You'll be in for a doggie treat at this one-night-only soiree of classical music fused with art photography and a silent auction to benefit Paws in the City, a local nonprofit animal rescue. The multimedia event showcases Dallas Symphony Orchestra's principal oboist Erin Hannigan and acclaimed studio photographer Teresa Berg. Both are superstars when it comes to saving dogs. Hannigan ran the New York City Marathon last November to raise $10,035 for another pet charity, and Berg was recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning with her "glamour shots" of shelter animals (the photos have dramatically increased animals' chances of getting adopted). Hannigan, joined by pianist Gabriel Sanchez and DSO flutist Kara Kirkendoll Welch, will provide the live soundtrack to Berg's new images, which will be projected onto a large screen. But the one likely to steal the show is Jesse Pibble, Hannigan's "foster fail," a lovable sock-eating pit bull rescued from the City of Irving Animal Shelter's Code Red euthanasia list. Jesse has already stolen many hearts through his Facebook page. Not only will you have the chance to meet the canine heartthrob, you might also get to hear him sing.

- Ellen Ritscher Sackett

Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. at Event1013, 1013 E. 15th St., Plano. $50; includes performance, wine and dessert. Tickets can be purchased at dogartdallas.eventbrite.com. pawsinthecity.org.

Get out your calendar and start jotting down the dates. Target is hosting Breaking Dawn parities, Norton Juster is heading to town, kids going to the new Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music show can play on Sesame Street Live's new Play Zone, DCT is presenting The Secret Life of Girls and Casa Manana has Charlotte's Web coming up. I've got the details in my Family Fun Looking Ahead column here.

PHOTO: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in Breaking Dawn -- Part 1

Mark your calendars -- there's some cool stuff heading here for kids in February and March: The Piccadilly Circus, award-winning children's book writer Richard Michelson, the amazing Norton Juster, Charlotte's Web and The Secret Life of Girls. You can get all the details in my Family Fun Looking Ahead column here.
.

I've found a great variety of fun for the kids this week. You can introduce them to opera with the kid-friendly Doctor Miracle from the Dallas Opera, show off the explosive ball handling skills of Harlem Globetrotter Fatima "TNT" Maddox, learn about the science of sports at Sci-Tech Discovery Center, watch Madeline and the Gypsies and catch the last weekend of Dinosaurs Live! at the Heard. You can get all the details in my Family Fun briefs here.

PHOTO: Dallas Opera will present the kid-friendly Doctor Miracle opera at the Rosewood Center for Family Arts Jan. 27 and Feb. 3. Photo by Karen Almond

Jaap van Zweden, in his fourth season as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, will also become music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic starting in the 2012-2013 season.
Recently named Musical America's Conductor of the Year, and widely viewed as a major rising star, van Zweden will succeed another Dutchman, Edo de Waart, in the new position.
In a press release, van Zweden says, "This is an ensemble of 90 talented musicians which possesses great musicality as well as potential. It deserves its reputation as one of the best in Asia.
"My work as music director will go beyond the concert stage, and will include what I think are essential elements for the growth of the orchestra, such as the education program and advocacy for a world-class home for us in the West Kowloon Cultural District."
In the press release, Hong Kong Philharmonic CEO Michael MacLeod says, "Those who witnessed the four awe-inspiring concert that Maestro van Zweden conducted last November know he is a musician of the highest caliber. His work with the orchestra has been truly inspirational."
Most major conductors these days hold at least two appointments, usually on different continents. Van Zweden last year resigned from the two European orchestras he had headed, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra in Belgium.

FORT WORTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The FWSO starts the new year with music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducting works by Beethoven and Brahms. Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen will guest star. Jan. 13 at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 14 at 8 p.m., Jan. 15 at 2 p.m. at Bass Hall, 525 Commerce St., Fort Worth. $10-$79. 817-665-6000. fwsymphony.org.

TYLER PERRY'S THE HAVES & HAVE NOTS The touring musical deals with tough topics -- financial woes, mental health and drugs, for instance -- but in a comedic way. Jan. 13-15 at Verizon Theatre, 1001 Performance Place, Grand Prairie. $42.50- $48.50. Ticketmaster.

NOISES OFF Michael Frayn's hilarious farce, about a befuddled group of British actors on tour, gets a staging at one of the area's best community playhouses, Theatre Arlington. Alcohol, lingerie and sardines all make startling appearances. Jan. 13-29 at 305 W. Main St., Arlington. 817-275-7661. theatrearlington.org.

BLACK MUSIC AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT CONCERT WITH CECE WINANS The Grammy Award-winning gospel-R&B star headlines the 29th annual production of this concert, a tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In addition to music, the show will feature film footage, narration and dance. Jan. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the Meyerson, 2301 Flora St., Dallas. $20.75-$37. Ticketmaster.

LIVE AND LET DIE: THE MUSIC OF PAUL McCARTNEY Singer-musician Tony Kishman, who has appeared in the Broadway show Beatlemania and has toured with Twist and Shout, Classical Mystery Tour and Legends in Concert, stars in this look at McCartney's career. A four-piece band and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra will also perform. Jan. 20-21 at 8 p.m. and Jan. 22 at 2 p.m. at Bass Hall, 525 Commerce St., Fort Worth. $27-$79. 817-665-6000. www.fwsymphony.org.

Compiled by Joy Tipping

KATHY GRIFFIN The socially incorrect, boisterously witty comedian brings her act to town. Jan. 6 at 8 p.m. at Verizon Theatre, 1001 Performance Place, Grand Prairie. $39.75-$59.75. axs.com.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK Terry Martin directs the stage adaptation of the moving tale about a young girl in hiding in Amsterdam during the Holocaust. Jan. 6-29, presented by WaterTower Theatre at the Addison Conference and Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison. $20-$40 (Jan. 8 is pay-what-you-can). 972-450-6232. watertowertheatre.org.

BRIAN REGAN The comedian, whose second album All By Myself came out in November, is a fan favorite on The Late Show With David Letterman and Comedy Central Presents. Jan. 7 at 8 p.m. at Fair Park Music Hall, 909 First Ave., Dallas. $61.58-$73.20. Ticketmaster.

CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF FORT WORTH Pianist Támas Ungár will appear as guest artist in a program of works by Mozart and Schubert. Ungár, a member of the Texas Christian University piano faculty, has performed in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Columbia, England, Hong Kong and China. Jan. 7 at 2 p.m. at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth. $28. 817-877-3003. chambermusicsocietyoffortworth.com.

Yes, Handel's beloved oratorio was composed for Lent, and it does trace the Christian story beyond the Nativity through the Passion, Easter and Ascension. But there's no dislodging it as a favorite for the Christmas season, and the Dallas Bach Society supplies the area performances closest to what Handel knew. With a compact ensemble of singers of instrumentalists, with baroque-period instruments, music actually meant for a theater--not a church--arrests, dances and delights. Joining artistic director James Richman and DBS regulars are soloists Lianne Coble (soprano), Scot Cameron (countertenor), Derek Chester (tenor) and David Grogan (bass). In addition to two concert performances, there's a singalong Messiah: bring along a score or buy one at the door.

