STRING THEORIES

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, February 28th 2007 at 7:03

    Bits of the latest issue of Strings magazine are online, including my profile of violinist Jennifer Koh:

    You’ve got to love Jennifer Koh for more than just her brain. Oh, sure, at age 17, when she won the top violin prize in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, she ...

HATTOGATE: LOCAL REPERCUSSIONS

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, February 27th 2007 at 8:07

    Now that the head of the English label Concert Artist/Fidelio has admitted that he plagiarized up to a hundred recordings and passed them off as the work of his late wife, Joyce Hatto, what are we to make of the Concert Artist recordings featuring Tucson musicians? Will Ozan Marsh ...

OUT, AND ABOUT

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, February 27th 2007 at 8:04

    Of the five days I was recently off the air, four of them were due to illness. At first I thought I had a cold, then it seemed like the flu, and my doctor ultimately diagnosed it as a bacterial infection in my lungs, for which he prescribed antibiotics that ...

LINK TO 'TIES'

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, February 22nd 2007 at 8:36

    No, I’m not on vacation; I’m one of the dozens of people hereabouts felled by the flu. (I dutifully got a flu shot in November, but it was apparently for the wrong strain.) Before succumbing, I did manage to catch a play for review in today’s Tucson ...

HATTO UPDATES

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, February 19th 2007 at 10:52

    I have no further comment on the Joyce Hatto Affair, but I will direct you to two useful sites. First, David Hurwitz of Classics Today describes how the story broke (it wasn't all sleuthing by Gramophone) here, with the continuation here. And Jessica Duchen is compiling links to articles ...

HATTO'S OFF

From the desk of James Reel on Saturday, February 17th 2007 at 8:50

    During the past year, critics have been all a-twitter over a slew of recordings featuring a reclusive and now dead British pianist named Joyce Hatto. According to legend, health problems caused her to stop concertizing in the 1970s, but she spend the remaining three decades of her life in the ...

THREE FOR THE SHOW

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, February 15th 2007 at 6:13

    It’s review time again in my little space in the Tucson Weekly. This time, I have a trio of plays to cover. Some highlights:

    Of three theater openings last week, one show focused exclusively on women with big hair, while another dwelled on men with big aspirations under their ...

ADDENDUM

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, February 14th 2007 at 7:08

    Former KUAT relief announcer Michael Dauphinais has pointed out to me that, as engaging as the concert announcement in the previous post may be, it neglects to mention that the singer has an accompanist, or who it is. Hmm ... Michael is a pianist who works a great deal with singers ...

FUN CONCERT ANNOUNCEMENT

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, February 13th 2007 at 10:21

    Here's an announcement that local singer and actress Molly Holleran circulated among her friends recently, and was forwarded to me. It's not a formal press release, but I wish more were written in this spirit:

    I would like to invite you to a voice recital, featuring me, on ...

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ILYA GRINGOLTS/GEORGE HANSON

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, February 9th 2007 at 7:56

    An impassioned performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony more than redeemed last night’s Tucson Symphony concert under George Hanson, a concert whose first half was dissatisfying despite good playing.
    The trouble started right away, with a well-paced, crisply delivered performance of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain in its ...

TIN CUP

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, February 8th 2007 at 6:57

    Monday afternoon, I went down to Green Valley to read a scene from Othello for an adult Shakespeare class. The instructor declared that I was receiving no compensation for my appearance (he didn't mention that he'd bought me a sandwich and some tea for lunch), and proceeded to ...

OPEN, SAYS-A ME

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, February 8th 2007 at 6:47

    Previews galore from me in the latest Tucson Weekly. Not enough space for ’em all, alas, so first comes a two-in-one package. Or is it three-in-one?

    Two local theater producers are thinking big this weekend.
    Arizona Onstage Productions, which usually presents offbeat shows in small venues, is moving into the ...

TUCSON SYMPHONY SALARIES, PART 2

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, February 7th 2007 at 10:10

    Within an hour of my post linking to Drew McManus’ survey of orchestral executive director salaries, musicians from the Tucson Symphony picked up on it and started contacting me with their own story to tell, offering more information than Drew had to work with on his particular project. Before I ...

CULTURE COMMODIFIED

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, February 5th 2007 at 7:27

    Yesterday, the Arizona Daily Star’s opinion section carried an article by Tucson Symphony Orchestra conductor and music director George Hanson, advocating a stronger arts presence in Rio Nuevo planning. George makes some good points (meaning I agree with them), and some points I don’t necessarily agree with but ...

PAYDAY

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, February 5th 2007 at 6:53

    Adaptistration’s Drew McManus has belatedly released his 2006 report on compensation for executive directors of American orchestras. If you go here to look at his chart, you’ll see that Tucson Symphony executive director Susan Franano makes $96,440 in an organization whose total expenditures are about $4.1 ...