When your home becomes a nightmare, what sound does it make? In composer Xavier Muzik’s “Strange Beasts,” it growls. It hisses. It groans. It goes topsy-turvy, unrecognizable. It vanishes. As Muzik told a San Francisco audience in February, at some point during the pandemic, his city, Los Angeles, became the stuff of nightmares. The 29-year-old […]
Author Archives: Hannah Edgar
… is a freelance writer and editor based in Chicago, with work in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Musical America, Opera America, and the New York Times, among other publications.
Posted inBarTálk
The Thirty-Year Itch
“Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you can do is scratch it,” the English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham is said to have told a cellist during a rehearsal. The quip is still played for laughs, dredged up by the likes of Classic FM (“The best […]
Posted inReport
Behind the Screens
In 1972, Elayne Jones got her dream job. Within two years, it had become a nightmare. When she won the principal timpani seat of the San Francisco Symphony, Jones became the first Black principal player in any major American orchestra, as well as the first Black woman and, at the time, the only rostered Black […]
Posted inReport
Is Cleveland Institute of Music Still a Good Environment for Students?
On October 1, less than a week after faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) voted in favor of unionizing with the American Federation of Musicians, CIM board chair Susan Rothmann announced in an all-faculty email that CIM’s faculty senate would be replaced by a temporary governing body, effective next month. CIM’s faculty senate […]
Posted inBreaking
Faculty Vote No Confidence in Senior CIM Leadership
On February 28, the faculty senate of the Cleveland Institute of Music voted overwhelmingly in favor of a motion of no-confidence in its president, Paul Hogle, and provost, Scott Harrison, citing reputational damage to the school, underqualified leadership, the institution’s growing deficit, and concerns about loss of accreditation, among other grievances. According to a letter […]
Posted inReport
Conductor Carlos Kalmar Sues the Deeply Divided Cleveland Institute of Music
After a Title IX investigation into his conduct became public last year, conductor Carlos Kalmar is suing the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he served as director of orchestral studies before “enter[ing] into a leave of absence” in September, for between $5 and $260 million in damages. The federal suit was filed in the Northern […]
Posted inReport
Inside the Crisis at the Cleveland Institute of Music
On September 13, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra met at Kulas Hall for its first rehearsal of the academic year. But the orchestra didn’t play. Instead, a group of student musicians, dressed in blue, sat silently without their instruments. Many seats were empty. The dozen or so string players who brought their instruments warmed […]