vegan conductor

Here are some tips for young composers and arrangers as a practical guide on how to best present their own scores in preparation for performances (rather than a guide on how to write good music! Bananathoven Here’s a preliminary tip: unless you have super neat handwriting (and an abundance of time), using a notation software is highly recommended!  1. Know what you want and add as much detail in the score as possible  The less details you provide, the more freedom you are giving the performers with room for interpretation. If this is your intention, then that’s cool. One quarter note can be played in a thousand  different ways - if you want specific articulations, note length, expressiveness - write them in!  Imagine in 300 years time your work is being performed when you’re no longer around.  Did you remember to say everything that you wanted to in the score? 2. Keep in mind that human beings are going to be performing your work, not a computer! Un

"Your Queen is dead!" "No, your Queen is dead!" ♠  Comparing the two Queens of Spades  ♠ Whenever you go to an opera performance of Eugene Onegin in Russia, there are always those dissatisfied people in the audience who argue that the characters are all portrayed wrong, how all modern productions are wrong, and basically how everything is wrong because some things aren’t “according to Pushkin”. Once I overheard someone commenting on Andriy Zholdak’s production at the Mikhailovsky Theatre (which is one of my favourite productions of Onegin!!) how it was “historically incorrect”! What? You mean, they didn’t have front-loader washing machines and microwaves in the 1820’s? Are you serious?! If we were to only value an operatic work (and its productions) on its likeness to the original text, then Tchaikovsky would fail instantly, as the very first words we hear in the opera Eugene Onegin (where Tatiana and Olga are singing a duet together) aren’t even

Taking a closer look into Tchaikovsky's penultimate opera and the original short story by Pushkin that inspired it. What is life? A game! - from Herman's aria in Act III of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades ♠    ♠    ♠ When Hermann, the central figure featuring in Alexander Pushkin’s story of the Queen of Spades, finds out that the three cards: three , seven and ace were (supposedly) going to win him a fortune, everything around him started to resemble threes, sevens and aces and they even started to appear in his dreams: Seeing a young girl, he’d say: “How slender is she!.. A true Three of Hearts”. When asked “what’s the time?”, he’d answer: “five minutes to seven”. Every pot-bellied man would remind him of an ace. [1] While learning my third  opera by Tchaikovsky - the Queen of Spades (first Eugene Onegin , followed by Iolanta ), I started to notice how this opera was gradually taking over my brain similarly to how the three cards eventually po

On October 16th 2016, the Saint Petersburg International Art Orchestra WARM & PEACE gave a world preimiere of a work by Ecuadorian composer Marco Mosquera, which takes the listeners on a journey to uncover the secrets of the dairy industry which are kept hidden from its conusmers. Why are the musicians of the orchestra wearing masks? Are they ill? The musicians of the orchestra represent the voiceless. They can only speak through their instruments once their masks are removed. Musical notes translate into words for us to understand. The work begins in a form of passacaglia - after the double bass gives its opening statement, each instrumental group joins in one by one over the bass-ostinato. Screams of pain and suffering can be heard from the orchestra, blended with the haunting sounds of electronics. These sounds of disturbing violence are simultaneously mixed with chords like a ray of light, perhaps a glimpse of hope - hope in humanity. English translation of t

Pyotr Ilyich, trying to FIG-ure out the answer to this question. (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for my appalling sense of humour. It's inherited from my father.) "So tell me please, what have you all learnt in my course over the past year?" - asks our teacher of a subject called "Foundations in Opera Directing" which all conducting students must take in Third Year of the five-year conducting course at the Saint-P Con. Lectures were inconveniently held on Monday mornings, therefore naturally, students rarely ever turned up, forcing the poor old lady to often sit in the classroom waiting by herself for the entire duration of the 2-hour lecture (often she'd be sitting in the very corner of the empty classroom with the lights turned off... kinda creepy). Occasionally I would be the only student present in her lessons (although not always, I was also guilty of truanting, often loitering at the rehearsals of the St Petersburg Philharmonic i

Which paw do we use to hold the baton with, Sergei Vasilyevich? I like writing notes and making lists - it's one of my nerdy hobbies. I also enjoy attending orchestral rehearsals and watching other conducting students' lessons (at the Con this is not only encouraged but generally expected). In the last few years of studying in Saint-P, I've been able to observe lessons and masterclasses by great local and visiting conductors including Yuri Simonov, Alexander Dmitriev, Alexander Polyanichko, Alexander Polischuk, Vladimir Altshuler, Bruno Weil, Jonathan Brett, Colin Metters, Mark Stringer and many others. Also I was lucky enough to be one of the active participants for Vasily Sinaisky's conducting masterclass with our Con orchestra. So I thought I'd share with you 10 tips and quotes from various teachers and professors in the past that I've found helpful as a conducting student (they're in no particular order by the way). Please note that I can't r