge from a recent visit to the University Heights Charter School in Newark, New Jersey. Last week, students at the school got to show off what they could do with their new violins—which they had had for all of three weeks, since starting a new music program. The 25 students in the pilot program, a partnership with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, receive free violin lessons three days a week after school More

This year’s League of American Orchestras’ National Conference in St. Louis will feature the usual rich variety of learning, creative thinking, and networking with peers in the industry. But the Conference, which runs June 18-20, will be particularly memorable for one set of League members: volunteers. In addition to seminars, events, and meetings customized just for volunteers, this year the League will honor its national Volunteer Council for 50 years of outstanding service, helping orchestras across the country. More