12.22.05 (AP) Roll over, Beethoven. Beat it, Brahms. MOZART is back with a vengeance, though he'd probably flip his powdered wig if he could see the fuss being made over his 250th birthday. As Austria and the world gear up for a jubilee year of concerts and celebrations marking the maestro's birth, his hometown of Salzburg, Austria is on the verge of becoming Schmaltzburg, Austria. Suddenly, Amadeus is everywhere, and not just on the usual T-shirts, calendars, coffee mugs and ubiquitous "Mozart balls" - small, round, unfortunately named candies that inevitably trigger snickers among tourists. Shelves are stacked high with bottles of MOZART beer and wine, MOZART baby bottles, MOZART milkshakes, MOZART knickers, MOZART umbrellas and MOZART jigsaw puzzles. Complaints of excessive kitsch aside, it's a fitting frenzy of tribute for a musical genius who gave the universe "Don Giovanni," "The Marriage of Figaro," "The Magic Flute," his haunting "Requiem" and hundreds of other works. Poking fun at the unprecedented hype, the organizers of Mozart 2006 events in Vienna have come up with a playful logo: a famed 18th century portrait of the composer doctored to show his eyes rolling back in his head. "There are fears of a possible overkill," conceded Peter Marboe, overseeing remembrances in the Austrian capital. But it's all about the music. "Mozart, for me, is the light I orient my life around. He is a gift from God," said Angelika Kirschschlager, a celebrated Austrian mezzo-soprano who says singing his works "purifies not only the voice but the soul." Amadeus aficionados will have hundreds of events to choose from in New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Prague, Vienna and scores of other cities. But "Mozart Central" will be Salzburg, where all 22 of his operas will be performed at the Salzburg Festival next Summer. The house where the composer was born serves as a museum with an eclectic mix of items that look like they came straight out of Tom Sawyer's pocket: a lock of hair, a violin string, mother of pearl buttons from his waistcoat, a snuff box, playing cards, and notes he scribbled on his many journeys. There are also more impressive items on display at Getreidegasse No. 9, including the violin he learned on as a child and a copy of a 1764 composition he wrote in his own handwriting at age 8. In Vienna on January 27th, the city will officially reopen the painstakingly restored downtown house where MOZART wrote "The Marriage Of Figaro." Austria's National Library is displaying the original -- and seldom seen -- handwritten score to "Requiem"; Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel last month presented a copy to Pope Benedict XVI. Amadeus will figure prominently in virtually every major event in Austria in 2006. Experts are peppering Austrians with MOZART trivia (he lived 13,097 days, and spent 3,720 of them traveling to more than 200 European cities), and educators, seizing the anniversary as a teaching point for music, history and culture, are touring schools with a special program. It asks children provocative questions such as: "What pieces did Mozart compose when he was my age?" and "Why didn't Mozart have to go to school?" Even "Did Mozart brush his teeth?" The classical music world indulged in a similar fit of obsession in 1991 when it marked the 200th anniversary of MOZART's death. But the sheer scope of the 2006 celebrations has some worrying that it will cheapen his legacy. "It's all a bit of an exaggeration," Kurt Palms, author of the forthcoming book, "Wolfgang Is Still Unorthodox," said ruefully. "It raises the question of whether one might be causing some damage."