Singalong $20; concert performances $20 and $40; discounts on all for students and seniors. 214-320-8700. www.dallasbach.org.

Singalong: Messiah Dec. 18 at 2:30 p.m. at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 7611 Park Lane, Dallas.

Concert performances: Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. at St. Mark's Church, 2024 S. Collins, Arlington, and Dec. 19 at 7 p.m. at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora, Dallas.

Scott Cantrell

The vocalists and instrumentalists of the Orchestra of New Spain promise quite an international sampling of 17th- and 18th-century Christmas music Sunday evening. Vilancicos, folksy hybrids of carols and cantatas, will be represented by composers from Spain and Mexico. Add a couple of liturgical pieces from Bolivia and the familiar "Winter," from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Corelli's Christmas Concerto, and one of the area's handsomest churches should resound to happy fare.

-Scott Cantrell

Dec. 11 at 6 p.m. at Christ the King Catholic Church, 8017 Preston Road, Dallas. Free. 214-750-1492, www.orchestraofnewspain.org.

Visual minds, rejoice! Recently we added to dallasnews.com/arts a special section for photos, where you'll find shots from our staff photographers of plays, musicals and exhibits, as well as spotlights on local artists.

If you are an artist based in Dallas-Fort Worth with an upcoming show locally and would like to be considered for an Artist Spotlight photo gallery or blog feature, email me (1) a short bio, (2) 1-2 photos or a link to your work, and (3) info on your upcoming exhibit with "Artist Spotlight" in the Subject line at least two weeks before the show's opening date.

Got some Yo Gabba Gabba fans at home? Check out my Kids' Corner in today's Guide section of the Dallas Morning News for details of tomorrow's big concert at Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie. Click here for details.

The first week of the month is always a favorite because that's when museums offer their amazingly fun and educational free family programming. So we've got Target First Saturdays at the Nasher Sculpture Center (with art scavenger hunts, yoga in the garden, crafts), an AdventureAsia collaboration with the Crow Collection of Asian Art AND the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University (with yoga, face painting, Bodhi leaf cookie decorating), First Tuesdays at the Dallas Museum of Art (with a chance to make a glitter-filled winter snow globe and hear storytellers and musicians) and Kimbell Story Time at the Kimbell Art Museum for the younger ones (with a story, craft and tour).

The Allen Public Library and Storyopolis Global Entertainment also have a great time planned with children's book illustrator David Catrow, who worked on the film Horton Hears a Who!, coming to the library to talk, answer questions and show how he creates his art. You can get all the details in my Free Family Fun column here.

PHOTO: First Tuesdays, which includes visits with Arturo, are always a blast at the Dallas Museum of Art

The Dallas Chamber Music series has begun to venture beyond its venerable history of presenting string quartets, piano trios and such to offer the occasional vocal ensemble. Hailed in the Irish Independent for "exceptional musicianship and unusual vocal virtuosity, unwavering intonation," the Calmus Ensemble, a vocal quintet from Leipzig, Germany, comes to Caruth Auditorium on Dec. 5 with sacred and secular music by Bach, Schumann, Brahms, Britten and Poulenc. Sounds promising.

Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. at Caruth Auditorium, Owen Arts Center, Southern Methodist University, 6101 Bishop Blvd., Dallas. $40; discounts for students. 972-392-3267. www.dallaschambermusic.org.

-Scott Cantrell / Classical Music Critic

The AT&T Performing Arts Center is taking part in all the awesome online deals today by waiving all fees on the following performances:

Jamie Foxx: December 1, 2011, Winspear, 8pm

A Gathering: The Dallas Arts Community Reflects on 30 Years of AIDS: Tuesday, December 6, Winspear Opera House

Charlie Daniels Band Holiday Show: Wednesday, December 7, Winspear Opera House

A Mary Mary Christmas: Saturday, December 10, Winspear Opera House

Linda Eder Holiday Show: Sunday, December 11, Winspear Opera House

The Second City Dysfunctional Holiday Review: Friday, December 16 - Saturday, December 17, Wyly Theatre

David Blaine (the art of magic): January 12, 2012, Winspear, 8pm

Mark Twain Tonight! w/ Hal Holbrook: January 13, Winspear Opera House

Ladysmith Black Mambazo: January 15, 2012, Winspear, 8pm

American Ballet Theatre: Jan. 20-21, 2012, Winspear, 8pm

Loretta Lynn: January 22, Winspear Opera House

National Geographic Live's Roz Savage: Solo Across the Ocean: February 21, 2012, Winspear, 8pm

Command Performance: SPECIAL EVENT March 9, 2012, Winspear, 7pm

National Geographic Live's Mireya Mayor: Pink Boots and a Machete: March 19, 2012, Winspear, 8pm

Anoushka Shankar: March 31 - April 1, 2012, Wyly Theatre, 8pm

DanceBrazil: April 13-14, 2012, Wyly Theatre, 8pm

Modern Family Panel (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet and Co-Creator/Executive Producer Steve Levitan): April 24, 2012, Winspear, 8pm

Diavolo: May 4-5, 2012, Wyly Theatre, 8pm

Madeleine Peyroux: May 24, 2012, Wyly Theatre, 7pm and 9pm

By Joy Tipping:

Contemporary Christian singer Sandi Patty has such amazing vocal range that she can bring high-impact oomph to just about any genre she chooses -- whether it's gospel, classic or modern pop, or musical theater. You won't find a more glorious voice to embody the spirit of the holidays. The Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame member and five-time Grammy Award winner sold out her Christmas show in 2009 at Casa Manaña Theatre. She returns this year to vocally light up Casa's geodesic dome in what's sure to be an exhilarating evening. Expect classics such as "Angels We Have Heard on High" and "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee," along with Patty's breathtaking original arrangement of "O Holy Night."

Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. at Casa Manaña, 3101 W. Lancaster Ave., Fort Worth. $38-$60. 817-332-2272. www.casamanana.org.

The holidays are a time for beloved traditions, such as A Christmas Carol, The Nutcracker or a fabulous Messiah. But there are also opportunities to explore new territory, or maybe even find a new seasonal favorite. Here's what our critics recommend.

