The Well-Tempered Ear

Why are Asians dominating Western classical music?

May 27, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger

The month of May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage month in the U.S.

And here is a perfect story to provide questions and raise issues that pertain to that theme as it figures in classical music.

We have not seen many of them booked for concerts locally, but perhaps you have noticed how so many Asian musicians, particularly pianists, have been winning major competitions.

Those competitions include the Van Cliburn (Korean Yunchan Lim, below top), the Chopin (Chinese-Canadian Bruce Liu, below bottom), the Tchaikovsky, the Arthur Rubinstein, the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, the Leeds Competition, the Geneva Competition and many others that are less famous.


Perhaps you have also noticed how we hear more Asian opera singers at the Met and more Asian string players in orchestras around the world.

More Asians also seem to be studying and performing in lower and higher educational institutions and organizations. 

And perhaps you, like The Ear, have wondered what is behind that trend?

Here is a terrific first-person story — with research, details, photos and performance videos – written by a Canadian musician of Japanese descent that appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

But The Ear thinks it could easily apply to the United States, Australia and other non-Asian places and cultures.

Here is a link:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbc.ca%2Fmusic%2Fwhat-s-behind-the-predominance-of-asians-in-classical-music-1.6846375&data=05%7C01%7C%7C852fdf58ce64492a4c6008db5e04e9c4%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638207147418451193%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JNR5H4OH26QHqKlknDNTeQtjzcqfO%2BCKcMpLfvNuzUE%3D&reserved=0

Do you think this story applies to Asians and Asian-Americans in the U.S.?

If you yourself are an Asian or Asian-American musician or music student, do the observations and analysis in the story ring true to you own experience?

Do you have other thoughts to add about the cultural reasons for the surge of Western classical music in Asia and among Asians elsewhere?

Are there important lessons here for non-Asian people and places?

The Ear wants to hear. 


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Why isn’t music education in Madison better, ranked higher? 

May 16, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear saw where the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation recently announced its annual list honoring cities, school districts and individual schools in the U.S. for outstanding music education.

Here is a brief explanation:

“Now in its 24th year, the 2023 Best Communities for Music Education program recognizes 830 school districts and 78 schools across 43 states for the outstanding efforts by teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community leaders and their support for music education as part of a well-rounded education for all children.”

Here is link to the overview of the award program: 

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nammfoundation.org%2Farticles%2F2023-04-18%2Fnamm-foundation-celebrates-best-music-education-honors-830-school-districts-and&data=05%7C01%7C%7C9c6c039f5e8544d5986a08db54cb7947%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638197005102315311%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=LRuj9PsrcrK33NhHkuBZWHHxPm7H3Iz5GdU%2BwA2ghDg%3D&reserved=0

 

I figured with its active music life, Madison should be, even must bet, on the list.

And I did find Madison.

But it was Madison New Jersey — not Wisconsin.

I found no mention of Madison, Wisconsin.

It disappointed me, since study after study shows the importance of music education in academic achievement.

It also perplexed me.

How could music education not be noteworthy in a city that is home to nationally famous Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (below is UW’s Hamel Music Center)? 

In a city with Edgewood College’s music department?

With the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra — all of which have educational outreach programs?

With the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the Willy Street Chamber Players, the Madison Bach Musicians, the Oakwood Chamber Players and so many other chamber music and early music groups? 

Where the statewide, nationally recognized Wisconsin School Music Association is located in nearby Waunakee

In the same city where the pioneering Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (below) has been located for 57 years and is building an impressive new headquarters with teaching facilities and a concert hall on East Washington Avenue?

Take a look for yourself. 

Here is a link to the list which can be filtered and narrowed down alphabetically by state, city, school district, school and past history: https://www.nammfoundation.org/articles/bcme-2023-schools

In Wisconsin you will find Dousman, Richland Center and Salem listed. But not Milwaukee or Green Bay or LaCrosse or Eau Claire or Appleton.

And no Madison.

What explains it?

What do school boards and administrators have to say about it?

What role do budget cuts, curriculum and staffing priorities play?

Is the list somehow biased?

Does not being named to list jibe with the reality of music education in public schools in Madison and nearby communities?

Why isn’t music education in Madison better and more noteworthy?

What do teachers, parents and students themselves have to say about the problem — and the solution?

The Ear wants to hear.


Music builds brain health. Which composers and pieces would you recommend?

