WildKat PR is pleased to welcome three new clients to the WildKat PR roster: National Geographic London Store’s new cultural calendar, lyric soprano Melinda Hughes, and Qanas Productions’ Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture.

National Geographic London Store have launched their cultural calendar comprising of concerts, talks and photographic exhibitions to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the National Geographic Society, and turning the adventure store into a cultural hub in Central London. Events include a performance by flautist Katherine Bryan launching her new album, artist Alexa Meade and Born Free Foundation CEO Will Travers.

Melinda Hughes is an operatic soprano whose roles have included Cio Cio San in Madame Butterfly, Mimi in La Boheme, Countess in The Marriage of Figaro and many more. In 2013, Melinda will be performing her new satirical show, ‘French Kiss’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The Qatar 2013 Year of Culture celebrates creativity, diversity and mutual cultural understanding through an exciting and varied musical programme. The cultural collaboration can be experienced at a concert at London’s Cadogan Hall on May 27th and Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on June 14th. Performers will include Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal National Scottish Orchestras with soloists Chloë Hanslip, Guy Johnston and Amira Fouad performing music by British and Qatari composers.

(Written on May 20, 2013 )

The Guardian

Happy 125th birthday, Concertgebouw

Amsterdam’s world-class orchestra and concert hall celebrate their 125th anniversary this week. Tom Service explains why the hall’s famously perfect acoustics create unexpected challenges for its players.

The Guardian

RPS awards: Stockhausen’s helicopters and the Guardian’s Tom Service

Nominations for the classical music industry’s most respected annual gongs, the Royal Philharmonic Society awards, have been announced

The Telegraph

David Mitchell on his ‘bonkers’ new 3D opera Sunken Garden

The novelist David Mitchell speaks to Sameer Rahim about writing the libretto for a spectacular occult-mystery-film-opera, Sunken Garden.

Classic FM

Soprano Julia Lezhneva on her fairytale career so far 

The talented 23-year-old soprano shares the highlights of her career so far with John Brunning, and talks passionately about Baroque vocal music.

Gramophone

Rosenblatt Recitals founder announces new summer music festival

Branscombe Festival will run from July 26-28, 2013.

Classical Music Magazine

Richard Hallam takes up ISM presidency

The Incorporated Society of Musicians has formally announced the appointment of music education specialist Richard Hallam as its president, an appointment which will last one year. Hallam takes over from choral conductor Suzi Digby.

The Guardian

(Written on April 12, 2013 )

Newstatesman 

Classical Music should be about more than elite parties and Private Schools 

“Exclusion in the classical music world stretches far beyond race” Andrew Mellor explores the existing tensions in the world of classical music.

Arts Journal- Slipped Disc

Oh Yuk! Smut author takes credit for classic chart success

Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium reaches number one in the charts after its feature in E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. 

Going Down: London gets an underground Orchestra 

Musician Shaun Boswell tries to remedy the lack of good music on London’s underground.

Listen Up: It’s a post-modern take on Rite of Spring 

Composer and viola player Lev Zhurbin gives a 21^st spin to folk music that Stravinsky used.

The Guardian – Music Blog 

Proms 2012: My Opera Highlights 

Tom Service picks his Opera Highlights from the programme of this year’s Proms.

BBC News 

Former Steel Worker Inspires Opera Cycle Song 

A former Steel worker and Olympic medalist Albert White inspires a community opera in Scunthorpe which featured as part of the London 2012 festival.

England’s Sistema youth orchestra programme expands 

Four new youth orchestras launch across England as a part of the In Harmony Programme inspired by Venezuela’s famous El Sistema.

Classic FM

Vivaldi’s “Bombshell” opera discovered 

A new version of Vivaldi’s Opera Orlando Furioso has been discovered in manuscript form almost 300 years after his death.

Higgs boson sounds like habanera

Newly discovered Higgs boson particle has inspired quite a different piece by Domenico Vicinanza.

Soprano’s live longer than altos  

Recent study by two doctors in Detroit suggests that Soprano’s live longer than altos.

(Written on July 16, 2012 )

The Telegraph

Proms 2012: top classical musicians pick their favourite Prom

Mark Elder, Tamsin Little, Sarah Connolly and more pick the Proms 2012 they are most looking forward to.

The Independent

‘Ow’ Liza and the BBC Proms is doing ‘My Fair Lady’?

Eliza Doolittle will screech in Cockney and sing posh as the quintessential London musical “My Fair Lady” makes its BBC Proms debut on Saturday in a lavish production that owes a debt to Hollywood.

BBC Music Magazine

A Proms fanfare

The BBC Proms kick off tonight at the Royal Albert Hall with a world premiere performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Canon Fever.

LA Times

Singers brave heat wave for Philip Glass premiere in Times Square

Happy returns for Glassmost took place recently with a performance in Times Square. His 1997 opera “Monsters of Grace” was reworked into a piece for soloist and an  eight-part chorus commissioned by NPR.