• The season's top 5 Dallas-area dance performances

• The season's top 5 Dallas-area classical music performances

• The season's top 5 Dallas-area theater performances

• The season's top 5 Dallas-area pop music performances

• Fun Dallas-area holiday events for Nov. 18 and beyond

• Five holiday kid picks for Dallas-Fort Worth: Madeline, Santa, Slappy's circus and more

• Movie critic Chris Vognar picks five to watch for the holidays

• Thanksgiving and Christmas dining events in the Dallas area

As part of a new plan to stabilize its finances, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will cut back the number of both classical and pops concerts in the 2012-2013 season.
The classical series will be reduced from 21 to 16 weeks, and will be sold as two eight-concert subscriptions instead of the current array of three seven-concert packages. The current mix of Thursday through Saturday and sometimes Sunday performances will continue.
The pops series will be reduced from 12 to nine weeks. Two six-concert subscriptions will be offered, with an overlap of three concerts.
Despite outstanding performances under music director Jaap van Zweden, attendance at both series declined in the last two season.
Although the concert cutback won't reduce the cost of DSO musicians, who are contracted on an annual basis, it will save money on production, guest conductors and soloists and marketing. Based on comparable cutbacks by the orchestras of Minneapolis, Detroit and Cincinnati, interim DSO CEO David Hyslop expects a $2.5 million saving in the 2012-2013 season.
The Dallas Opera, like the DSO facing multimillion-dollar deficits, cancelled one of five productions originally scheduled for 2011-2012, Leos Janácek's Kátya Kabanová.
The DSO is looking into applying unused orchestra services to special one-off concerts and performances in outlying venues. "We need to make sure we don't put services on that don't at least pay for themselves," Hyslop said.
A special $20 million "Great Orchestra Campaign" wiped out an $8 million cumulative deficit from 2009-2010 and an additional $6.5 million loss from 2010-2011. But remaining funds from the campaign cannot be used for general operating expenses. Anticipating a $6.5 operating loss for 2011-2012, Hyslop says the orchestra needs an additional $5 million by the end of December.
Hyslop added that the DSO lags well behind comparable orchestras in percentage of contributed income--"18th out of the 23 top markets."
Blaine Nelson, chair of the DSO's board of governors, has been restructuring the board, with an emphasis on fundraising.
"We're not going to be bashful about communicating our situation," Nelson said. "We're operating as well as we can operate, and we've got excellent leadership. But earned revenue has been on a decline for a number of years, and contributed revenue has been flat. We need the community to step up."

Dallas Symphony Orchestra music director Jaap van Zweden has been named conductor of the year in Musical America's annual awards. The 2012 edition of the annual directory, an 800-page directory of information and contacts in the international music business, includes a van Zweden profile by a certain Dallas Morning News critic. Awards will be presented in a special ceremony at Lincoln Center on Dec. 5.
Other honorees include cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han as musicians of the year, Meredith Monk as composer of the year, violinist Gil Shaham as instrumentalist of the year and tenor Jonas Kaufmann as vocalist of the year.
Now in his fourth season with the DSO, van Zweden was virtually unknown in the U.S. when he took the job here. But he is universally credited with transforming the DSO, and he is now guest-conducting top orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Dallas Opera has added $20 million to its endowment, thanks to $10 million in new donations to match a $10 million challenge from an anonymous donor. The two-year campaign had an Oct. 31 deadline.

The new funds, to be received in the next few months, will be added to approximately $2 million in existing endowment funds. General director and CEO Keith Cerny estimates the total endowment will yield about $1 million in annual income and provide a cushion in case of emergencies.

"Obviously, our board chair and I are extraordinarily happy that we have made this match, and had this support from the community," Cerny said. "We're feeling very positive about the company's future."

Major donors to the campaign included the Hamon Charitable Foundation, Linda and Mitch Hart, Joy and Ronald Mankoff, Mrs. Eugene McDermott, Phyllis and Tom McCasland and Margot and Ross Perot/The Perot Foundation.

The opera company's Cultural Renaissance Endowment Fund was launched in late 2009 to help stabilize long-term finances. The 2009 move into the Winspear Opera House realized a long-held dream of a purpose-built home in the Dallas Arts District, but added approximately $4 million in annual costs. With both ticket sales and donations impacted by the ongoing economic slowdown, the company ended the 2010-2011 season with a $4 million deficit.

The company has made some major cost-cutting moves, including cancelling one of five operas originally scheduled for 2011-2012, Leos Janácek's Kátya Kabanová, and planning its long awaited Tristan und Isolde as a semi-staged production with projections instead of sets.

Cerny expects to present only three fully staged productions in the Winspear again in 2012-2013, but he is considering alternate venues for smaller-scale operas. In March, the company will present its first production in the Wyly Theatre across Flora Street, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse.

In a period when performing-arts organizations across the country are facing major financial challenges, Cerny still expects a $1.9 million deficit for 2011-2012. But he has a plan to bring the budget back in balance by 2014-2015.

This Saturday, October 8th, is when one of my favorite events to attend is happening. Twice a year the Near Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth hosts Arts Goggle. Arts Goggle is an art and music festival with a focus on local, independent artists. Restaurants, shops, and offices across the Near Southside open their doors and host artists and musicians from a wide range of genres.

Facing financial challenges like most arts organizations, the Dallas Symphony Association cut four staff positions on Wednesday, and converted another from full- to half-time. The cuts included an executive assistant, an IT suppost specialist, a direct mail/telefund manager and a store sales associate.
A special "Great Orchestra" capital campaign wiped out multimillion-dollar deficits from the last two seasons, but interim president/CEO David Hyslop fears there will be more red ink in the 2011-2011 season. Meanwhile, the associating is negotiating a new contract with musicians. The current contract expires next month.

This Friday, June 17, is the Dallas Art District's monthly Block Party. The event, starting at 6 p.m. and running until midnight, aims to bring together Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art, 'til Midnight at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Crow Collection After Dark.

If you've never been to any of the museums in the Art District, this is a perfect time to check it out. All three museums will be open and hosting different events as the night goes on, and many other events will be taking place outdoors for free, like performances from musical artists Calhoun, The Polyphonic Spree and Luna Matto.

We always love to hear feedback, so after you check out the Block Party, come back here and let us know how it went.

For a complete schedule and price list, visit The Dallas Art District's website.

(Photo courtesy of The Dallas Art District.)

As part of the facility's first redesign in 15 years, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has unveiled its expanded Beatles exhibit. Among the items on display at the exhibit, said to be the world's most comprehensive, are Ringo Starr's drum head used on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, John Lennon's piano, a performance contract from 1960 with the name "Silver Beetles," and many notable clothing items worn by each group member.

Check out the official website for a complete list of items on display at the exhibit.

View the entire exhibit slideshow on USA today.

(Photo courtesy of USA Today.)

The opening-night audience, cast, musicians and staff at Fort Worth Opera's "Hydrogen Jukebox" were twice sent to the basement of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center Tuesday night because of tornado warnings in the area. The first time was not long after the Philip Glass/Allen Ginsberg opera started, the second time at the end of the intermission. The audience was quite chipper about the whole thing, and each time just lasted about 10 minutes.

The concrete-bunker basement of the arts center would be a good place to be during a tornado, but fortunately none struck in the Museum District. During the performance driving rain could be heard on the building's roof, but by the end of the performance, around 10:30, the storms had moved off well to the east.

