More from Z

We're a big fan of Judith Lang Zaimont, and happy to share this music with artwork!

CatCerto is pretty amazing

Do you have a pet? Ever watch those shows like AFV or Animal Planet? Combine the two with some "new music" and tada!

Grand Finale

The final broadcast of last season's San Antonio Symphony is this Sunday. The program, recorded last May, features music by Richard Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn and Modest Mussorgsky. Artistic Advisor Christopher Seaman conducted with violin soloist Elmar Oliveira. The Saturday evening concert also featured a preconcert talk with Performance Today host Fred Child, interviewing Oliveira (seen right on stage @ the Majestic). Listen to their complete conversation: mp3 file

Be sure to tune in Sunday afternoon at 2pm on KPAC & KTXI, or hear it online @ tpr.org.

Here's a preview of next month's Carmina Burana:

More wacky videos of Carmina are on Jack Fishman's blog!

H1N1 @ the opera?

Soprano Katherine Jenkins has insured her voice against the swine flu! Read all about it here. Perhaps she should take out insurance to not fall off the stage, or her legs. And you might remember this fan who got to meet Jenkins from a shout out to the stage!

Locally, don't forget to catch Madama Butterfly coming up next month. Read about an opera convert who is all ready for it!

Tone deaf?

New research about the brain:
Some people are really bad at singing a song they've heard, and scientists are figuring out why. The phenomenon, called tone deafness, refers to people who do poorly at distinguishing between different musical tones. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, looked at images of the brains of 10 people who tested as being tone deaf, and 10 people who were not.
Read more, including losing direction and smell here on CNN.

Added drama!

Do you remember earlier this summer when mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato broke her leg during an opera?
Opera lovers at Glyndebourne were treated to rather more drama than they anticipated when soprano Ana Maria Martinez fell offstage into the orchestra pit! Read about it here.
And poor Joyce had the lights shut off during a concert in Scotland!

See and hear some drama on stage in San Antonio with Madama Butterfly next month...we hope no one is injured and the lights stay on!

Summer Night Concert Schoenbrunn on DVD

On the 4th of June, 2009, Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic presented a free open-air concert on the grounds of Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. Over 100,000 visitors were present in the audience for this charming occasion.
Recorded and filmed by Austrian Television (ORF), the concert will be broadcast world-wide in more than 50 countries and will be released on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday August 25th. The US Broadcast on PBS is currently scheduled for September 16th (KLRN in San Antonio).
In the audience that evening were composer Richard Danielpour and KPAC host John Clare (seen before the concert left) who were in Vienna for the world premiere of Danielpour's Souvenirs on Philippe Entremont's 75th birthday (June 7th).
The concert shared a theme: Night. So we heard Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik; de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain; Mussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov's A Night on Bald Mountain; and Strauss II's Thousand and One Nights Waltz; plus encores Josef & Johann Strauss and Mariano Mores. All in all, a wonderful 93 minutes with one of the world's greatest ensembles! Besides the concert, views of the Schoenbrunn grounds and palace are seen, as well as gorgeous shots of the moon, fireworks and eerily appropriate fog/smoke (we're sure it was artifically made via dry ice).
You also get a wonderful sense of how many folks were there, and just how large the grounds are with stunning camera work. Check out this video from that night of a large robotic crane camera in action. You can even spot Danielpour & Clare in the audience, especially just after Barenboim announces the encores! Of course, the real magic comes from the Vienna Philharmonic in music they were born to play. (Danielpour is pictured in b&w with Christian Buchmann introducing him to Barenboim after the concert).
You can purchase the DVD of the concert here, or here (after 8/25/09).
Here's an extra bonus as well, composer Richard Danielpour set the scene at the VIP party after the concert:

Next year's concert is earlier, May 20th, 2010 with Maestro Seiji Ozawa.

We know the emcee...