Arts Journal – Slipped Disc

Koreans come first and third in Vienna singing contest

A 22 year-old tenor Beomjin Kim took first prize and soprano Sang-Ah Yoon came third in the 31st Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition.

Deutsche Grammophon signs Canadian star

It was only a matter of time before a label locked on to Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the first Canadian conductor to achieve international renown.

Gramophone

Maxime Tortelier named Bournemouth Symphony young conductor in association

Son of Yan Pascal Tortelier to work closely with BSO’s Kirill Karabits .

(Written on July 13, 2012 )

The Telegraph

Let’s have much more opera on the beach

Garsington has proved a hit when beamed to the sands of Skegness.

The chromatic slithering of Delius leaves me cold

Delians claims his music evokes the soul of the forgotten English landscape, but I don’t hear that.

The Independent

Heads up: Wednesday from Light

Opera aims shy hight with 150 performers and 4 helicopters.

Opera al fresco? What could possibly go wrong?

Stag beetles and bats are among the hazards of outdoor performances, says Michael Volpe, head of Opera Holland Park. And don’t get him started on the weather…

The Guadian

A guide to Kaija Saariaho’s music

All composers are dreamers. But very few have dared to dream sonic images of such magnetic power as those that Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho has conjured in her music for ensembles, orchestra, opera houses, electronics and soloists.

Take your seats for Swindon: the Opera

Production with 250-strong cast and crew made up of local people shines spotlight on working-class family life.

BBC Music Magazine

Evelyn Lear (1926-2012)

The soprano who appeared with every major opera company in the US dies aged 86.

LA Times

Woody Allen revisits opera in ‘To Rome With Love’

In his latest movie “To Rome With Love,” Woody Allen plays Jerry, a retired music executive and former opera director who travels to Italy to meet his daughter’s fiancé.

Arts Journal – Slipped Disc

Boulez is out of the BBC Proms

Pierre Boulez has been forced to withdraw from the BBC Proms as a result of continuing difficulties with his eyesight. He is in doubt for the Lucerne Festival.

The Times

Daniel Barenboim’s hazardous Proms mission

‘You need t be brave to join this opera’, says Daniel Barenboim. ‘Our mission is vital’.

Proms highlights: what to book for 

With the Proms starting on Friday, here are highlights from Berlioz, Beethoven, Boulez, not to mention Wallace & Gromit.

5 minutes with Sarah Connolly

Sarah Connolly, 49, is an English mezzo-soprano, widely viewed as one of the world’s finest.

(Written on July 10, 2012 )

The Telegraph

Tamsin Little on Delius: regrets of a lost composer

Violinist Tamsin Little tells Ivan Hewett why she loves the music of Delius.

The opera voice: Gianni Schicchi by Puccini

If you were ever in doubt that opera could be hilarious then Puccini’s one-act opera Gianni Schicchi will convince you.

NY Times

Evelyn Lear, Versatile Soprano, Dies at 86

Evelyn Lear, an American soprano who became a star in Europe in the 1950s and later won acclaim in the United States for singing some of the most difficult roles in contemporary opera, died on Sunday.

Arts Journal – Slipped Disc

Chariots of Fire composer: ‘success breeds creative paralysis’

If you missed a rare interview with Vangelis in the sports pages of the Observer, you’ll want to catch up on the Greek composer’s thoughts on economic crisis and its relation to creative impotence.

Jessica Duchen

The Trouble with Sponsorship

More people these days are making their feelings known about where sport and the arts get their necessary lucre. And it’s not a moment too soon. But where do we go from here?

Gramophone

Opera experiment at the Sydney Opera House

Presenting Erich Korngold’s Die tote Stadt has compelled Australia’s national opera company to think outside the box – literally.

(Written on July 5, 2012 )

Last week’s two-night run of Sacrifices, by Vignette Productions and La Nuova Musica, directed by Andrew Staples, has this week been praised in its reviews in the press. The modern setting and simplicity of direction was seen as ‘wholly appropriate’ to the intricate works of Charpentier and Carissimi, praise indeed for Andrew’s work (Exeunt Magazine).

Sacrifices was performed in Shoreditch Town Hall, as part of the Spitalfields Music Summer Festival, a venue which was ‘resonant enough to fill out the sound without swamping it’, an important factor for such a dark yet moving performance (The Evening Standard).

The Evening Standard celebrated La Nuova Musica for providing musicality and colour ‘of often heartbreaking poignancy’, whilst uplifting all of the performers and musicians as ‘exquisite’.

The direction by Andrew, ‘a fine tenor branching into theatre direction’ (The Times) was commended for drawing ‘poingnant, assured performances from the young actors and singers’, also noting the skill with which they performed the difficult polyphony entirely from memory. The Times also individually celebrated the soprano Sophie Junker for her performance of Jephte’s Daughter in the Carissimi work, in particular the ‘touchingly sung’ lament before she is tragically sacrificed; whilst Exeunt Magazine noted Sophie’s fellow soprano Augusta Hebbert for being both confident and engaging.