The Dallas Symphony Association has named veteran orchestra administrator David Hyslop as interim president, starting Wednesday. He succeeds Bill Lively, who lasted only a month on the job half-time before resigning April 29 for health reasons.
A well-known figure in the orchestra world, Hyslop served as CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra (1991-2003), St. Louis Symphony (1978-1991) and Oregon Symphony (1972-1978). Since retiring from the Minnesota job he has worked as a consultant to arts groups around the country, specializing in strategic planning, fundraising and executive coaching. He has also served as interim president of the Tulsa and West Virginia symphony orchestras.
"All organizations have challenges these days," Hyslop said, "but you also have resources. It's a great metropolitan area, from what I've seen you've got a board that's committed, and also musical excellence.
"What I can do with my experience is give them some stability. I've been a team builder where I've been. I know what works and what doesn't work."
Hyslop will remain as interim with the DSO until a permanent president is appointed. Cece Smith, who chaired the interim search committee, will head an expanded committee to seek a permanent leader.

Graeme Jenkins, music director of the Dallas Opera since 1994, will not renew his contract when it expires at the end of the 2012-2013 season. He cites an expanding schedule conducting in European opera houses, notably Vienna State Opera, as the reason for stepping down here.
Jenkins has proved a remarkably versatile conductor, compelling in repertory ranging from baroque to the world premiere of Tobias Picker's "Therese Raquin, and he has gotten some superb performances from the very part-time Dallas Opera Orchestra.
During his remaining time working with Dallas, he will conduct "Katya Kabanova," "Tristan und Isolde," "The Magic Flute" and other operas still being planned.
His base remains a home in Dorset, England.

With shoulder problems acting up again, Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden has cancelled his guest conducting gig this weekend with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has been having off-and-on rotator cuff issues for the last couple of years, and at his doctor's advice has cancelled some other performances, including in Dallas.

"He's just being prudent," said Chris Shull, the DSO's manager of publications. Shull said van Zweden was expected to return to Dallas next week to conduct rehearsals and a May 6 Dallas preview of the Steven Stucky oratorio "August 4, 1964," which the orchestra and Dallas Symphony Chorus will perform at Carnegie Hall May 11.

Replacing van Zweden in the LA program of Beethoven and Prokofiev will be the young German David Afkham, assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Scott Cantrell has this about Dallas Symphony Orchestra management:

Seven months after taking over as president and CEO of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Paul Stewart announced his resignation Tuesday, effective immediately. But he had already been preempted in the DSO's top administrative job with the January announcement that Bill Lively would take over halftime this month and fulltime in June.

Before succeeding Doug Adams as president, Stewart, a former health care executive and longtime DSO supporter, had served briefly as the orchestra's chief operating officer. When Lively's appointment was announced, it was announced that Stewart would return to the COO position.

Lively is wrapping up his stint as president and CEO of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, but he has been looking into the DSO's operations almost since the January announcement.

Pianist Seth Simmons performs, as Dallas-based Cuban-American artist Rolando Diaz creates an original work of art that will be auctioned at Dallas Film Society Honor at the Nasher Sculpture Center. This event Sunday was part of the Dallas International Film Festival. (DMN-Video/ editing: Nathan Hunsinger)

Received this press release this week:

DALLAS, TX (March 22, 2011)--The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) announced that starting today, a significant portion of the proceeds from its March 31-April 3, 2011 Texas Instruments Classical Series concerts will benefit Sendai, Dallas' International Friendship City and the closest major city to the earthquake's epicenter. The concerts, led by Music Director Jaap van Zweden, will include both Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony and his Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by international star and former Van Cliburn Competition winner Olga Kern.

"As an organization, we were stunned by the news of widespread devastation in Japan," said DSO President Paul Stewart. "The fact that our sister city Sendai was one of the most impacted areas immediately made us start thinking about how we could use the resources of the DSO to help, so we contacted the Japan-America Society of Dallas/Fort Worth. We look forward to working with these new friends and some of our long-term friends with ties to Japan, like Texas Instruments, to use this weekend of inspiring music and charity to bring relief to the people of Sendai."

While the downtown area of Sendai did not suffer serious damage, the coastal areas were nearly destroyed by the tsunami. Most homes still standing do not have access to vital utilities, according to city representatives of Sendai.

"Our friends in Sendai are deeply touched by news of the outpouring of support from the people of Dallas/Fort Worth," said the Japan-American Society of DFW Executive Director, Anna McFarland. "We know that Sendai has a long recovery ahead, and we appreciate this special initiative by the DSO to help."

Ticket prices for the DSO benefit concerts range from $18-$114 (just $5 for up to 2 children under 18, accompanying an adult) and can be purchased by calling 214-692-0203 or by visiting DallasSymphony.com. Representatives from the Japan-America Society of DFW will also be on-site to provide information and to collect donations for Sendai.

UPDATE
------------------------------------------------
José Cobles triggered a kinetic dancing frenzy Saturday night at the LCC's full house of fans. The "Roots of Bachata" concert featured the 87-year-old Cobles, who also goes by the nickname of "Puerto Plata." The show was part historical homage to an enduring, guitar-based art form.

Cobles' rendition of the famous Cuban ballad Guantanamera was a clear favorite and pulsated with steel guitarists and percussionists playing so tightly it seemed like one musical breath. The first band included Joan Soriano, who then led the second set of bachata and merengue melodies full of playful metaphor and plain pain.

------------------------------------------------
Looking for the next Buena Vista Social Club, the Cuban musicians whose rhythms vibrated globally in the late '90s thanks to promoter Ry Cooder?

Might check out the Latino Cultural Center this Saturday.

That's when Joan Soriano and Jose Cobles ("Puerto Plata") take to the stage at the cinnamon-hued art center. These musicians come from the Dominican Republican with a sound well-known to Afro-Latin dance maniacs and novices looking to glide to a less complicated Caribbean beat.

This is guitar-based bachata music with some bolero and meringue mixes. It comes from the poorer barrios of that island-nation. And Soriano's early music education reflected the financial poverty of his family. He strung a tin can with fishing wire and out flowed melodies of melancholy from a molasses-seeped voice.

Folks at the Dallas Opera weren't happy at my pointing out -- accurately -- that their highest ticket price for "Romeo and Juliet" is actually higher than for the Metropolitan Opera's run in March: $450 to $420. True, most DO prices are cheaper than comparable seats at the Met. But there's a good deal of overlap, and in 6 of 16 price categories, DO's top price is higher than the Met's.

For the second week in a row, slippery roads have prompted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to cancel its Thursday-evening classical concert.

Performances of the Wagner, Liszt, Strauss and Shostakovich program are still set for 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center. Music director Jaap van Zweden will conduct, with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Ticket holders for Thursday may switch to best available seats at any of the other performances. The box office -- 214-692-0203 -- is scheduled to open at 9 a.m. Thursday.

As another option, Thursday ticket holders may get credit for a future program, but those wishing to do so are asked to call the box office NEXT week to make that exchange.