April 15, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger

If you think music education and music lessons are only for young people who are still growing and maturing, you couldn’t be more wrong.

More and more research studies show that in adults and older people, even in Alzheimer’s patients, music has force and can break through. 

Music is — like many other kinds of art including poetry, dance and paintings — a key that unlocks the plasticity of the human brain (below is an image from Shutterstock) and the brain’s ability to grow and endure in a healthy manner.

Here is one of the most recent studies that was covered in a story by NPR (National Public Radio), which you can read or listen to:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/03/1167494088/your-brain-on-art-music-dance-poetry

The Ear finds it convincing food for thought.

Certain genres of music, for example, come to mind as brain-healthy. Think Schubert. Art songs which combine music and words, even poetry, seem an especially likely candidate.

String quartets and theme-and-variations also come to mind as artistic and brain-developing genres. So does the sonata form that is used to develop and establish harmonic and thematic logic in symphonies and concertos as well as sonatas.

As for specific composers, The Ear thinks Johann Sebastian Bach (below) stands out as a one whose music requires active listening and critical thinking. 

Preludes and fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach (below and in the YouTube video at the bottom where Friedrich Gulda plays the Prelude and Fugue No. 1 of the WTC) in The Well-Tempered Clavier and his many suites and Beethoven’s string quartets, especially the late ones, are individual challenging works that do the same.

Are there musical genres that you think are good for the brain and would recommend?

Are there certain composers you think are especially helpful in building brain health?

Are there any particular pieces that you think also work toward brain health and plasticity?

The Ear wants to hear.


This ‘body percussion” version of Beethoven will make your day!

February 15, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger

Here is something that easily outdoes Bavarian thigh-slapping in Lederhosen!

It features 157 school children playing the opening theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony using “body percussion.”

That is, they use their hands, feet, knees and chests with various pressures and degrees of loudness, rhythm, speed and dynamics.

It is a performance practice and method of music education that has roots in folk music.

It was performed in 2020 — hence the covid masks — and was recently posted on Instagram by ClassicFM.

Here is a fuller definition from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_percussion

The kids are amazing. They are so synchronized and precise.

It took five months of practicing and rehearsing, so the persistent music teacher who organized and executed this must be amazing too.

It all seems very French in its combination of the physical and the emotional.

Take a look and listen. Here is a link to the one-minute video:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Freel%2FCofX3zGIPMS%2F%3Figshid%3DMDJmNzVkMjY%3D&data=05%7C01%7C%7C8fe1099d6019482968a708db0c80ef51%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638117520131162642%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ZUhwrmWr8qFFd4eATPOcp6A5bc%2Bp1oVLcOr6Vq%2BkCb8%3D&reserved=0

Does anybody else wonder if an American parent might have protested or even filed a lawsuit alleging inappropriate touching by classmates?

What do you think of this “body percussion” Beethoven?

The Ear wants to hear.


One piano lesson made all the difference

January 15, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger

Not long ago, NPR and Wisconsin Public Radio featured a moving story from the website “Hidden Brain” and its series of profile called “My Unsung Hero.”

It told the simple story of a single piano lesson — and how just one short sentence at this piano lesson proved both ordinary and momentous – and made all the difference, changing the course of a young boy’s life.

The Ear found it inspiring. And it provoked some of his own memories of important music lessons and music teachers as well as other subjects and other influential teachers in school.

He hopes you will also like it and share it, perhaps with a friend who had a similar experience or with a special teacher who influenced you and made an important difference in your life.

Here is a link:

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/05/1140759435/a-few-words-of-encouragement-from-his-music-teacher-changed-karl-goldsteins-life

Did you ever have a similar experience with a music teacher and music lesson?

Or find an “unsung hero” in music or another field of education who made a big difference? 

Please tell us about it.

The Ear wants to hear.


Too bad the Wisconsin Union Theater didn’t book a great pianist for next season

May 21, 2022
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By Jacob Stockinger

“We are living in a Golden Age of pianists,”  famed concert pianist, Juilliard teacher and frequent Madison performer Emanuel Ax (below) has said.

He should know. But you would never guess that from the recently announced next season at the Wisconsin Union Theater (below).

The WUT has not booked a solo pianist for the 2022-23 season.

Here is a link to the lineup for the next season:

https://union.wisc.edu/visit/wisconsin-union-theater/seasonevents/

Is The Ear the only one who has noticed and is disappointed?

