News – September 2002

The NC Symphony has announced terms of its new three-year contract with its musicians, represented by the Professional Musicians’ Association, Local 500, American Federation of Musicians. The settlement was ratified by the players in late August and by the Symphony’s Board of Trustees on September 20. Bassist Robert Anderson chaired the five-member musicians’ group, and the NC Symphony Society was represented in the negotiations by NCS President and CEO David Chambless Worters, General Manager and Vice President for Artistic Operations Scott Freck and Vice President for Finance Bonnie Medinger. The announcement includes the following contract details: “Orchestra members will receive a 14.6% increase in salary over the next three years and the Society’s pension contribution will increase from 8.5% of base salary to 9.0% in 2003-04. The Society also agrees to cover the first 10% of health insurance expense increase per season. Significant work rule changes include the addition of same-sex domestic partners for sick leave care and bereavement leave, a guaranteed one week rotation relief for each musician, and an added vacation day beginning in 2002-03. In addition, musicians will make up half the search committee for the search for a new music director, which began this past summer…. Other financial adjustments include adding a new tier for seniority recognition at 25 years of service beginning in 2002-03 and increasing payments for 5th- and 10th-year players beginning in 2001-02. Musicians will also receive increases in per diem for run-out and tour concerts, fees for solo appearances with the orchestra and local television broadcast fees.” Worters says, “It’s a good, smart settlement [that] takes several steps in the right direction. It reflects … the facts [that] the Symphony is healthy and that everything is in place for taking several strong steps forward.”

 

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Duke Receives Rare Musical Instrument Collection
 

Legend has it that, thanks to St. Patrick, there are no snakes in Ireland, but Duke’s Music Department has recently obtained an English church serpent, so perhaps there is hope for reptiles in the UK. That serpent is part of a collection of over 400 rare musical instruments bequeathed to the University by Norman and Ruth Eddy. According to a Duke News Service announcement, issued last month (and subsequently picked up by WUNC-FM and our local NBC television station), “the collection contains 260 woodwinds (flutes, fifes, piccolos, clarinets, oboes, saxophones and bassoons), 140 brass (trumpets, trombones, horns, cornets, bugles, mellophones, euphoniums, helicons and tubas), 12 pianos, six free reeds (accordions and concertinas) and four strings” plus “90 paintings by Norman Eddy that show families of instruments and the variations within them.” Some of the instruments, not all of which have been restored, are on display in the lower lobby of the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building, located on Duke’s East Campus. Contact information is provided in the News Service’s announcement, available at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/arts/eddys.htm [inactive 12/03].

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Margot Knight Heads for Florida
 

The Orlando Sentinel reported September 18 that Margot Knight, 48, president of United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, had accepted appointment as president of United Arts of Central Florida, based in Orlando. Her appointment was effective October 9. UACF’s budget is said to be $8-9M. The Sentinel article can be found at 
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/.

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In Memoriam: Fuller Blunt
 

We invited David R. Lindquist, Executive Director of the Concert Singers of Cary, to share with us some thoughts about Fuller S. Blunt.
 

“We’re deeply saddened by the loss of our friend Fuller Blunt, who passed away on September 13. Fuller’s was a face familiar to many in the Triangle arts community by dint of his passion for the arts and leadership and service with the Friends of the Page Walker, Theater in the Park, and North Carolina Symphony. But for members of the Concert Singers of Cary, he was in many ways our central figure and our mentor.
 

“Fuller, more than anyone, fathered Concert Singers of Cary. He thrived in a role that is often little appreciated or recognized. He was our model as stage manager for a volunteer-driven chorus: he made things happen so that our director, Lawrence Speakman, could have the freedom to come in on Mondays and focus on the music. He was our organizational architect. He designed much of the chorus and had a knack for building organizations and programs from the ground up that were professional and ultimately prosperous. He was also a man devoid of egocentrism. Within just two years of embarking on his mission to establish the chorus and at the height of his accomplishments as our first President, Fuller stepped down and unhesitatingly handed off leadership to others. With the experience of 33 years as a teacher (largely on Long Island, NY), Fuller was comfortable trusting the people he trained and inspired with carrying on his vision. His dreams and hopes became ours. And those people, like myself, who assumed leadership roles, found in Fuller a sturdiness and wisdom in advice when things did not always go as we planned and encouragement to achieve excellence in everything we did. Like Glen Holland, the modest protagonist of Mr. Holland’s Opus , Fuller gave much more of himself to his students and acolytes than to himself. I don’t know all of the dreams he may have had for himself and whether he thought he achieved them. We know he succeeded more than he knew in making vocal music in and for our community.”

The staff of CVNC joins the Concert Singers of Cary in extending sympathies to Blunt’s family and many friends.

A memorial service was held September 23 at the Cary Presbyterian Church. The family requests that memorials be made to the Concert Singers of Cary Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 1921, Cary, NC 27512.
 