The cancellation was necessitated by weather-related cancellation of two Wednesday rehearsals for the program.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has canceled its Friday classical concert, as well as the Thursday performance, due to the weather.
The Saturday performance, including the world premiere of Stewart Copeland's Gamelan D'Drum and the Mendelssohn Scottish Symphony is still scheduled for 8 p.m. at the Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora.
Ticket holders for the Thursday and Friday performances are invited to attend Saturday. The box office is scheduled to open at 9 a.m. Saturday to handle exchanges. Or patrons may bring their Thursday or Friday tickets to the concert Saturday for an exchange, but they should arrive early.
Patrons may also exchange this week's tickets for another concert, but the DSO asks that they call the box office next week when it's more fully staffed.
The box office number is 214-692-0203.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has cancelled Thursday's classical concert due to the weather. For now, Friday and Saturday performances at the Meyerson Symphony Center are still on, but that could change.

The program includes the world premiere of Stewart Copeland's "Gamelan D'Drum," for "world percussion" and orchestra, with the Dallas percussion ensemble D'Drum, and Mendelssohn's "Scottish" Symphony. The Saturday performance will also include an "Intrada" for brass and percussion by Dutch composer Willem van Otterloo.

Ticketholders for the Thursday performance can show up either Friday or Saturday to get the best available seats. Or they can call the ticket office--preferably next week, when it's more fully staffed--to get credit for another DSO concert.

For information, call 214-692-0203 or go to www.dallassymphony.com

Due to the weather, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Guild has cancelled its Tuesday-evening program featuring composer Stewart Copeland. Copeland's percussion-and-orchestra piece "Gamelan D'Drum" is scheduled for its world premiere in DSO concerts Thursday through Saturday at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

Nicole LeBlanc, president of the guild, says she's deeply disappointed because "not only did I miss out on the chance to get up close and personal with a rock star and talented 'serious' composer, but I will also miss out on the opportunity to promote our annual fundaising gala."

The DSO concerts are still on the schedule, but the orchestra already has had to cancel two rehearsals. Extra rehearsal time has been scheduled Wednesday and Thursday, but with temperatures forecast to remain below freezing until Friday, roads are likely to remain icy.

We'll keep you posted.

Two very different organs, and aptly different programs, on Sunday afternoon and Monday suggested a compare-and-contrast review. So that's what I'm going to do with Dong-ill Shin's Sunday-afternoon recital at Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth and Balint Karosi's Monday night at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration.

Voices of Change, Dallas' modern-music ensemble, offered a provocative mix of Stravinsky, Elliott Carter, Kevin Puts, Fant de Kanter and Poul Ruders at Caruth Auditorium. Look for a review online by Monday morning.

In what must rank as one of opera's most heroic performances, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves continued to sing Saturday night even after experiencing an early-pregnancy miscarriage.
Singing the role of Jane Seymour in the Dallas Opera's "Anna Bolena," the 46-year-old Graves remained on the Winspear Opera House stage for her character's great duet with Anne Boleyn, portrayed by soprano Hasmik Papian. Profoundly shaken, Graves then left the stage for what Dallas Opera artistic director Jonathan Pell announced as "a medical emergency." The performance continued, but minus Jane Seymour's confrontation with Henry VIII.
After taking a break at her home outside Washington, D.C., Graves expects to return to sing the opera's final two performances at the Winspear, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
For information, call 214-443-1000 or go to www.dallasopera.org.

As part of the monthlong Art in October series of events in the Arts District, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Dallas Museum of Art are offering a joint ticket to the DSO's performances of Brahms' German Requiem and the DMA exhibit The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures From the Court of Burgundy.

$30 gets you a "best available" ticket to the DSO show tonight or Saturday at 8, and also to the exhibit, which runs through Jan. 2. The $30 ticket price is available only by phone through the DSO Box Office, 214-692-0203.

Pianist Jeffrey Kahane, who was to perform Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Thursday through Sunday, has cancelled due to illness. Instead, the orchestra will perform Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a companion to the "Eroica."

The Van Cliburn Foundation, which runs one of the world's premier piano competitions in Fort Worth, has named David Chambless Worters as its president and chief executive. He succeeds Richard Rodzinski. Worters is currently president and CEO for the North Carolina Symphony.

As some readers noticed last week, my editors really had me hopping about. I reviewed a big rock concert (REALLY big and REALLY long), a symphony concert and a play over the course of three nights. (Just to get you feeling sorry for me, I'll point out that the second and third evenings were in Fort Worth, about 50 miles from where I live in Richardson).

Read on after the break to see why they would ask me to do such an outlandish series of things.

Only two years after arriving as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's president and CEO, Doug Adams is resigning, effective in 30 days.
He blamed the decision on personal reasons, especially an inability to sell a home in Denver, where he previously was president and CEO of the Colorado Symphony.
"It's about lifestyle," Adams said. "For two years I've been in a commuter marriage, with my wife having to do the commute, because I've been too busy. I've been trapped in a real estate deal I can't get out of, and I don't see that changing.
"I love the orchestra, and it's not even about the challenges here. It's just that at this stage of my life I didn't expect to be living in an apartment."
Adams' is the second high-profile resignation on the Dallas arts scene in the last month. Mark Nerenhausen stepped down as CEO of the AT&T Performing Arts Center with no notice.
The recession has taken a toll on ticket sales, donations and endowment income for arts organizations nationwide. The DSO is widely rumored to have a sizeable seven-figure deficit from last season, although figures haven't yet been released.
Asked if he had felt any pressure from the DSO board of directors, Adams said, "I have a lot of mixed emotions about this, and frankly I don't want to talk about it.
"I have a long list of personal reasons. The executive board has been very nice in allowing me to make this as smooth as possible."
Adams is leaving with no other job in hand.
"I can afford to do nothing for a while," he said. "I haven't decided what I want to do. Right now, I want to play golf where it's cool."
Before the Denver job, Adams worked a couple of years as general manager of the DSO, a number-two position subsequently eliminated. Before that, he was a television executive, spending nine years as president and general manager of KXAS-TV in Dallas.
Adams' departure leaves the DSO in search of a chief executive when the pool of available and really capable candidates seems especially shallow. Musically, the DSO has been improving dramatically under music director Jaap van Zweden, who arrived at the same time as Adams. But in a difficult economy the administration is also facing negotiations with musicians, whose contract expires next summer.

Scott Cantrell is writing about the Richardson Symphony's conflict with the local musicians' union in today's Dallas Morning News. Here at MusicBlips, and elsewhere on the Internet, you can hear a recording of the RSO music director going off during a rehearsal.

There will never be a time when you will hear "Poker Face" in the Meyerson accompanied by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra - unless you where at Idina Menzel's concert Thursday night.

The night started off with a small prelude from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, who had prepared a medley of Tony-winning Broadway shows in honor of Menzel's Tony-winning reputation (their West Side Story medley nearly melted the bones in my spine.) After a short intermission, the Orchestra played Menzel on stage (to thunderous applause) with the opening notes of her first song, "Life of the Party" - a fitting intro for her, as she owned the stage the rest of the night.

