Early Music America

When Music of the Baroque opens its 47th season Saturday night with Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, it will be the first curtain-raiser in nearly two decades with a new executive director in the house at the Harris Theater.

The highly regarded period-instrument ensemble Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra has a new music director. Elisa Citterio has stepped into the position formerly held by Jeanne Lamon since 1981.

The Board of Directors of Early Music America would like to welcome Karin Brookes as the new Executive Director.

“Period-instruments practice means deep reflections on interpretation and performance practice. This blank slate is a phenomenal sensation of freedom. That’s something really exciting for the new generation, and it demonstrates how classical music is absolutely alive.”

Matthew Halls, the popular artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival, has been unexpectedly fired from his job at OBF. “I have been let go by the University of Oregon,” he told Eugene Weekly in a phone call Sunday (Aug. 27) morning from his home in Toronto. “And, as yet, I’m not sure why.”

The Bay Area musicologist Richard Taruskin, a prolific and wide-ranging scholar whose work has challenged conventional notions of music history and performance, has won the prestigious Kyoto Prize — the first music scholar to win the award.

Despite its 8.5 by 12 centimetres, the Leuven Chansonnier is a huge find. Director Bart Demuyt is thrilled with the fifteenth-century songbook recently discovered by his Alamire Foundation. “It’s been a century since the last time such an important manuscript surfaced in our field.”