Union Saves Music Program Oakland Technical High School was going to lose its music program until America's largest union came up with the money to save it. "The 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union, which represents school employees and has strong ties in Oakland, donated more than $91,300 to the school at a ceremony last Wednesday in honor of International Human Rights Day. The money pays for the music director position and keeps several music programs afloat for one year, such as the pep squad band, piano classes and a choral program. The donation also sets up a student chorus called Voices of Justice." Contra Costa Times 12/16/03 

The New Divas "This fall has seen a remarkable outpouring of albums by female opera singers," writes Charles Michener. "The majority of them, as it happens, are not sopranos but mezzo-sopranos; we’re living in an age when, curiously, many of the most interesting female voices belong not to the leading ladies who impersonate the tragic heroines around which most operatic plots creak, but to a powerful group of slightly lower-voiced women who rival, and frequently outstrip, the prima donnas for vocal charisma." New York Observer 12/17/03 

Of Rings, Wagner and Tolkien Lord of the Rings certainly has a Wagnerian feel, writes Alex Ross. And not just because rings are at the center of the two epics. "Tolkien refused to admit that his ring had anything to do with Wagner’s. 'Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceased,' he said. But he certainly knew his Wagner, and made an informal study of 'Die Walküre' not long before writing the novels. The idea of the omnipotent ring must have come directly from Wagner; nothing quite like it appears in the old sagas." The New Yorker 12/16/03 

Baltimore Cutting Music Lessons For Kids Fifteen children, dressed to the nines, gathered in the rotunda of Baltimore City Hall yesterday to play their violins and cellos for the politicians who are closing their music school. The Baltimore Talent Education Center provides after-school music training for 180 children from across the city. "The school system, facing a financial crisis, has reassigned the three full-time teachers who run the weekly lessons, saying their talents will be better used in music classrooms in schools. The teachers' redeployment is the result of an immense school system staff reduction; layoff notices were sent to more than 700 employees last month." Baltimore Sun 12/18/03 

The Composer Who Didn't Kill Mozart Ask your average classical music buff how Mozart died, and most will probably answer that he was murdered (or at least driven to the grave) by his jealous rival, Antonio Salieri. This theory has been around for centuries, and was firmly embedded in the modern consciousness by Milos Forman's 1984 film, Amadeus. But the truth is that Salieri had very little motive to kill off Mozart, and there is nothing but the thinnest anecdotal evidence to link him to the master's death. Furthermore, Salieri was hardly the hack composer that Amadeus made him out to be, and a newly revived interest in his operatic work is sweeping across Europe. The Guardian (UK) 12/19/03 

On Writing Words For Opera Poet Lavinia Greenlaw recently found herself writing an opera libretto. "Singing is not a casual act. Opera (again, like poetry) works best when it refuses to be embarrassed about its artifice. Libretti work best when the lines are fluent and convincing, but also emphatically styled. As I have begun to learn in my own libretto-writing, it's a question of texture rather than vocabulary. Rossini once said: "Give me a laundry list, and I will set it." WH Auden points out that this is not so great a claim, since lists lend themselves to music particularly well. Any words can be used if they contain a space for the music and action and are strong enough to change shape without losing meaning. It's like making the skin for some fantastical beast based on what it is going to do rather than what it might look like." The Guardian (UK) 12/20/03 

Game Boy Symphony Some avid players of Game Boys, are using the little electronic game consoles to compose and play music. The music is "surprisingly complex." "The gizmos serve as musical notepads, the modern-day equivalents of Beethoven's pen on paper. The group then sets up in smoky bars and other modest local concert venues to treat — or subject — their audiences to beeps, buzzes, clicks, recorded-speech snippets and other computer-age sounds, all strung together into assaults on the senses." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 12/18/03 

London Music, 2003: The Bland Leading The Blander? "If most years are dispiriting for full-time opera companies because of the parlous state of their finances, against which they generally manage on stage to achieve minor miracles, this one was different; there was less talk of monetary problems (with certain exceptions) and far more of artistic disappointment, especially where the two London-based companies were concerned. It's hard to think of more than a couple of productions at either the Royal Opera House or at the Coliseum (before ENO temporarily decamped to the Barbican to allow its home to be renovated) that lodge in the memory or could remotely merit a revival." The Guardian (UK) 12/18/03 

Pop Opera Comes Full Circle When Bugs Bunny first appeared in a cartoon as the protagonist of a spoof of The Barber of Seville, the public roared with laughter, but classical purists rolled their eyes at what they saw as the bastardization of Great Art. Decades later, with classical music becoming an endangered art form, and pop culture occupying an ever more important role in society, the Vancouver Opera is using the cartoon to promote their more traditional performances. "You might call this missionary work. From a company with a million-dollar debt, teetering a few years ago on the brink of bankruptcy, Vancouver Opera has transformed itself into a debt-free, community-conscious, grassroots purveyor of an art form once associated with social elitism and a disdain for everything Bugs Bunny stood for." Toronto Star 12/20/03 
 

Composer David Laganella (b. 1974) is both an electric guitar player and cellist.

By Deborah Kravetz

This Chamber Music Now! Presentation of String Quartet by Wilmington, Delaware’s Serafin String Quartet is a preview performance for a world premiere to take place next March 27, 2004 at Carnegie Hall, New York.