Look for reviews starting Sunday of the four productions at Opera Theatre of St. Louis: the world premiere of "The Golden Ticket" by librettist Donald Sturrock and composer Peter Ash (based on Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"), plus "The Marriage of Figaro," "Eugene Onegin" and "A Little Night Music."

Because of impending nasty weather, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has canceled its outdoor concert tonight at 8 at the Dallas Arboretum. www.dallassymphony.com.

Among the winners of the 94th annual Pulitzer Prizes, announced this afternoon, was this one for music, the Violin Concerto by Jennifer Higdon, premiered Feb. 6, 2009 in Indianapolis, IN (Lawdon Press). Higdon is the composer-in-residence for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
Two of her works, Loco and Blue Cathedral, were performed in the March 19-21 FWSO concerts. Here's some more about Higdon, including an upcoming performance of her Violin Concerto by the Dallas Symphony.

Emanuel Borok, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's concertmaster since 1985, will retire in August. He announced his plans to DSO musicians after the orchestra's Friday night concert.

"I was thinking about this before Jaap [van Zweden] arrived," Borok said Friday night. "I decided to give him a couple of years, because he needed my presence there. But mainly my teaching career took off, and I have more students than I can actually admit because of my symphony schedule. This is what I would end up doing anyway, so why not start building up a class now rather than at a later point?"

In addition to his responsibilities as leader of the DSO's first-violin section, Borok teaches at Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts and the University of North Texas.

"Retiring is the wrong word," added Borok, who would admit only to being "in my mid 60s."

"I'm just making a change in my life. If you do this for 40 years, 39 of them as concertmaster, you get to the point that you want to do something else that you enjoy. I get more invitations to play concertos and recitals and chamber music than my schedule allows. That is another phase of my artistic life that I've had to put on the back burner."

Borok has been a frequent soloist with the DSO, and in years past he was also a member of the Walden Piano Quartet and Voices of Change.

A search for a successor will probably take all next season, and maybe even longer. But, as one of the country's healthier orchestras, both artistically and financially, the DSO should attract plenty of top-tier talent.

Before coming to the DSO, the Latvian-born Borok was associate concertmaster of the Boston Symphony for 11 years.

Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden will make his THIRD substitute appearance with the Chicago Symphony April 22-27. He'll replace scheduled guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has withdrawn "for personal reasons." With violinist Christian Tetzlaff, he'll lead the Brahms Violin Concerto. The Rachmaninoff Second Symphony, which van Zweden conducted here in February, will replace the originally scheduled Nielsen symphony. (I don't know which one.) Both van Zweden's previous sub gigs with the CSO got rave reviews in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times.

The very fine Meadows Symphony Orchestra has been featured in annual gala concerts benefitting SMU's Meadows School of the Arts scholarship funds. But for Saturday night's installment, the orchestra was in the Winspear Opera House pit, accompanying the Meadows Dance Ensemble.

That was a first for the dancers, who left very strong impressions. It was also, as Meadows dean Jose Antonio Bowen, the first full evening of dance in the Winspear to be accompanied by a full, live orchestra. (Texas Ballet Theater, in precarious financial condition, is using recordings these days.) Bowen also said the event had raised a record-setting $375,000.

Sadly, Meadows Symphony music director Paul Phillips wasn't there to conduct. Having fallen at home earlier in the week, he had suffered two broken vertebrae and will need to have his head immobilized for a while. Second-year grad student Gregory Grabowski filled in ably, although the push-me-pull-me parts of Ravel's "La valse" weren't always quite together. And, maybe because he and the musicians were unfamiliar with the acoustic, fortissimos sounded overblown. (Dallas Opera Orchestra musicians have complained they can't hear themselves or one another in the Winspear pit.)

I won't pretend to write a dance review, but, seeing the Meadows dancers for the first time, I was impressed. They did quite a creditable job with Balanchine's "Serenade." And "An American in Paris," choreographed by faculty member Danny Buraczeski, struck me as a smart melange/updating of Agnes de Mille and a little bit of Alvin Ailey. Pascal Rioult's "Wien," on the other hand, seemed an arbitrarily brutalist interpretation of Ravel's original balletic concept for "La valse." But it was sharply done.

Paul Phillips, music director of Southern Methodist University's superb Meadows Symphony Orchestra, fell at his home Tuesday and fractured vertebrae in his neck. I'm told he'll have to wear one of those screw-on "cages" to stabilize his head and neck until the fractures mend, and he won't be conducting for a while.

He was supposed to conduct Saturday's Meadows School gala at the Winspear Opera House, but his graduate student, Gregory Grabowski, will fill in. No word yet on how SMU will fill his job in the meantime.

Paul, who recently made a distinguished debut as guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony, is a real jewel on the local music scene, and a gentleman of the old school. Let's all wish him a speedy recovery.

Joy Tipping already reviewed RAIN, the tribute to the Beatles, earlier this week. She wrote in her review that she was a wee babe when the Beatles exploded onto the scene in 1964, not a Boomer. Well, I am a bonafide boomer AND a die-hard Beatles fan, so let me add to Joy's praise of the show from the point of view of a Boomer- If you love the Beatles, you can't miss RAIN. RAIN not only performs a tremendous (if not, complete) range of Beatles music, but they perform the music that the Beatles themselves never performed live for an audience. And they do it, oh, so well.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has cancelled its Thursday-night classical concert because of the snow.
"We just couldn't get all of our musicians here," said Stacie Adams, the DSO's director of public relations. "This is the first time anyone here can remember canceling a concert because of weather."
Ticket holders for the all-Rachmaninoff concert should call the box office at 214-692-0203 to exchange tickets for another performance or another program. The Rachmaninoff program is to be repeated at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora.
Scott Cantrell

Look for reviews early next week of Houston Grand Opera's productions of Benjamin Britten's "Turn of the Screw" and Puccini's "Tosca."

The Britten is on a surprisingly long list of important 20th-century operas never produced by the Dallas Opera, although it was given a riveting production several years ago by Fort Worth Opera. DO has never done Britten's "Midsummer Night's Dream," either, not to mention "Death in Venice." It hasn't done "Peter Grimes" in 30 years, and "Billy Budd" since 1997. The HGO presentation is part of a multi-season survey of the composer's operas.

UNT alumna Patricia Racette makes her role debut as Floria Tosca in the Puccini.

Could be. AMP Productions is winner of the CableU's Non-Fiction Emerging Producer Contest for "Lone Star Opera," a behind-the-scenes exploration of Fort Worth Opera's annual festival.

That gives the producers representation by CABLEready, which bills itself as "the television industry's premier international independent program representation firm." And an inside track toward actual production and broadcast on a cable channel.

AMP has already begun filming preparations for this year's Fort Worth Opera Festival, to be held May 22 through June 6 at Bass Performance Hall.

