The London Public Library in Ontario becomes the latest public facility to use classical music to repel undesirables – in this case, "loitering crowds of teenagers," Geoff Turner reports in the London Free Press:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2010/06/28/14541841.html
On the heels of the Philadelphia Orchestra's appointment of 35-year-old Yannick Nézet-Séguin as its next music director, the Seattle Symphony has announced that Ludovic Morlot, a 36-year-old French violinist-turned-conductor, will succeed Gerard Schwarz as its music director in 2011. Daniel J. Wakin reports in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/arts/music/30conductor.html?hp
The Greater Richmond Children's Choir, on tour in the Deep South, performed on the venerable "King Biscuit Time" on KFFA in Helena, AR. Listen here:
http://www.kffa.com/news.cfm?CustomPageID=173
After Monday, the link will be here (click on June 25):
http://www.kffa.com/news.cfm?CustomPageID=174
The Castleton Festival, the four-week round of opera, orchestral and chamber performances produced by conductor Lorin Maazel and his wife, Dietlinde, on their estate in the Rappahanock County foothills of Virginia’s Blue 
The festival, July 2-25, also will mount revivals of Benjamin Britten’s "The Turn of the Screw" and Britten’s arrangement of "The Beggar’s Opera," as well as the Castleton Festival Orchestra in an all-Beethoven program and evenings of Italian, French and American music, and three chamber recitals by festival participants at The Theatre at Washington, VA.
"Il Trittico," comprising the one-acts "Il Tabbaro," "Suor Angelica" and "Gianni Schicchi," will be presented in its entirety three times, with three more performances of two of the three operas, all in Castleton’s Festival Tent. Other 
"Master Pedro’s Puppet Show" will feature Emily DeCola and Eric Wright of the Puppet Kitchen, with choreography by Faye Driscoll.
Built on the artist apprenticeship and training program established by the Maazels' Châteauville Foundation in 1997, the festival brings some 200 young singers, instrumentalists, conductors and theater artists to the 550-acre Castleton Farms to work with and learn from Lorin Maazel and other leading professionals in opera and orchestral music.
Castleton is located about 60 miles southwest of Washington, DC, and within two hours’ driving time from Richmond and Baltimore.
Festival tickets are $20-$85 for single performances, with weekend passes available for $172 and a festival pass, for admission to one opera and four concerts, available for $475.
For ticket purchases, directions, information on nearby accommodations and other information about the festival, call (866) 974-0767 or visit http://www.chateauville.org/
The 2010 Castleton Festival schedule:
July 2 (7 p.m., Festival Tent) – Puccini: "Il Trittico" ("Il Tabarro," "Suor Angelica," "Gianni Schicchi"), Maazel conducting. (Gala, with dinner.)
July 3 (2 p.m., Theatre House) – Britten: "The Turn of the Screw," Timothy Myers conducting.
July 3 (7 p.m., Festival Tent) – Castleton Festival Orchestra, Maazel conducting. Respighi: "The Pines of Rome," "The Fountains of Rome;" orchestral music from operas by Rossini, Verdi, Puccini.
July 4 (2 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Il Trittico."
July 5 (7 p.m., The Theatre at Washington, VA) – recital by festival participants. Program TBA.
July 8 (7:30 p.m., Theatre House) – "The Turn of the Screw."
July 9 (7:30 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Il Tabarro," "Gianni Schicchi."
July 10 (2 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Suor Angelica."
July 10 (7 p.m., Festival Tent) – Castleton Festival Orchestra, Maazel conducting. Works by Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel.
July 11 (2 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Il Tabarro," "Gianni Schicchi."
July 11 (7 p.m., Theatre House) – "The Turn of the Screw."
July 12 (7 p.m., The Theatre at Washington, VA) – recital by festival participants. Program TBA.
July 15 (7:30 p.m., Theatre House) – Gay-Britten: "The Beggar’s Opera," Maazel conducting.
July 16 (7:30 p.m., Festival Tent) – Maazel Master Class Concert. Gershwin: "An American in Paris," Maazel conducting; works by Barber, Bernstein, Copland, master class participants conducting.
July 17 (7 p.m., Theatre House) – "The Beggar’s Opera."
July 18 (2 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Il Trittico."
July 19 (7 p.m., The Theatre at Washington, VA) – recital by festival participants. Program TBA.
July 22 (7:30 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Suor Angelica," "Gianni Schicchi."
July 23 (7:30 p.m., Theatre House) – Stravinsky: "L’Histoire du Soldat" ("The Soldier’s Tale"); De Falla: "Master Pedro’s Puppet Show," Maazel conducting.
July 24 (7 p.m., Festival Tent) – "Il Trittico."
July 25 (2 p.m., Theatre House) – "L’Histoire du Soldat," "Master Pedro’s Puppet Show."