Andrew’s triumphant work at Spitalfields was applauded as a whole, with the ‘clever linking’ of the two works bringing them up to date and making them relevant to today’s society, in an ultimate portrayal that, even now, Sacrifice can ultimately never be evaded (The Times).

La Nuova Musica in Rehearsal at Shoreditch Town Hall

(Written on June 20, 2012 )

Classical Music Magazine

Breakthrough for blind musicians as Prima Vista signs deal with OUP

Ms Machell, based in Leeds, has her own music publishing and software company, Prima Vista Braille Music Services, which provides music to enable blind musicians to ‘feel the music’.

Jubilee composers miss out on BBC coverage

The event, organised by the Thames Diamond Jubilee Foundation, saw nine ‘music herald barges’ sail down the river, with performers on each.

LA Times

Vinny Golia to enable young talent

Vinny Golia is using his residency at the Blue Whale, which celebrates his Nine Winds label’s 35th anniversary, to showcase young musical talent.

Playboy Jazz Festival tries to broaden its appeal

The 2012 Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl will feature classic styles, jazz-rock fusions and genre pushers. Bill Cosby is the emcee.

Sonny Rollins, Esperanze Spalding head S.F. Jazz Festival lineup

Los Angeles-area jazz fans will have ample reasons to trek north on the Golden State Freeway beginning in August with the recently announced lineup of the 30th San Francisco Jazz Festival.

The Guardian

Opera North tackles Wagner’s Ring Cycle – minus the financial drama

Concert hall staging with giant video and ‘nicely blown in tubas’ keeps ticket prices down to draw Wagner virgins.

Gramophone

Obituary: Judith Nelson, early music soprano

The American soprano Judith Nelson, who has died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, was one of the most prominent voices in the early music world.

New York Times

The White Light Festival Turns to Dark-Hued Mahler

White Light, Lincoln Center’s fall festival dedicated to humanity’s spiritual side, will present Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London next season.

BBC Music Magazine

Winners of Placido Domingo’s Operalia competition announced

The first prize at the annual competition founded by tenor Plácido Domingo,Operalia, has been awarded to 29-year-old American soprano Janai Brugger.

(Written on June 13, 2012 )

The Independent

The London 2012 Festival: The greatest show of a great year

It is about to happen all over the UK. It brings existing celebrations like the Proms together with one-off spectaculars on the Thames and in Edinburgh, and street dance everywhere, in a programme of 12,000 events.

The Guardian

Derek Hammond-Stroud obituary

Popular baritone and lieder singer with remarkable diction.

BBC presenter Petroc Trelawny arrested in Zimbabwe

Radio 3 presenter hurt in fall after detention by immigration officials at the end of a children’s concert.

Classical Music Magazine

Arts Council had consent for creative accounting

The National Audit Office has picked up on some unorthodox accounting by Arts Council England in the shape of a move devised to prevent ACE having to give cash back to the government at the end of the financial year.

NY Times

Composing a more useful future

The leaders of the American Composers Orchestra look to the ensemble’s future.

LA Times

The Sunday Conversation: Pianist Mona Golabek holds on to the music

The creator of the one-woman show ‘The Pianist of Willesden Lane’, now at the Geffen Playhouse, reflects on the gift of music.

The Times

Sophie and Mary Bevan: the soprano sisters

Soprano sisters Sophie and Mary Bevan are sharing an opera stage for the first time.

Jessica Duchen

The power of laughter

Comedy is, notoriously, the hardest genre of all at which to succeed – and probably why it doesn’t get into music very often.

Gramophone

Pianist Valentina Lisitsa signs to Decca Classics

YouTube sensation to record her London concert debut for the label.

(Written on May 28, 2012 )

The Telegraph

Tallis Scholars: at the cutting edge of discovery

Tallis Scholar founder Peter Phillips says there are still great Renaissance masterworks waiting to be brought back to life.

The Guardian

The Cunning Little Vixen brings animal magic to Glyndebourne

With its cast of bloodthirsty foxes, lazy hens and mischievous frogs, Janácek’s opera is joy – and a powerful reminder of the force of nature.

Classical Music Magazine

Catalyst Arts fund: music organisation to invest in development

Nearly £4.5m has been allocated to UK music organisations as part of Arts Council England’s Catalyst Arts scheme, announced today.

NY Times

Mattila Bows Out From Met Production

Karita Mattila, the Finnish soprano, has dropped out of a new production of Verdi’s “Ballo in Maschera” at the Metropolitan Opera planned for next season.

LA Times

Piano and flute in India, where the sitar is king

There’s a growing interest in the music of Beethoven, Bach and Co. in the country. The Delhi School of Music is among the institutions that feed this thirst for the Western classical genre.

ArtsJournal – Slipped disc

Pavarotti’s Machiavelli has died

Herbert Breslin, who masterminded Luciano Pavarotti’s career and made sure it triumphed above all others, died today in Nice, France.

Gramophone

No place for boorish boos at sumptuous new Falstaff

The reaction of sections of the audience at Tuesday night’s unveiling of a brand new Falstaff at the Royal Opera House was uncalled for, unjustified – and boorish.

(Written on May 18, 2012 )