Happy 2023, everyone! Hope you all had a lovely, restful holiday season and start to the new year.
Today’s newsletter will be in a slightly different format than usual since I’ve stored up updates and longer-form thoughts over the past couple of weeks.
Some news
After two months of Secret Behind the Scenes Workings, I can finally announce that I am a 2023 Fellow with Turn the Spotlight!
I am still flummoxed to find myself named as one of seven “creators and change-makers” in classical music; as part of this year’s fellowship, I’ll be working on a large-scale project with the help of my mentor, the wonderful Kathleen Kelly.
Full disclosure that I actually have no idea what my project will be yet—I’m kind of hoping that some marvelous idea will just hit me out of the blue one day. The year is still young, right?
In other news, we’re nearing the finish line on the Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel piano concerto I’d previously announced; the premiere is scheduled for March 9 in Boston, Massachusetts. I’ll have more information later, but for now, I’ll just be furiously practicing some freshly written music and wondering what possessed me to have this idea in the first place.
A common problem
This is purely anecdata, but I’ve noticed lately that Fanny Mendelssohn seems to be getting more airtime; when I was talking to the music director and conductor of one symphony, he mentioned that they’d performed Fanny’s Overture in a recent season. Next week Jeremy Denk and the Takács Quartet will be performing Fanny’s String Quintet here in LA, and this weekend the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was scheduled to perform Fanny’s Overture. (I’d originally called LACO out for using a portrait of a completely different woman to represent Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel on their program page.)
I say “LACO was scheduled” because…things happened. I got an email this week from LACO with the subject line “Change of Plans” (bolding is mine):
Unfortunately, our Music Director Jaime Martín has tested positive for COVID-19 and is unable to travel to Los Angeles to conduct this weekend’s concerts. In his stead, we’re thrilled to announce Lina González-Granados has agreed to lead LACO in this exciting program of Classical-era gems.
One of the most exciting young conductors working today, Lina was recently appointed Resident Conductor of the LA Opera. She is also a Solti Conducting Apprentice at the Chicago Symphony, a Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner, and has guest conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, and many others. Also, please note that the program will now begin with Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides. The rest of the program will be performed as published.
In short, because of a last minute conductor swap, the Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel piece has been replaced with a standard piece by Felix Mendelssohn.
Before I go on: this was, imho, absolutely the right call. I am not mad at the decision, and I have no desire to call anyone out over it. It would have been incredibly unfair to everyone involved to have a last-minute substitute conductor perform a piece she’s not familiar with, and I am a strong proponent of the idea that we need strong showings of underrepresented works, for reasons I went into in this post:
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