Latest news
ARIA Announces Fine Arts Nominees For 2017
The 2017 ARIA Awards launches at the National Art Gallery in Sydney on October 10, with the announcement of the winners in the Fine Arts category, including Best Classical Album, Best Jazz Album, Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album, Best World Music Album, along with Producer Of The Year, Engineer Of the Year, Best Cover Art and Best Comedy. The nominees…
Gramophone’s 15 Worst Record Covers
With the demise of the vinyl record, the repository of art work – both good and bad – created for record covers was also lost. These artworks chronicled the styles of the times and showed some of the artists in a rare light. Gramophone presents 15 of the less successful covers from its collection alongside three…
Australian Tenor Samuel Sakker Succeeds At The Grange Competition
Congratulations to Samuel Sakker with his success in the inaugural Grange Festival International Singing Competition which has just concluded with the Australian tenor gaining the second prize to British soprano Rowan Pierce’s winning performance. British-Serbian bass-baritone Božidar Smiljanić was placed third. Around 150 young singers aged 33 and under from 28 countries entered the competition…
Musica Viva’s New Building Houses Community Rehearsal Studio
Musica Viva has recently launched a new national office in Sydney and included in the brand new premises is a rehearsal space intended to relieve the pressure on local ensembles struggling to find a rehearsal venue. Musica Viva intends to make this studio available to the wider music community on a cost-neutral basis. Musica Viva’s…
Opera Companies Required To Hire More Home Talent
In a long-awaited response to the National Opera Review, chaired by Helen Nugent and released nearly a year ago in October 2016, the federal government has addressed the declining number of Australian opera singers heard on Australian stages by requiring that the nation’s major opera companies employ more Australian singers in an “appropriate balance” or face…
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Retires From Singing
Dame Kiri te Kanawa who was watched by an estimated 600 million people when she sang Let the Bright Seraphim at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, has announced her retirement from singing. Dame Kiri shot to fame as the Countess in the 1971 Covent Garden production of the Marriage of Figaro….
Latest reviews
Concert Review: Winterreise/ Sydney Schubert Society
Winterreise – Sydney Schubert Society Independent Theatre, North Sydney 20 August 2017 Written by Deen Hamaker Franz Schubert’s Winterreise is one of the pinnacles of the lieder repertoire. It tells of a lonely person’s journey into a bleak winter landscape of snow, ice and bare trees. The 24 songs that make up the cycle explore…
Opera In Concert Review: Parsifal/ Opera Australia
Parsifal in Concert Opera Australia Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House 9 August 2017 Written by Deen Hamaker Parsifal is a work that is revered for its Wagnerian splendour and epic scale, but its magnitude makes it a rarity in many opera houses. Adding to this is the difficulty of staging this intensely spiritual piece in…