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Stefan Soltesz was in the middle of Richard Strauss’s “The Silent Woman” when he fell from his podium shortly before the end of the first act.MUNICH — Stefan Soltesz, a prominent and in-demand Austrian conductor, died on Friday night after collapsing during a performance at Munich’s main opera house.Mr. Soltesz, 73, was conducting the Richard Strauss opera “The Silent Woman” at the Bayerische Staatsoper, or Bavarian State Opera, when he fell from his podium shortly before the end of the first act. He was pronounced dead at a hospital several hours later, said Michael Wuerges, the spokesman for the company.“At some point, the music stopped,” said Sebastian Bolz, 35, a research assistant in the music department at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, who attended the performance with his wife. He said that they did not see the conductor’s fall shortly before 8 p.m., but that they did hear calls for help from the stage and orchestra pit.Mr. Wuerges said that the theater’s on-site doctor and a heart specialist from the audience attended to Mr. Soltesz. Shortly after the conductor’s collapse, the curtain fell on the stage and Tillmann Wiegand, the artistic operations manager of the Bavarian State Opera, announced that there had been an emergency and that there would be an immediate 30-minute intermission.Once the audience filed back into the auditorium at the end of the break, Mr. Bolz said, Mr. Wiegand reappeared onstage to announce that the remainder of the performance would be canceled. Shortly before 11 p.m., the State opera’s general manager, Serge Dorny, used Twitter to announce Mr. Soltesz’s death. “We are losing a gifted conductor,” he wrote. “I lose a good friend.”Deaths at the podium are rare, but Mr. Soltesz is the fourth conductor to collapse midperformance at the National Theater, the Bavarian State Opera’s main venue, since the early 1900s.In 1911, the Austrian conductor Felix Mottl collapsed at age 56 during his 100th performance of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” and died 11 days later; the German maestro Joseph Keilberth died at age 60 at the podium in 1968 during a performance of the same work. Most recently in Munich, in 1989, the Italian conductor Giuseppe Patanè collapsed at age 57 during Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and died hours later at a hospital.At Berlin’s Deutsche Opera in 2001, Giuseppe Sinopoli, 54, an intensely physical maestro, had a heart attack while conducting Verdi’s “Aida.” He died at a hospital hours later.Mr. Soltesz, who was born in 1949 in Hungary, conducted at major opera houses across Europe over the past four decades. He held musical directorship positions at the State Theater of Brunswick, in Germany, from 1988 to 1993, and at the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent, in Belgium, from 1992 to 1997. His most recent appointment was in Essen, Germany, where he led that city’s opera house, the Aalto Theater, as well as the Essen Philharmonic from 1997 to 2013.“He took this Central German theater in Essen and he turned it, in 17 years, into one of the best ensemble houses in Europe, and he turned the Essen Philharmonic into an absolute A-grade orchestra,” the Australian opera director Barrie Kosky, who collaborated with Mr. Soltesz on four productions at the Aalto Theater in the early 2000s, said on Saturday after learning of Mr. Soltesz’s death. Mr. Kosky was speaking from Salzburg, Austria, where he was rehearsing a new production of Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova” that he is directing next month at the Salzburg Festival.During his career, Mr. Soltesz also led performances throughout Asia, and in 1992, he made his United States debut with the National Opera with a performance of Verdi’s “Otello” at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Mr. Soltesz is survived by his wife, Michaela Selinger, a mezzo soprano.“He was a very fine, refined musician, and music, you know, was first. He came second,” Mr. Dorny, a Belgian impresario who said he had known Mr. Soltesz since the 1990s when he ran the Festival of Flanders, said on Saturday.“He was the perfect diener for the art form,” Mr. Dorny added, using the German word for servant.On Friday night, Mr. Soltesz was conducting a revival of Mr. Kosky’s 2010 production of Strauss’s rarely performed “The Silent Woman,” as part of the Bavarian State Opera’s summer festival. Mr. Soltesz had previously led other revivals of the production. And it was one of several throughout Germany that he and Mr. Kosky had worked on together.“He was an amazing musician,” Mr. Kosky said, singling out Mr. Soltesz’s interpretations of Strauss for high praise, adding, “He understood the idea of orchestra accompanying, and understood the idea of the architecture of an act — or a three-act opera. He understood that, and he was at home in the pits. That was his home.”“In a world of dilettantes,” Mr. Kosky said, “he was the real thing.” More
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CatSong Festival, which was staged to celebrate the 50th anniversary reissues of the singer’s 1970 albums ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ and ‘Mona Bone Jakon’, also features Dave Matthews.
Dec 7, 2020
AceShowbiz – HAIM, Jack Johnson, and Dave Matthews were among the stars who came together to honour Yusuf/Cat Stevens as part of Saturday’s (December 05) CatSong Festival.
The livestream event was staged to celebrate the 50th anniversary reissues of the singer-songwriter’s 1970 albums “Tea for the Tillerman” and “Mona Bone Jakon”.
