An orchestra, said Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Järvi, is "not a football team. "It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about having something very fragile that needs to be nurtured and protected, not turned into a mass event."
Järvi, who is back in Cincinnati to lead the opening concerts of the CSO’s 111th season, nevertheless knows how to play the game.
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American Symphony Orchestra League president Henry Fogel, former president of the Chicago Symphony and one of the nation's most respected arts leaders, comes to Cincinnati Wednesday to give the 2005 Joan Cochran Rieveschl Lecture at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Fogel will speak about be keeping the arts relevant in a changing society. On one issue Fogel is crystal clear: American orchestras must adapt.   - [Read more]

Pianist Sergei Polusmiak is completely devoted to his students. "My students are my children," he says literally so in the case of Anna Polusmiak, his step-daughter. Anna, 22, an international competition winner who will perform with the Cincinnati Symphony at Music Hall in April and with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (Russia) in June, is one of eight Polusmiak students who will give a joint recital at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 2 in Northern Kentucky University’s Greaves Concert Hall. Polusmiak himself will perform Chopin’s Ballade No. 4.   - [Read more]

Cincinnati Opera artistic director Evans Mirageas know a lot about opera. A lot. He also knows a lot about symphony orchestras, broadcasting, recording, flight schedules and how to say no, which is what he said twice to Cincinnati Opera general manager Patty Beggs when she asked him to take over the artistic direction of the company.
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Chinese conductor Xian Zhang went from being a 29-year-old, unknown assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music to assistant to New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel.  The jump came when she won the first Maazel/Vilar International Conductors' Competition in New York in 2002. (first published in The Cincinnati Post Sept. 29, 2005)
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Paavo Järvi in master class, Pärnu, Estonia, July 2005 (photo by Mary Ellyn Hutton)

"You can actually touch the sound. Feel it with your hands," says Paavo Järvi, standing barefoot before a class of young conductors at the Concert Hall in Pärnu, Estonia in July. To illustrate, he reaches out, draws his fingers together and pulls his hand back towards him. The gesture demonstrates how palpable music is to the Estonian born conductor, who returns to Cincinnati this week to begin his fifth season as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.   - [Read more]

Reports to the contrary, Paavo Järvi did go to Detroit last month. Sort of. The Cincinnati Symphony music director, son of Detroit Symphony music director emeritus Neeme Järvi, accompanied a delegation from CSOEncore, the CSO's young adults avid support group. At least his poster did.   - [Read more]

Blockbuster may not adequately describe "Margaret Garner," the Richard Danielpour/Toni Morrison opera about escaped slave Margaret Garner, opening at 8 tonight at Music Hall. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, 9,069 tickets had been sold, more than the opera's goal of 8,000 with a week to go before the final performance.  The hall seats 3,516 -- more than 200 of them obstructed views.  Still, chances are the opera will sell out, said opera marketing director Chris Milligan.
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Baritone Rod Gilfry was booed in Detroit. Not surprisingly, since Gilfry portrays slave master Edward Gaines in "Margaret Garner," the Richard Danielpour/Toni Morrison opera which receives its Cincinnati Opera premiere this week at Music Hall. (The world premiere was in Detroit May 7.) Cincinnati and Michigan Opera Theater have joined with Opera Company of Philadelphia in a $5.5 million, three-way co-commission. Gilfry expects the response to be "much more intense" in Cincinnati than in Detroit. The historical context of "Margaret Garner" is more of an issue for Cincinnati Opera than Detroit.
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Even James Levine, famed music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony, admits to "a little wave of terror" before the music begins. Then it’s over. "The music starts and that’s all there is. I’m not aware of anything until it stops." Cincinnati native Levine – in town to conduct final concert of the 2005 May Festival at 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall discussed his home town, returning to the May Festival, Music Hall, conducting and the future of symphonic music in an hour-long press conference Thursday afternoon at Music Hall.   - [Read more]

It’s going to be a haunted weekend at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Beginning at 8 p.m. tonight in Corbett Auditorium, CCM Opera presents "The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe" by American composer Dominick Argento. The 1976 opera, to be directed by CCM opera head Sandra Bernhard, is a "voyage of discovery" in which Poe boards a phantom ship, thinking it’s real. On board, he meets the ghosts of his life, including his wife, mother and foster mother (all dead), detective Dupin from "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Rufus Griswold, the biographer who libeled Poe after his death.   - [Read more]

Where in the world is Paavo Järvi? Late on a Wednesday afternoon, the Cincinnati Symphony music director is at his desk at Music Hall, between meetings with CSO staff and an evening fund-raising event. Ask him where he’d like to be in September, 2009, and the answer is the same. "Here. I see this as home."


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Hey, composer!" That’s how neighbors greet Jennifer Higdon on the streets of Philadelphia, she said. Higdon, 42, whose Concerto for Orchestra recorded by Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony received four Grammy nominations in December including "Best Classical Contemporary Composition," is one of today’s most popular classical composers. Her music is performed over 100 times a year. "I think it’s important that music speaks to the audience," she said from Philadelphia, where she is a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music.

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Chinese pianist Yundi Li, 22, wears his stardom lightly.  Commercials for Nike? Rock star in Asia?  What he cares about, he said, is the music.  (first published in The Cincinnati Post April 15, 2005)
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The Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra has been on a roll with music director Mischa Santora for the past five years. Back in town for the CCO’s final concerts of the season, the arrestingly tall Hungarian (6 ft. 5 inches) believes the ball is at the top of the hill and must not be allowed to roll backward. Like all arts organizations, the CCO is having to deal with tough economic times. That, plus venue issues – a key concern for the CCO, as for the Cincinnati Symphony in over-sized Music Hall - will keep him busy here for the next month.   - [Read more]