12.16.05 (MusicPortal.com) Grammy Award-winning writer/producer and contemporary music visionary WILLIAM ORBIT makes a return February 7th with a new album entitled "Hello Waveforms" on Sanctuary Records. His first solo release since 2000's "Pieces In A Modern Style," the new offering is performed and produced by Orbit. "Hello Waveforms" is ethereal, ambient, subtle and distinctive in style, fusing strong melodies with electronic synths to produce his definitive signature sound. Recorded in London and America, the new album features a collection of collaborations and influences - the track 'Humming Chorus' is taken from "Madame Butterfly," 'Spiral' features the SUGABABES and Kenna on vocals, while Finley Quaye plays acoustic guitar on the dreamlike 'Who Owns The Octopus.' WILLIAM ORBIT has also reunited with former "Strange Cargo" band member Laurie Mayer, who plays piano and synthesizer on 'Surfin' and provides vocals on the tracks 'Bubble Universe' and 'Who Owns the Octopus?' An artist who individually determined the new age of modern mixer/producer credibility, WILLIAM ORBIT's most high profile projects to date include his contribution to Madonna's "Ray Of Light" album - on which he produced, co-wrote and performed, U2's 'Electrical Storm', Blur's "13," and his smash-hit single, 'Barber's Adagio For Strings.' In 2001, WILLIAM ORBIT performed as part of Barbican's celebrated Elektronik Festival. Well-known for his contributions to modern music, Orbit is undoubtedly one of the world's most accomplished talents, and continues to be internationally recognized as a premier artist, writer, producer and composer. Influenced by an eclectic range of musicians including Jimi Hendrix, KRAFTWERK and Miles Davis, WILLIAM ORBIT's involvement in the music industry has not only created an impressive list of critically acclaimed work that spans genres and styles, but also ceaselessly defines the Dance/Electronica genre. While music is clearly his forte, it was never an obvious career choice. "My parents are both teachers, but I left school at 16 with no university education and worked a variety of jobs such as a fruit picker and in a shoe factory, before spending time in the seventies doing my own thing, which included living on a boat in Holland," he says. It was only when squatting in an old school house in Paddington during the 1980's that he formed TORCH SONG with Laurie Mayer and began to explore his innate creativity - thanks to the free electricity and lack of overheads. "We'd make cassettes and send them to everybody in the industry, which is basically how my music career began." Four critically acclaimed albums followed under the name "Strange Cargo," one of which produced the classic hit 'Water From A Vine Leaf,' featuring Beth Orton. During the 1990s, WILLIAM ORBIT also released under the names THE ELECTRIC CHAMBER and BASSOMATIC, whose material included the hit 'Fascinating Rhythm.' "Pieces In A Modern Style" was a pioneering collection of ambient Classical pieces interpreted with his distinctive vision. Featuring 'Barber's Adagio For Strings,' Erik Satie's 'Ogive Number 1,' Antonio Vivaldi's 'L'Inverno' and a Henryk Gorecki piece for the track 'Piece In The Old Style 1,' that album earned WILLIAM ORBIT instant worldwide commercial and critical success.
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12.15.05 (AP) The latest tune at the METROPOLITAN OPERA in New York is the box-office blues. Because of a slump in ticket sales, Met general manager Joseph Volpe wants to cut operating expenses for the company's current fiscal year by 5 percent. "We are currently projecting the box office to achieve 76 percent of capacity versus a budget of 80 percent, resulting in a shortfall of $4,303,000," Volpe wrote in a memorandum dated December 12th to METROPOLITAN OPERA department heads, a copy of which was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. "To offset this shortfall, we need to identify savings in all areas of our operating expenses," he wrote. "Our targeted savings goal is 5 percent of the expenses budgeted for the fiscal year, which can come from payroll or non-payroll sources, or both." In the late 1990s, the METROPOLITAN OPERA often sold more than 90 percent of tickets for each season, but the box office slowed after the 2001 terror attacks. Asked about the memorandum, spokesman Peter Clark said: "Mr. Volpe does not wish to discuss it." In recent weeks, the METROPOLITAN OPERA -- the largest Classical music company in the United States -- appears to have started the transition from Volpe, who took over in 1990, to Peter Gelb, the former Sony Classical music executive who becomes general manager next August. Gelb has declined interview requests, but he appears to have formulated an aggressive agenda that could include an increase in new productions, which have numbered four or five in recent seasons. Some of the productions will be shared with other companies or borrowed. The English National Opera says its new hit staging of Puccini's "Madame Butterfly," directed by Academy Award winner Anthony Minghella, is a co-production with the METROPOLITAN OPERA and the Lithuanian National Opera. While there has been talk that it will come to the Met next season, possibly for opening night, the Met hasn't acknowledged its participation. The San Francisco Opera said this week that the METROPOLITAN OPERA plans to borrow its world premiere production of John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" for the 2008-2009 season. Volpe said the decision to bring "Doctor Atomic" to the Met is not yet confirmed. There also are changes on the business side there. Coralie Toevs started work this week as the METROPOLITAN OPERA's director of development, replacing Lillian Silver, who had held the fund-raising job since 1997. Toevs had been the New York Philharmonic's development director since 1997. Thomas Michel, the Public Theater's director of marketing since March 2004, began work this month as the METROPOLITAN OPERA's director of marketing. Elena Park, who had been with radio station WNYC and previously worked for the San Francisco Opera, starts next month as director of communications and will take over as head of press and public relations in August from Francois Giuliani, who's retiring.

12.14.05 (AP) Pianist GYORGY SANDOR, who was a protege of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok and toured the world into his 90s while teaching at the Juilliard School Of Music, has died, it has been announced. He was 93 years old. Sandor died Friday of heart failure at his Manhattan home in New York, according to his son, Michael. A native of Budapest, Hungary, GYORGY SANDOR studied piano with Bartok and composition with Zoltan Kodaly at the Liszt Academy Of Music there. He concertized worldwide in the 1930's, making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1939 and later premiering many of the piano works by Bartok, who died in New York in 1945. GYORGY SANDOR was best known for his performances and recordings of the music of Bartok, Kodaly and Sergei Prokofiev. He recorded the complete solo piano works of Prokofiev and Kodaly, and the piano music and concertos of Bartok, for which he won the Grand Prix Du Disque in 1965. In Bela Bartok's fiendishly difficult music, GYORGY SANDOR was praised for his subtlety and fine articulation at the keyboard. "His playing serves as a chastisement to those who play Bartok with percussive sound," critic Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote in a review of a four-disc set the pianist recorded a dozen years ago. GYORGY SANDOR gave his last public performance in Turkey last Spring. In addition to the Juilliard School Of Music, Sandor also taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the University Of Michigan At Ann Arbor. GYORGY SANDOR wrote "On Piano Playing: Motion, Sound and Expression," a book published in 1981, and finished the manuscript of a book on Bela Bartok and his works.

[Classical News: November 2005]