Who else feels bad about it?

After all, this is the same presenting organization that brought to Madison such legendary pianists as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Percy Grainger, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dame Myra Hess, Guiomar Novaes, Egon Petri, Robert Casadesus, William Kapell, Claudio Arrau, Alexander Brailowsky, Gary Graffman, Glenn Gould, Rosalyn Tureck, Byron Janis, Misha Dichter, Peter Serkin, André Watts, Lili Kraus and Garrick Ohlsson

It is the same hall (below) in which The Ear has heard Rudolf Serkin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Angela Hewitt, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Valentina Lisitsa, Andras Schiff, Joyce Yang, Yefim Bronfman, Jeremy Denk, Ingrid Fliter, Richard Goode, Leon Fleisher, Simone Dinnerstein, Wu Han and so many other great and memorable names including, of course, Emanuel Ax.

What a history!

As you can see and as The Ear likes to say, the Wisconsin Union Theater is “The Carnegie Hall of Madison.” For over 100 years, it is where the great ones play.

One irony is that many of those former bookings of pianists took place when the University of Wisconsin School of Music had many more pianists on the faculty and provided a major alternative venue for piano recitals.

Another irony is that so many young people take piano lessons (below) and are apt to want to attend, probably with their parents, to hear a live professional concert piano recital. You would think the WUT would also see the advantages of having such community outreach links to the public and to music education, especially since the WUT has hosted Open Piano Day for the public. (See the YouTube video of a Channel 3000 story in February 2020 at the bottom.)

From what The Ear reads, there are lots of up-and-coming pianists, many affordable names of various winners of national and international competitions. They should be affordable as well as worthy of being introduced to the Madison public.

But that seems a mission now largely left to the Salon Piano Series.

Plus, so many of the new pianists are young Asians who have never appeared here, which should be another draw for the socially responsible and diversity-minded WUT.

But that is another story for another day.

What do you think of the WUT not presenting a solo pianist next season?

Maybe there will be a pianist booked for the 2023-24 season.

What pianists would you like see booked by the WUT student programming committee?

The Ear wants to hear.

 


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Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) will build a new $25 million home on East Washington Avenue

June 24, 2021
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has received the following major announcement to post:

The Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) has announced plans to construct a new $25 million-building in the 1100 block of East Washington Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin.

The new home will occupy three lots and will replace the historic Avenue Bar (below)

The new music center will continue WYSO’s vision to expand instrumental music education and performance opportunities for young people of diverse backgrounds and inspire excellence and a lifelong connection to music.

More than 500 young musicians from communities throughout southern Wisconsin currently participate in WYSO’s programs. 

This 500 percent growth in student numbers since the organization’s founding is driving the need for facilities large enough to support both the organization’s programs and its mission of providing transformational musical experiences and opportunities.

For more information about WYSO, go to its home website: https://wysomusic.org

The purchase of the property and the kick-off of WYSO’s capital campaign have been made possible by two lead gifts totaling $18 million from Pleasant Rowland and Jerry Frautschi, who have long been supporters of the organization. 

The planned 40,000 sq. ft- building will provide state-of-the-art rehearsal spaces sized for full orchestras; a room designed for percussion including a world-class array of percussion instruments; rehearsal rooms perfect for ensembles and chamber music; a piano laboratory; and small teaching studios for private lessons.

The building will also hold all of WYSO’s current orchestra and Music Makers programs, administrative offices, a music library— and provide opportunity to grow. 

But the building will NOT contain public performance spaces. WYSO will continue to rent and use venues that already exist.

Since the fall of 2020, the organization – which used to be located in the UW-Madison School of Music — has been without a home base and has pieced out its program in different facilities throughout the Madison area. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the WYSO Youth Orchestra give a virtual and socially distanced performance last year of the finale of Rossini’s Overture to “William Tell.”) 

This new building will allow all of WYSO’s programs to thrive under a single roof and provide the space, location, resources and connections necessary for WYSO to become a key collaborator in a growing youth arts community.

WYSO’s new home will be around the corner from the newly constructed Madison Youth Arts (My Arts), creating a vibrant youth arts synergy on the near east side. (An architect’s renderings of the exterior and interior theater are below.)

Located on a major transit corridor for easy access with adequate parking, the building will be in proximity to area performing arts venues, with space for WYSO’s programs and community events. 