The Dallas Opera's world premiere of the Gene Scheer-Jake Heggie opera "Moby-Dick" will be previewed in three panel discussions on March 27 and 28.

Titled "From Page to Stage: The Operatic Journey of Moby-Dick," the symposium will include both librettist Scheer and composer Heggie as well as authorities on Herman Melville, whose seafaring novel is the basis of the new opera.

Here's the lineup:

March 27, 2 p.m.: "Melville, the Man." Moderated by pianist and popular pre-concert speaker Shields-Collins Bray, with Melville scholar T. Walter Herbert (professor emeritus at Southwestern University, Georgetown) and Duncan E. Osborne, Melville's great-grandson. At SMU's Caruth Auditorium.

March 27, 3:15 p.m.: "Melville, the Inspiration." Moderated by Bray, with Heggie and Scheer, and readings from the novel by Michael Connolly, head of acting in the Meadows School's Theater Division. Caruth Auditorium.

March 28, 4 p.m. (limited to subscribers and donors to the Dallas Opera, Texas Book Festival and Meadows School Division of Music): "Melville, In the Heart of the Sea." Moderated by KERA reporter/producer Jerome Weeks, with Scheer and 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist Nathaniel Philbrick. At Hamon Hall, inside the Winspear Opera House.

The opera will have its first performance April 30 at the Winspear Opera House, with subsequent performances on May 2, 5, 8, 13 and 16.

All events are free, but space is limited and reservations are required for the member/donors session on March 28. For reservations for that event, call the Dallas Opera reservations hotline at 214-443-1044 or RSVP at amici@dallasopera.org.

For information on other events, contact Dallas Opera patron services coordinator Shelby Covington at 214-443-1013 or shelby.covington@dallasopera.org.

Whenever my byline doesn't appear for a few days, or someone else reviews a classical concert in the DMN, I'm told the conspiracy theorists are all abuzz: Has he been fired? Has he been forbidden to review this concert?

Well, let me set troubled minds to rest. I'm not reviewing the DSO this week because I have some leftover vacation days I need to take. And, considering all I've written about Andrew Litton, I figured it would be good to have a different voice represented. So I've asked Wayne Lee Gay, former longtime classical critic of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, to review this time. And, well, I'm not a big fan of the Franz Schmidt 4th Symphony, which is on the program this week. (I like some of Schmidt's other symphonies better.)

Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden managed to overcome a sore shoulder, a snow storm and a contract stalemate to make his Cleveland Orchestra debut last Thursday.

Writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Zachary Lewis hailed "a concert marked by clarity of vision and a high degree of collaborative cohesion." He described van Zweden as "a demonstrative stage personality whose musical choices were sometimes debatable but whose dramatic sense and power to unite were beyond dispute."

The Cleveland Orchestra and its musicians have been deadlocked over a new contract, with threats of cancelled concerts later this month.

Van Zweden's sore shoulder, which prompted him to cancel his appearances at two DSO New Year's concerts, is "a conducting injury," according to DSO spokesperson Stacie Adams. On his doctor's orders, he's again resting this week.

Over the holidays, I got to hear a run-through with piano of the new Margaret Brouwer Viola Concerto the DSO is premiering this week, with principal violist Ellen Rose as soloist. Listening while following an orchestral score, I found the piece exciting, dramatic and beautiful. Can't wait to hear it in full orchestral guise. Look for a story on the piece in the Thursday GuideDaily section.

Brouwer had a previous life as an orchestral violinist. She played in the FW Symphony and sometimes subbed in the DSO between 1980 and 1984, at which point she went to Indiana University to get a doctorate in composition.

This week's concerts also mark the classical-series debut of conductor Paul Phillips, whose work with SMU's Meadows Symphony I've greatly admired. So I'd put this week's program on a "must hear" list.

Sidelined by a sore shoulder, DSO music director Jaap van Zweden won't be conducting the orchestra's New Year's concerts. He'll be replaced by British conductor James Judd, a former music director of the Florida Philharmonic and New Zealand Symphony.

Van Zweden has been having shoulder pain for some time, according to DSO PR director Stacie Adams, but had been working through it. But his doctor told him he needed several weeks' rest.

It remains to be seen whether he'll be able to make his Cleveland Orchestra debut Jan. 4-10.

The DSO's New Year's concerts are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Dec. 31 and 1 p.m. Jan. 1.

Akin Babatunde, who has been shooting a couple of episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent for when the series returns in the spring, has been working on a new jazz holiday show. Songs in the Key of Glee will take place Dec. 20 at 7:30 at Southside on Lamar. Tickets are free. Six other artists will appear alongside the star.

The musicians protesting Texas Ballet Theater's use of recorded music for "Nutcracker" have a great--if unwitting--ally in whoever put together the actual playback system at the Winspear Opera House. The sound Thursday night ranged from passable to awful.

And there was a really embarrassing couple of minutes when the "Arabian" dancers came onstage, but the speakers seemed to be emitting a mix of "Arabian" and "Chinese." The dancers gamely kept dancing until whoever was running the playback got the right music on. Talk about small-town...

About the sound, now. In the Overture, there was no bass. After that, there was too much: orchestral double basses were pumped up to levels like those "boom cars" that rattle our windows at stoplights. Violins sounded like choruses of dentists' drills, oboes like saxophones. Horns actually sounded OK. And pretty much everything was too loud and echoey. My home stereo system sounds a LOT better than this, and so does yours.

The sound seemed to come from big speakers hidden at the sides of the proscenium. But either there were other speakers elsewhere in the hall, or the hall was doing its acoustical thing really well in spreading the sound around.

But the sound was not nice. Bring back the orchestra.

TBT is trying to bring itself back from financial disaster, and one wishes the company nothing but well. But for this holiday "hit," the Winspear looked maybe 1/3 full Thursday. That's probably a slow night, but still...

Robert Essert, the acoustical consultant responsible for the outstanding sound of Dallas' new Winspear Opera House, has been tapped as consultant on a reworking of Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall.

The biggest part of the project is an expansion and "humanizing" of the lobby. The orchestra hall itself, designed in collaboration with acoustician Cyril Harris, has been generally considered one of the more successful of the middle 20th century. But, as in many halls (including Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center), musicians have trouble hearing one another onstage. Essert will be working to improve that situation without compromising sound heard by the audience.

Maybe someday he can do the same at the Meyerson....

After getting rave reviews for two sets of concerts with the Chicago Symphony last season, Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden got cooler notices for his Philadelphia Orchestra debut last week.

Philadelphia Inquirer critic Peter Dobrin called van Zweden "assured," with "a fluid and legible baton, which, in some places, he used to great effect in the fine shaping of phrases. He clearly knows how to make the ensemble go like clockwork."

But Dobrin also cited brisk tempos in the Bruckner 9th Symphony as evidence of a "maestro who seems to be anticipating the listening public's stinted attention span by applying faster tempos to most every score."