We thought you might want to know about this:
Saturday August 29, 2009 at 3:00 pm
"Prelude to the Afternoons of the Fans of Festival Hill"

A sampler of the 2009-2010 August-to-April Concerts Series
with
James Dick, piano.
Libi Lebel, conductor of the Texas Medical Center Orchestra.
Philippe Bertaud, Guitar.
Thomas Burritt, Percussion.
Libby Lovejoy, dancer and choreagrapher, presenting some excerpts of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker".
Chaddick Dance Theater
Chesley Krohn, actress and singer in a medley of Noel Coward's Broadway Shows.

John Clare will emcee the event.

Wine and hors d'oeuvres following the performances.

Come and enjoy a varied sampler of programs designed for all ages. Bring friends you will meet again and again in the course of the season!

Call (979) 249-3129.

1K too many?

From the Times:
When Beethoven wrote his heaven-storming Ninth Symphony he cannot have imagined that the Ode to Joy would one day be played by an ensemble of 1,000 ukuleles. The attempt at the Albert Hall on Tuesday night was as sublime as it was ridiculous.

Perhaps Beethoven would have been content with his hearing condition...

Passing of a legend

Soprano Hildegard Behrens, one of the finest Wagnerian performers of her generation, has died while traveling in Japan. She was 72.
Jonathan Friend, artistic administrator of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said Tuesday in an e-mail to opera officials that Behrens felt unwell while traveling to a festival near Tokyo. She went to a Tokyo hospital, where she died of an apparent aneurism.
Friend's e-mail was shared with The Associated Press by Jack Mastroianni, director of IMG Artists.
Her funeral was planned in Vienna.
Organizers of Behrens' visit said she was in Japan to perform at a music festival and then give lessons at a hot springs resort.
Miyuki Takebayashi, an official at the Kanshinetsu Music Association, said Behrens was taken to a hospital Sunday night and died there Tuesday.
"Her son and daughter were at her bedside when she passed away," she said.
Behrens was among the finest actors on the opera stage during a professional career that spanned more than three decades. She made her professional stage debut in Freiburg as the countess in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" in 1971 and made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Giorgetta in Puccini's "Il Tabarro" in 1976.
One of her breakthrough roles came the following year, when she sang the title role in Strauss' "Salome" at the Salzburg Festival in Austria.
She sang 171 performances at the Met, where she appeared until 1999.
She was most acclaimed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for her portrayal of Bruennhilde in the Otto Schenk production of the Ring Cycle, the Met's first televised staging of Wagner's tetralogy.
"She is the finest Bruennhilde of the post-Birgit Nilsson era,"
Associated Press critic Mike Silverman wrote in 1989. "Though she lacks the overpowering vocal resources of a great Wagnerian soprano, she makes up for that with dramatic intensity as she changes before our eyes from a frisky young Valkyrie to a passionate and then betrayed lover, and finally to a compassionate woman whose sacrifice returns the ring to its rightful owners, the Rhinemaidens."
A dramatic soprano, her Met career included Elettra in Mozart's "Idomeneo," Isolde in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," Senta in "Die Fliegende Hollander," Donna Anna in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," Santuzza in Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the title roles in Strauss'
"Elektra" and `Salome," and Puccini's "Tosca," and Marie in Berg's "Wozzeck."
She was injured during the final scene of Wagner's "Goetterdaemmerung"
at the Met on April 28, 1990, when Valhalla collapsed prematurely and an overhead of foam rubber landed on her. Behrens walked off the stage under her own power and was taken to Roosevelt Hospital.
She missed subsequent performances because of the injury, and later sued the Met, according to a 1995 article in The New York Law Journal.
According to Behrens' Web site, she was born in the north German town of Varel-Oldenburg. Her parents were both doctors and she and her five siblings studied piano and violin as children. She earned a law degree from the University of Freiburg, where she was also a member of the student choir.
She received Germany's Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of the Merit Cross), Bavaria's Bayerischer Verdienstorden service medal and was honored by both the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Vienna State Opera.

KPAC & KTXI will honor Behrens singing today at 2pm with some Wagner.