Says WYSO’s Executive Director Bridget Fraser: “Thanks to the incredible generosity of Pleasant Rowland and Jerry Frautschi, musicians of all ages will have state-of-the-art rehearsal facilities to call home. It’s a dream come true!”

WYSO has partnered with Urban Assets, city planners with experience in real estate development; Strang, an integrated architecture, engineering, interior design and planning firm with a history of designing for the civic and cultural sectors; Talaske Sound, experts in architectural acoustics; and J.H. Findorff & Son, a local construction firm passionate about youth education and the arts. 


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This Saturday night the Wisconsin Chamber Choir and Grammy winner Sarah Brailey perform a free live-streamed concert of music by women

May 13, 2021
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has received the following announcement to post:

The Wisconsin Chamber Choir (WCC, below) with a special guest — Grammy Award-winning soprano and UW-Madison graduate Sarah Brailey – will perform this Saturday, May 15, at 7 p.m.

“Music She Wrote” is a celebration of music composed by a highly diverse group of women from many ages.

Choir members will sing from their individual cars using wireless microphones, listening to the sound of the whole choir via their car radios.

The audience is invited to listen in live on YouTube and to let us know they are interested by sending an RSVP to our Facebook event.

There is no charge to view the livestream, but donations will be welcome. 

Here are the links to hear the performance LIVE on YouTube or Facebook:

https://youtu.be/Iaz0wZhuG18 or: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1561155960751974/

The WCC had scheduled a regular concert with an all-female cast of composers for May 2020, which fell victim to Covid-19. As it became obvious that the pandemic would last longer, the WCC started exploring new ways of making and disseminating music.

From September 2020, we resumed activity in the shape of the Parking Lot Choir, generating local media coverage from WKOW-TV and Madison Magazine, whose story was headlined “Forget tailgates, parking lots are for choir practice.”

The result of this first rehearsal run was the widely acclaimed “Car Carols” concert in December 2020, whose format is the model for “Music She Wrote.”

In addition to the Parking Lot Choir, three smaller groups from the WCC assembled at the Edgewood College Amphitheater on Saturday mornings to rehearse (below) in widely spaced formations, wearing specially designed singer masks.

Another such group, made up of our members from southeastern Wisconsin, met in Whitewater on Sunday afternoons. Recordings by those four small groups will be aired during the May 15 broadcast in addition to live singing by the Parking Lot choristers.

The program includes: the Garden Songs by Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn (Felix’s sister, below), which were intended for outdoor performance; and Ethel Smyth’s March of the Women, the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement in the English-speaking world.

In addition to works by African American composers Ysaÿe M. Barnwell (below top) and Rosephanye Powell and by Cuban composer Beatriz Corona (below second), the program includes samples from outside the Western tradition — Lamma Badaa Yatathannaa, sung in Arabic, by Shireen Abu-Shader (below third), who hails from Jordan but received her academic education in the U.S. and Canada; and two pieces by Japanese composer Makiko Kinoshita (below bottom).

Western early music is represented by Italian composers Raffaella Aleotti (below top) and Chiara Cozzolani (below bottom), who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Finally, there is singer-songwriter Judy Collins with her Song for Sarajevo, composed for the children of the war in Bosnia in 1994 and arranged by her longtime collaborator, Russell Walden. (You can hear it in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

For more details, visit: https://www.wisconsinchamberchoir.org/music-she-wrote.

Sarah Brailey (below, in a photo by Miranda Loud), a native of Wisconsin, studied at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she has just completed her doctorate. A consummate musician and internationally acclaimed soloist, she recently won a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Vocal Solo Album category for her role as The Soul in the world premiere recording of Ethel Smyth’s The Prison. 

She is familiar to Madison audiences not only as a performer and co-founder of Just Bach but also as the co-host of WORT’s Musica Antiqua show on FM 89.9 and the director of Grace Presents. 

As a graduate student, she joined the WCC for two seasons from 2004 to 2006. We are thrilled to welcome her back! For more information on Sarah, see her website at https://sarahbrailey.com


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Library of Congress streams UW pianist Christopher Taylor’s online Liszt-Beethoven symphony recital for free this Thursday night

December 16, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

This Thursday night, Dec. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. CST, University of Wisconsin-Madison virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor (below) will close the celebration of the Beethoven Year, marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, at the Library of Congress. After the concert’s premiere, it will stay posted online.

For the past several years, Taylor has been performing the solo piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies both in Russia and at the UW-Madison. 

