One of the kindest people

Philip Jones died late on Monday afternoon, 17 January 2000, following a long illness, having achieved worldwide fame as a trumpeter and as leader of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. A memorial service will be held later in January. Philip was Principal of Trinity College of Music, London, from 1988-1994, completely transforming the institution, and TCM's Christopher Ellicott says that Philip was one of the kindest people he has ever met.

Obituaries: The Times; Yahoo

Music begins where speech stops

Reference Recordings has announced a new CD of world première recordings of music by American composer Dominick Argento (born 1927, York, Pennsylvania). Argento won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975 for his song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. Argento's latest opera The Dream of Valentino is set in the early days of Hollywood and examines fame and the immigrant experience. Valentino Dances - the suite from this opera, is included on the new CD along with Reverie, Reflections on a Hymn Tune, Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe, Valse Triste and A Ring of Time (Preludes and Pageants for Orchestra and Bells). The CD, entitled Valentino Dances - Music of Dominick Argento will be available from February 2000 as RR-91.

Cybergrass and the Vienna Philharmonic

William Osborne, an American expatriate composer living in Germany, has stirred up a hornets nest using the internet, mobilising a cyber-group of feminists to pressurise the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (founded 1842) into accepting its first ever woman member - harpist Anna Lelkes was hired in 1997. Read the full story in Jan Herman's article at MSNBC.

Candle dancing

Composer Robert Hugill's score for the play Candle Dancing by Coni Ciongoli-Koepfinger has been commended in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's annual critics' Pick of the Year for 1999.

Candle Dancing was premièred in April 1999 in Pittsburgh, at the Veronicas Veil Auditorium, and the substantial score includes a setting of the Requiem Mass. The score was the result of an internet collaboration (using emails, MIDI files and web pages) between Hugill and playwright Ciongoli-Koepfinger. They had never met until the week of the première.

Really more useful

Andrew Lloyd-Webber, composer of top-selling musicals The Phantom of the Opera and Cats has bought Stoll Moss, a top London theatre company, owning famous houses such as the Garrick, Her Majesty's, the Palladium and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, for GBP 85 million. A new company will be formed, to include also the theatres previously owned by Lloyd-Webber's Really Useful Group - the Adelphi, the New London and the Palace. Read the full story at CNN.