“Tickets for the New York Philharmonic’s debut last month at the Santa Barbara Bowl in California sold out six weeks before the orchestra rolled into town,” writes Jennifer Smith in Friday’s (9/4) Wall Street Journal. “But it wasn’t just a one-night stand…. The Philharmonic is increasingly developing partnerships in places where its musicians can stay put longer…. Over the course of a week in Santa Barbara, five of the orchestra’s leading players also played a chamber-music concert, taught master classes and delivered lectures at the Music Academy of the West…. In July, [the Philharmonic] had its first orchestral residency in Shanghai, where it has also teamed up with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music on a program to train young orchestral musicians…. In October, the Philharmonic heads to Ann Arbor, Mich., for the first segment of a five-year residency with the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan…. Such arrangements can help host organizations stand out in a competitive cultural marketplace.” The Philharmonic’s April residency at London’s Barbican Centre included “a staging of Stravinsky’s ‘Petrushka’ … that combines music with dance, live animation, puppetry and circus arts.” Says Barbican classical-music programmer Paul] Keene, “You couldn’t have made that work in the old touring model.”
Posted September 9, 2015