Members of the Concert Singers of Cary have posted some personal thoughts about Blunt at http://www.concertsingers.org/memoriesoffuller.htm

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Great Artists Signed on for 2002
 

On September 30, before a Great Artists Series recital by Leila Josefowicz and John Novacek, NC Symphony President and CEO David Chambless Worters announced the lineup for next year’s offerings. The NCS manages this distinguished series, which was launched by the Fletcher Foundation to celebrate its new opera theater. Brochures and follow-up mailings have now begun to hit the post office. Please note that this series, unlike many others, runs on a calendar-year basis. The dates and guests are:

January 29, 2002: Radu Lupu, piano
March 2, 2002: Eliot Fisk, guitar
April 6, 2002: Pamela Frank, violin, & Peter Serkin, piano
September 15, 2002: Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano
October 16, 2002: Gil Shaham, violin, Truls Mork, cello, & Yefim Bronfman, piano
November 16, 2002: Vladimir Feltsman, piano

We guessed last year, writing elsewhere, that this series of truly great artists – these are the finest lineups in the capital since the heyday of the Friends of the College – would sell out in a heartbeat. The first year didn’t. Surely the second season will, despite even higher prices this go-’round. For tickets or more information, call 919/733-2750.

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NC Composers Featured on UNC-TV
 

WUNC-TV, which characterizes itself as the UNC Center for Public Television, is presenting another round of films made by people with strong ties to North Carolina; the series started at 11:00 p.m. September 8. The offerings of “North Carolina Visions 2001” include no films dealing with classical music, per se, but the soundtracks of several of them are by composers who are or have been based here. For example, Ed Harris, a former Winston-Salem resident now living in Manlius, NY, contributed the music for Jim Sharkey’s “New Life: The Cole Family Potters” (which aired October 6), and John Baumbach and Eric Ahmdahl, students at the NCSA, scored Chad Concelmo’s “Jane and the Evil Spinstresses” (October 13). There are eight programs, all told, running on Saturday nights through October 27; the series encompasses nineteen films that, based on past editions, are sure to be cutting edge and thought provoking. Set those VCRs for remaining telecasts and look for re-runs next summer for the ones we’ve missed! 

 

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An Obituary?
 

Without any substantive changes on WCPE’s part, its programming suddenly became a whole lot more attractive the week of July 30. How can this be? Well, that’s when WUNC-FM, said to have been giving its own daytime announcers a break, began running its syndicated, sleep-inducing “overnight” classical service during the daytime, too. At the time, it appeared that the new approach might have been part of the station’s fundraising drive (“online only, please, so as not to interrupt our fine programming”), but cynics wondered if it marked a last hurrah in the station’s “25th anniversary” year, which actually reflects a quarter-century of NPR affiliation. (The station was on the air for a long, long time before 1976.) The “service” was from someplace up north, for among the ads – is this non-commercial radio? – were periodic plugs for a St. Paul hotel. The announcers clearly weren’t from ’round here, and while the selections they offered didn’t sound quite like the old computer-programmed stuff the station used to broadcast, the aura definitely said, “I’m canned.” Musical wallpaper’s nothing new, but the local variety heretofore presented by ‘UNC featured local commentary, at least; the change brought “imported” ear candy, which some listeners found superior but others didn’t.
 

Then, thanks to an article on the front page of the News & Observer published August 18, we knew that the rumors were true – the station gave up on classical on Labor Day, joining a flood of media outlets (including Spectator and Independent) that see no future in serious art music. The N&O‘s announcement might have gone on the obituary page, where, when ‘UNC (“usually news content”) first joined the ranks of the NPRists, our daily’s concert reviews usually appeared. The death-knell was long in coming and may be dated to the engagement of Bill Davis, who dropped the Met and jazz in fairly short order. Hospice might have been summoned back then. The patient lingered on, but the end was perhaps preordained. Stay tuned… Or, on second thought, don’t. We’ve switched back to ‘CPE, supplemented by the BBC’s Radio 3 on the web – and while we’re not holding our breath, we’re hoping that our remaining local classical voice (on the radio) will now revamp and upgrade its offerings and its announcing staff. Engaging some (but not all) of ‘UNC’s former on-air crew would be a good first step over at 89.7.
 

Since September 11, we wouldn’t have had much music on ‘UNC anyway, but now that we approach the first month anniversary, one might think that a bit of the Funeral March from Beethoven’s “Eroica” might be appropriate. Instead of talk about music and art, a taste of the real thing would seem to be indicated. Hope springs eternal. 

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NC Symphony Lauded by Peers for Adventurous Programming 
 

At a recent American Symphony Orchestra League conference in Seattle, the NC Symphony was one of three orchestras in its category (operating expenses between $4.135 and $11.8 million) recognized for its “adventurous programming” of contemporary music. The second place award went to the Colorado Symphony and third place, to the Toledo Symphony. 

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EMF Recovering from Financial Bind
 

In last summer’s coverage of the considerable artistic achievements of the 39th season (2000) of the Eastern Music Festival (for another publication), William Thomas Walker chronicled the alarming news that its continued existence was threatened by a $350,000 budget shortfall. With the board making up a major chunk of the deficit, an end-of-season goal of $200,000 was set for the community, and by the deadline, a total of $308,690 was raised from the Triad. As a result, the future of the EMF, based on the campus of Guilford College just west of Greensboro, was, at the start of this year’s season, somewhat more secure than it had been. We reported extensively on the 2001 edition; Walker’s reviews may be found elsewhere at this site.
 

More recently, Greensboro’s News & Record reported (on September 26) that EMF Artistic Director Andre-Michel Schub “will take a less active role at the festival next year.” The article notes that Schub “will continue to perform at the EMF in 2002 but will act as artistic advisor instead of director. Other artistic duties next season will be administered by EMF orchestra members. By 2003, a principal conductor and an education director… will oversee student and concert programs, audition orchestra members and other artistic duties.”