Here is more from the website of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music:

“It takes extraordinary skill as an orchestrator to condense an entire symphony by Beethoven (below top) into a version for a solo instrument, but that is just what Franz Liszt (below bottom) accomplished in his piano transcriptions. (You can hear a sample, along with a visual representation, of the Fifth Symphony transcription in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

“Hear virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor perform three of these transcendent symphony transcriptions, works he describes as a “new perspective on something familiar.” (The Ear, who has heard Taylor’s impressive performances of almost all nine symphonies, finds that comparing the two versions is like looking at the same photograph in color and then black-and-white. Color emphasizes details while black-and-white emphasizes structure. You hear new things by comparing the two.)

The performance was pre-recorded in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the Hamel Music Center.

The program is:

BEETHOVEN/LISZT

Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

You can find more details at: https://loc.gov/concerts/christopher-taylor.html

You can Register on Eventbrite

Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.

He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks.

Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.

Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia and the Caribbean. 

At home in the U.S. he has appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, the Madison Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony. As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues.

In chamber music settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets.

His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. 

Throughout his career, Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects.  Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt; performances and lectures on the complete etudes of Gyorgy Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano (below) in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.

Numerous awards have confirmed Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.

Taylor lives in Middleton, Wis., with his wife and two daughters. He is a Steinway artist.

For more biographical information — including his piano teachers and his education as well as his interest in mathematics and engineering — go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/christopher-taylor-concerts-from-the-library-of-congress/

 


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The Madison Symphony Orchestra cancels the remaining orchestra and organ concerts of the 2020-21 season and postpones its Beethoven celebration until next season

December 2, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Madison Symphony Orchestra (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) has canceled the remaining orchestral and organ concerts of the 2020-21 season due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A free online performance of “A Virtual Madison Symphony Christmas” will take place on Dec. 16 and stay posted through Dec. 31. For more information about the program and performers, plus a link to register and to hear that performance, go to: https://madisonsymphony.org

Plans for others online events – free or paid – have not been announced, although the MSO seems to be considering such steps. It also suggests that the 2021-22 season will be a postponed version of the same concerts planned this season to celebrate the Beethoven Year.

Here is the email from executive director Richard H. Mackie that the MSO sent out Monday:

Dear Friends of the Madison Symphony Orchestra,

As you know, the continuing COVID-19 crisis has curtailed planned performances of orchestras all over the world.

As more and more orchestras face the almost certain prospect that well-attended, full-orchestra concerts indoors will not be possible for the foreseeable future, at least until a successful vaccination program has brought COVID-19 under control, the remainder of many symphony concert seasons across America are now being cancelled
.

We have previously cancelled our live, main stage concerts and education performances through January 2021 due to public health restrictions and the closure of Overture Hall.

Public Health Madison and Dane County restrictions continue to prohibit publicly attended indoor concerts. As a consequence, we have faced a painful decision in recent months regarding the fate of the rest of our 2020–2021 season.

I am grieved to announce that, under the present conditions — which offer no reasonable prospect of abatement until the summer, at least — we deem it an unfortunate necessity to cancel all previously scheduled Madison Symphony Orchestra concerts, Education and Community Engagement Programs, and Overture Concert Organ performances through May 2021.

Our June 2021 Concert on the Green remains on our schedule at this time.

We are prepared to issue refunds to our subscribers as we did in the fall. We will be communicating directly with our subscribers to provide options, including the option to donate the value of their tickets.

As we consider alternative programming opportunities for the spring, we will continue to welcome donations to our Musicians’ Relief Fund.

When we planned a joyous celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday, we could scarcely have imagined the devastation of the coronavirus in almost every aspect of our lives. But we are finding solace in successfully rescheduling this epic season just one year hence.

The emerging promise of vaccine development has rekindled our enthusiasm for making great music on a grand scale for our community with our Beethoven celebration. We all look forward to a new beginning with John DeMain (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson) and the orchestra in September 2021. (You can hear the original promotional preview in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Please stay tuned for some exciting news about next season. In the meantime, should there be a breakthrough opportunity to restore any of the cancelled orchestra or organ concerts, or educational and community services to the schedule, we will be prepared to do so.

We are committed to helping our orchestra and keeping great music alive in Madison. Thank you for your interest and continuing support.

Sincerely,

Richard H. Mackie, Executive Director

 


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