July 25 (7 p.m., Festival Tent) – Castleton Festival Orchestra, Maazel conducting. Beethoven: Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica").
WETA (90.9 FM), the DC-area public radio station, will broadcast concerts at 9 p.m. July 5 and July 19 and productions of "Il Trittico" at 1 p.m. July 10, "The Beggar’s Opera" at 1 p.m. July 14 and "The Turn of the Screw" at 1 p.m. July 17. WETA can be heard online at http://www.weta.org/fm/listenlive
John Adams, this country’s highest-profile composer of orchestral music and music-drama, maintains a blog . . .
http://www.earbox.com/posts
. . . that is candid and funny, and offers the reader unusual insight on what, musical and otherwise, is going on in the mind of an active creative figure.
Compare Adams’ posts on "Hell Mouth" with the Adams portrayed by The Guardian’s Peter Conrad, who rather snarkily sketches a figure intent on self-promotion and prone to riffs of Grand-Old-Mannerism:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jun/20/john-adams-interview-peter-conrad
I don’t care to guess which is the "real" John Adams – I’ve talked with him face-to-face twice, and twice more on the phone, hardly sufficient grounds for character assessment; but the difference between the first-person Adams of "Hell Mouth" and Adams-via-Conrad is pretty striking.
As more creative figures take to speaking for themselves through media such as blogging, the versions of them strained through old-media filters appear more suspect. Or do they? Adams certainly wouldn’t be the first celebrity to craft a persona and selectively flesh it out using media that he controls.
If that’s what Adams is doing with "Hell Mouth," though, he does it better than most.
Stanley M. Baker, maestro of the summer festivals of early music at Richmond’s Centenary United Methodist Church, has resurrected many works by under-performed or nearly 
Several more first performances on this side of Atlantic are in store on June 27, as Baker and his Centenary Festival Choir and Orchestra celebrate the 200th anniversary of the organization of the downtown church’s congregation with music by Methodism’s most resonant name: Wesley.
Not John, founder of the denomination, or Charles, the great Methodist hymnodist; but Charles’ son and John’s nephew, Samuel Wesley (1766-1837), the organist and composer sometimes known as "the English Mozart."
Family ties notwithstanding, Samuel Wesley was not a model Methodist. He may have converted to Catholicism; he certainly was attracted to Catholic liturgical music. "If the Roman Doctrines were like the Roman Music we should have Heaven upon Earth," he told a friend. He sampled other non-conformist faiths. He was married, to Charlotte Louisa Martin, in an Anglican ceremony. Their brief marriage produced three children; he fathered nine more out of wedlock – among them, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-76), who became a prominent composer of Anglican church music.
Samuel Wesley was best-known in his lifetime as an organist (especially noted for his improvisational playing) and music teacher; he also played the violin. He was one of the leading English promoters of the Bach revival in the early 19th century, publishing several arrangements of Bach's works, and was unusually well-versed in other baroque and Renaissance music.
He was prolific, credited with composing some 600 works, ranging from Latin and English church music to chamber and orchestral music, two oratorios and dozens of hymn tunes.
Wesley’s music resembles that of Haydn, Mozart and other classical-period composers; but "[h]is style at its best is marked by counterpoint of real vitality, by strong diatonic dissonance, bold word-setting and a tendency to work out an entire piece or movement without frequent contrasts of mood – all characteristics that set it apart from the ordinary church style of the Classical period," Nicholas Temperley writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians.
Baker and his Centenary Festival ensembles will sample both instrumental and choral works of Samuel Wesley: his Concerto in D major, with organist Grant Hellmers and violinist Risa Browder; the "Funeral Anthem on the Death of the late Charles Wesley," featuring sopranos Brittany Brooks and Lynn LaBarre, alto Emily Martin, tenor Todd Minnich and baritone Dustin Faltz; "Exultate Deo" in its rarely heard choral-orchestral version; and the "Ode to Saint Cecilia," with soprano Anne O’Byrne, alto Lynn Kotrady and bass John C. Ford Jr.
The Centenary Festival Choir and Orchestra, Stanley M. Baker conducting, will present "A Walk with Wesley" at 5 p.m. June 27 at Centenary United Methodist Church, 411 E. Grace St., in Richmond. A $15 donation is suggested. Details: (804) 648-8319; http://www.centumc.org/
At last week’s League of American Orchestras conference in Atlanta, participants were polled on the need for symphony orchestras to change the way they do business and connect with audiences. The poll was on a sliding scale, from level 1 (status quo "with a few tweaks") to level 5 ("dramatic change as soon as possible"). In a show of hands, most chose level 4 – somewhere between significant and dramatic change.
That response roughly corresponds to the degree of battering that orchestras have taken in this recession. They’re not in the worst shape among performing-arts groups – more opera companies have shut down, radically cut back or sloshed through deeper pools of red ink; but most every professional orchestra in the U.S. is running a deficit, cutting costs (especially, lowering or freezing musicians’ wages), raising ticket prices, and seeing its audience and donors age and/or dwindle from one year to the next.