Johnson kicked off the special by performing “Where Do the Children Play?”, confessing it was an “honour” to play a track by one of his “all-time favourites.”
He was followed by the HAIM sisters, who offered their rendition of “Hard Headed Woman”.
Incubus’ Brandon Boyd, Feist, James Morrison, Passenger, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Ron Sexsmith and Imelda May also pitched in for the two hour-plus event, joining in the fun by sending in videos from home.See also…
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Highlights included Feist’s version of the “Mona Bone Jakon” classic “Trouble” and Matthews’ take on “Tea for the Tillerman” track “Father and Son”.
“It’s great to see and hear these covers of my songs given new life,” Yusuf said of CatSong in a statement. “There’s no better honor for a songwriter than to have his songs performed by talented musicians with such love and sincerity. Thank you.”
The singer, who adopted the name Yusuf Islam after converting to Islam in 1977, also celebrated the 50th anniversary of his album “Mona Bone Jakon” by releasing a previously-unreleased demo recording of “Maybe You’re Right”. The studio demo offers impressively clean audio of Stevens in the studio with just his acoustic guitar and vocals to perform the song in one take.
The “Mona Bone Jakon” 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Box Set was released on December 4. It includes newly-remastered audio recordings from the original album on CD and Blu-Ray discs, along with unreleased demos, live recordings, video footage, a 98-page hardback book and unique memorabilia.You can share this post!
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Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIn 2018, the rising indie rock singers Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus teamed up to form boygenius, a collaborative side project that quickly took on outsized importance. For fans, it reinforced the characteristics that made each singer so appealing individually, and also created a new layer of lore.The debut boygenius EP was released in 2018, but it wasn’t until last week that the group released its first full-length project, “The Record.” It continues the group’s familiar combination of emotionally acute songwriting, rich harmonies and inside-joke banter.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the music of boygenius overlaps with the solo work of its three members, the ways in which friendship can be rendered in musical terms and how even the most beloved artists can be subject to a backlash cycle.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticCat Zhang, an associate editor at PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More
The pop star, who announced in December that she was suffering from a rare neurological condition, said she was “working really hard to build back my strength.”The powerhouse pop superstar Celine Dion announced Friday morning on social media that she was canceling the remainder of her Courage World Tour through April 2024 in order to focus on her recovery from a rare autoimmune and neurological disease.Dion, 55, first shared publicly that she was grappling with the medical condition — called stiff person syndrome, which causes progressive stiffness and severe muscle spasms — in an emotional Instagram video that she posted in December 2022, as she canceled or postponed a number of tour dates.“I am so sorry to disappoint all of you once again,” Dion said in the statement on Friday. “I’m working really hard to build back my strength, but touring can be very difficult even when you’re 100 percent. It’s not fair to you to keep postponing the shows, and even though it breaks my heart, it’s best that we cancel everything now until I’m really ready to be back onstage again. I want you all to know, I’m not giving up … And I can’t wait to see you again!”The remaining 2023 tour dates had been scheduled to run from Aug. 26 in Amsterdam through Oct. 4 in Helsinki, Finland; then from March 6, 2024, in Prague through April 22, 2024, in London. Tickets purchased for the canceled dates can be refunded via the original point of sale, according to the statement.Before the pandemic paused Dion’s tour in March 2020, she had completed the first 52 dates of the tour, in North America. “Unfortunately, these spasms affect every aspect of my daily life sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I am used to,” she said in the video posted last year.Dion can be seen in her first feature movie role, alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, in the romantic comedy-drama “Love Again,” which was released this month.After the announcement of her illness last year, Dion, known for her renditions of ballads like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On,” was met with a remarkable outpouring from fans, particularly in Quebec, the French-speaking Canadian province where Dion was born. More
The choreographer Andrea Miller chose Lido Pimienta — “she’s a superstar” — to score her new piece for New York City Ballet. They talk about breaking new ground.“Arrghh, the pressure!” exclaimed the composer Lido Pimienta, after being told that she and the choreographer Andrea Miller were the first all-female team to be commissioned to create a piece for New York City Ballet.When that dance, “sky to hold,” with costumes by Esteban Cortázar, debuts at the company’s fall fashion gala on Thursday night, both women will be breaking new ground. For Miller, a contemporary choreographer who danced with the Batsheva Ensemble in Israel before founding her New York company, Gallim Dance, it will be the first time she has created a piece on pointe. And for Pimienta, a Canadian-Columbian singer-songwriter whose music incorporates Indigenous, Afro-Columbian and electronic elements, “sky to hold” is her first theatrical score.And more ground broken: Pimienta, who has incorporated her voice and songs, which she will perform live, into the score, is also the first female composer of color to create a piece at City Ballet. The score isn’t the company’s usual fare: it includes vallenato, a popular folk music genre from Colombia, and dembow (“heavy rhythm, very groovy,” Pimienta said) from the Dominican Republic, sometimes making unconventional use of classical instruments like the harp.Most of the collaboration between Miller, who lives in New Haven, and Pimienta, who lives in Toronto and London, Ontario, has been done remotely. But last week, Pimienta arrived in New York and at rehearsals.Pimienta (in back) rehearsing “sky to hold” with City Ballet dancers Sara Mearns and Taylor Stanley.Erin Baiano“It’s pretty cool to have her with us, watching and reacting to us as artists,” said the principal dancer Sara Mearns in a phone interview. “Andrea warned us, know the music, don’t rely solely on her voice because she might not do the same thing every show. I love that; you have to be out there, in the moment.”In a video interview, with Miller on a train and Pimienta in a temporary apartment, they discussed the evolution of the score and the choreography, and how Pimienta came to be performing in the work. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did this collaboration come about? Did you know each other?ANDREA MILLER I told a friend, who was working with Lido at the time, that I had a commission from City Ballet and really wanted to take the music seriously. She said, “Stop right there: It’s Lido Pimienta.” I knew Lido’s music, she is a superstar, so my jaw just dropped. My husband and I, and our kids, listen to her music all the time, and it’s so exciting, so inspiring, you want to dance to it with your headphones on.LIDO PIMIENTA It’s funny, when Andrea contacted me, I was working on music for my next album and really thinking about orchestration.It’s my first time doing something this big, and I am always fighting the feeling of impostor syndrome. But I told myself: Even if I have never composed for 66 musicians before, there are 66 channels in the music I produce. If Andrea thinks I’m worthy, it’s fine!Pimienta says, “I told myself: Even if I have never composed for 66 musicians before, there are 66 channels in the music I produce.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesHow did you begin? Did you discuss specific ideas, images or musical styles?PIMIENTA We were communicating constantly and dreaming together. I kept watching Andrea’s work, which was very inspiring for me. My songs are about me and my lived experience, but for this it also had to be about Andrea and the dancers, so I wanted to create a story with the music that we could all tap into.MILLER It was a specially dark time during the pandemic, and I was thinking of heat, the sun on my face, going dancing with strangers! I was craving the heat of intimacy, of summer, of warmth. I gave Lido a sense of that, and I also let her know which pieces of her music were very inspiring to me.PIMIENTA My job was to translate those ideas and feelings into music. As someone from Colombia, I know that feeling of the sun hitting your face as you lie in a hammock. That gave me an intro; a feeling of heat, but also of tension.I am a singer and I would say my work is about storytelling, so once I had that idea, in my head there was this whole movie happening. I thought, I should tell Andrea, so I sat down and wrote and illustrated the story I saw.It’s about a seed, who falls in love with a storm. To get to light and heat, you go through the storm, and that became the musical thread.Andrea, how did the evolution of the score affect the development of the choreography?MILLER Lido is so generous, and had let me listen without telling me how anything should be. But after receiving the story, I had so much more to say and discover. There was something in her story and drawings that reminded me of both the magical realism of Colombia and the symbolism and mysticism of Chagall, whose work I love.In the ballet, I do have a seed character, Taylor Stanley, and a storm, Sara Mearns, but I’m not worried about it making sense. The shape and feel of it are just there to absorb and take away, like looking at a painting.Pimienta: “I am a singer and I would say my work is about storytelling,”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesLido, how does it feel to see your work given a visual counterpart?PIMIENTA It feels potent, it feels extreme — I feel an abundance. When I see the dance responding to the rhythm, the sound, the melody, it’s very emotional for me. I told Andrea, you might have to get another singer, because I might cry throughout the ballet!Was it always part of the plan that you would sing onstage?PIMIENTA Never in a million years did I think I would be performing. But after Andrea got the first draft of the score, she said, where is your voice? I thought, OK, I’ll be in the pit, and she said, “We’ll put you onstage and give you some steps.” I said NOOOOO, so the compromise is that I’ll be on the side of the stage.Now, of course, I’m totally into the fantasy. I had my fitting yesterday, and I thought, how fabulous am I going to be? Maybe I will walk around the stage!Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThere’s pressure in being the first female composer-choreographer team to create an entirely new work for the company. (Violette Verdy created a dance to an existing score by Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, in 1988.) That’s still noteworthy; are things changing?MILLER There has been important progress, but I also feel sadness for all the talented women who didn’t get to choreograph or compose or get recognition in their time. And I’m always conscious that when we talk about things turning around, we’re not thinking globally.PIMIENTA I am South American, Indigenous, Black, brown, an immigrant — sometimes I feel like I am just those boxes being checked off. So to have this support and confidence is just incredible.It makes me feel sad for this world of classical music and ballet that it’s so remarkable that we are women because in my musical world I mostly work with women. But it’s not just that. Having more people like me is important because there is a class divide, too; people don’t necessarily feel at ease going to a symphony concert or a ballet. It’s a pity. For me, the classical world actually feels very contemporary, very much what is happening now. I want more people to understand how strong and inspiring it can be. More
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