Even more alarmingly, orchestras sense that their art form is losing its relevance even further and faster in a culture that is growing more diverse, interactive and participatory. In a cultural environment that, more and more, thrives on conversation among artists in various disciplines and media, and between artists and audiences, the symphony orchestra makes statements – increasingly dated and culturally insular ones – to an audience that sits in the dark and listens in silence.
Contemporary society is experiencing a "fundamental realignment of culture and communications," Ben Cameron, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s program director for the arts, told the conference. The Internet, on-demand cable and satellite TV, make-your-own-playlist music devices and other electronic media enable people to see and hear what they want, when they want.
There’s a parallel shift in the entertainment-culture market "from consumption to participation," Cameron noted. Perhaps the most visible sign of that trend is that computer video games now generate more sales than recorded music and movie and TV videos combined.
Cameron’s address, and other features of the League of American Orchestras conference, can be found at:
http://orchestrarevolution.org/
* * *
Symphony orchestras and other "high-art" live-performance groups stand athwart this on-demand, hands-on culture. They perform at set times and places, and their product is ephemeral – once it’s done, it’s gone. Their audiences are largely passive onlookers. Their performances have a quality of "re-enactment rather than creation," Eric Booth, another speaker at the orchestra league conference, remarked.
Classical concert audiences "have essentially solitary, inward experiences," Alex Ross, The New Yorker’s music critic, observed earlier this year in a talk to London’s Royal Philharmonic Society. "Where listeners once spoke of being swept away by music, to the point of gesturing or crying out loud, they now [speak] of music sweeping over them, like an impressive weather system over which they [have] little control."
Can this kind of experience survive in a culture increasingly driven by participation and feedback? Can it – should it – be adapted to accommodate an audience that wants in on the act?
Orchestras and other classical performing troupes have been trying for years to involve audiences more actively. Sing-along "Messiahs" and orchestral-choral Christmas concerts are fixtures of concert calendars in many communities, and some groups are trying audience-participation performances of more challenging choral repertory. A growing number of orchestras are scheduling dates in which their members perform alongside student and amateur musicians.
Orchestral and chamber-music programs, especially those in which new or unfamiliar music is performed, more frequently feature preparatory talks, onstage commentary with musical excerpts and/or post-concert question-and-answer sessions. Musicians make more and more effort to mix and mingle with audiences in receptions or less structured encounters. Some troupes have made tentative steps toward engaging audiences through text-messaging and the like during performances.
Theatrical or quasi-theatrical stagings and multimedia "experiences" – typically, music with video or lighting enhancement – are increasingly common components of orchestral and other classical concerts. That trend is sure to continue.
For all that, classical music remains "largely about contemplation, emotional surrender, sensory captivation in a non-verbal world," as Cameron put it. Any attempt to engage senses other than the auditory risks distraction from – even pollution of – the essence and singularity of the musical experience.
* * *
As orchestras and other classical presenters anxiously consider "significant" or "dramatic" change, mulling possible innovations and shopping for bells and whistles to effect that change, here’s a counterintuitive – maybe conservative, maybe conservationist – thought.
Classical concerts are one of the few remaining chances people have for contemplative spiritual or inwardly emotional experience in a public gathering. (You don’t even get much of that in church anymore, unless you go to Quaker meetings.)
Classical music is the last oasis of live-performance experience that is largely free of visual and ambient distraction, the last show that can be as enriching with eyes closed as it is with eyes open.
It’s you and the music – a real-time, not to be repeated, close encounter with a work of art.
Is that a salient – or, more practically speaking, sellable – commodity in today’s cultural marketplace? Is there enough difference between hearing a Beethoven symphony live and listening to a recording or broadcast or online audio stream of it at home to warrant spending more for the ticket and driving to the concert?
I would like to think so. I’m not a marketing guru; I haven’t concocted a slogan or designed a brochure or scripted an ad to pitch this concept. It may defy pitching in a cultural and media environment obsessed with novelty. Except in one sense: This product is quite unlike any other. Is uniqueness still a selling point?
* * *
One more point: As orchestras view with alarm the aging of their audiences, will somebody please check the actuarial charts? People are living longer. If you’ve got a clientele in its 60s, much or most of that clientele will still be alive, mobile and in the market for your product or service for another 20 to 30 years. And these people have, and will continue to have, more disposable income, and more time to spend it, than younger segments of the population.
With the exceptions of healthcare, travel and a few other industries, the marketplace, including the "new media" that everybody is so excited about, under-serves or ignores older consumers.
Symphony orchestras have captured these people about as well as any outside-the-home cultural entity. If orchestras lose this audience, they will not find a new one to take its place.