"If you didn't know what you were missing by hearing other performances of this work, van Zweden's quick tempos might have come across as vigorous or energetic. But if you were listening for the enigmas, the contradictions, and the profound questioning that other conductors dig for in the score, all you might have come up with was a certain glibness."

Writing on the Philadelphia arts blog Broad Street Review, Robert Zaller opined that van Zweden's "sometimes brisk tempos [in the first movement] didn't let the music quite breathe. The trio of the Scherzo was particularly snappish, although the reading here was more plaudible."

Also on Broad Street Review, Tom Purdom offered a positive review, but hardly a rave: "Van Zweden is another conductor who arrives in the city without much fanfare and leads the orchestra without drawing attention to himself. When he lowers his arms after the final note, you don't feel like you've heard a great performance. You feel you've heard a great, moving piece of music.

"But that doesn't just happen. Somebody must keep all those instruments working together. Somebody must make hundreds of decisions regarding artistic matters like instrumental balance and the exact pace of the tempos. In this case, somebody did."

A certain Dallas critic also worries about van Zweden's tendency to press tempos...

Those who attended last Friday's opening-night performance of The Nutcracker at the Winspear Opera House could not help but notice that the music was canned, not live. It's an ongoing problem for an organization -- Texas Ballet Theater -- that says it has no choice: It does not have the money for a live orchestra and hasn't for more than a year, thought TBT officials say they hope to reverse the policy in the not-too-distant future. And now if you'll permit me a few minutes on my own personal soapbox: There's another problem with the Winspear that canned music only exacerbates. Opera sounds fine, I'm sure Broadway musicals will sound fine, but those sitting in my section, near the back of the main floor, heard only about 60 percent of Billy Crystal's dialogue-heavy 700 Sundays, and Friday night's recorded music of The Nutcracker failed to carry the clarity and depth it should have. It was not the recording, I contend, but the venue. Last spring's performance of Cleopatra at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth used recorded music, and -- no offense to the locked-out musicians -- but the quality and sound of that recording was terrific. There is simply something wrong with the sound at the Winspear, and we haven't even touched the bathroom issue. Why is there a paucity of restrooms in the Winspear, the crown jewel of the $354 million AT&T Performing Arts Center? At that price, you figure the bathrooms would be larger and greater in number. It's a drag to have people returning to their seats 10 to 15 minutes after intermission, because of lines at the bathroom. (Doesn't seem to be nearly as big an issue at the Wyly Theatre.) Tell us what you think, but before you do, please read on!

Photo: A scene from The Nutcracker at the Winspear Opera House

Movie music will be featured in a new series of Dallas Symphony Orchestra pops concerts for the next two seasons.

Starting in 2010-11, the concerts will feature music from some of the most popular films of recent years. Each of the six programs, presented with film clips on a big screen, will be devoted to a single composer.

Each composer also will be commissioned by the DSO to create a new concert work for the occasion. In most cases, the composers will also conduct their own music.

The composers, are:

James Newton Howard (Pretty Woman, King Kong, The Fugitive)

George Fenton (Gandhi, Dangerous Liaisons, The Madness of King George)

Theodore Shapiro (Marley and Me, The Devil Wears Prada, You Me & Dupree)

Michael Giacchino (Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Ratatouille)

Harry Gregson-Williams (Shrek 1, 2 and 3; The Chronicles of Narnia series; Wolverine)

Sir Anthony Hopkins, establishing himself as a composer as well as actor (Slipstream, August, The Mask of Time).

The series was announced at a Thursday morning news conference at the Meyerson Symphony Center. Hosted by Steve Cook, the DSO's chief marketing and entertainment officer, the presentation included an elaborately produced video and appearances by Fenton, Shapiro and Gregson-Williams, as well as music director Jaap van Zweden.

"I think it is a fantastic initiative," van Zweden said. "It's very important for us that we are inspired by people who are in my opinion fantastic composers."

All three composers said they would probably stick to their familiar idioms for their new concert pieces. But Shapiro added, "I might take this as an opportunity to write the music I don't get to write as a film composer."

The DSO announced last month that Richard Kaufman will end a 14-year run as principal pops conductor when his contract expires in May 2010. With an emeritus title after that, Kaufman is expected to continue occasional appearances with the orchestra.

The review of last night's DSO concert, including his performance of the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, should be posted shortly. It was filed last night, but night editors were swamped with coverage from the Ft. Hood shootings.

In addition to playing concerts around the world--including, this weekend, with the Dallas Symphony--pianist Stephen Hough blogs for the London Telegraph newspaper. And a new posting reports the disspiriting experience of walking around downtown Dallas--nothing to buy! Well, he did find a couple of curious shops...

Check out his report:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/stephenhough/100004548/wigs-in-the-window/

The advantage of the Winspear Opera House's horseshoe shape is that it brings so many seats relatively close to the stage. But people who've gotten seats toward the front of the side balconies are complaining about partial views of the stage. The problem is worst on the top two levels; in the worst seats you can only see about 1/4 of the stage. The sound, for both voices and orchestra, is great up there, but you won't have much sense of what's happening dramatically.

"Those seats are very flawed," says Susan Chizeck, who was in the next-to-top side balcony for Sunday's "Otello." "And I heard from several other people who wen't happy. Everybody on our row got up and left at the first intermission."

The Dallas Opera has had "fewer than 40 complaints" about sightlines and supertitle visibility in those seats, says PR rep Suzanne Calvin. Adds marketing director Jennifer Schuder: "To my knowledge right now, we've been able to accomodate everybody who has requested a change."

Those are definitely cheap seats: five-opera subscriptions for as little as $75. But, unlike some other opera companies, the Dallas Opera so far has no warning on its ticket-purchase web site that these are partial-view seats. (And the seats are bolted to the floor, so you can't scoot 'em closer to the rail.)

"We're looking at that," Schuder says. "I think we need to get through 'Otello' and look at all the data. We may not offer those as subscription seats, just for single-ticket sales. They're already value-priced."

Have you had a bad experience with sightlines at the Winspear?

Denton resident Robert McBroom won a Nordiska grand piano last week in a giveaway by Encore Pianos of Plano. The store asked entrants to fill in a form and did a drawing from the 305 who responded. The $12,000 instrument was a big jump up from previous prizes he had won -- a phonograph record, a Thanksgiving turkey and $35 in the Louisiana lottery.

A couple of readers have inquired about the spelling "Otello" for the Dallas Opera's opening production in the new Winspear Opera House.

The Verdi opera is set to an Italian adaptation (much abbreviated, necessarily) of Shakespeare's tragedy. And since the letter "h" isn't pronounced in Italian, the Italian spelling of the Moor's name is "Otello" -- no "h." Buy a score of the opera, and it will say, "OTELLO."

Lots of operas to Italian librettos Italianize names we know in other guises. "Julius Caesar" becomes "Giulio Cesare" in the Handel opera of that name. "Hamlet" becomes "Amleto" in an obscure operatic version by Mercadante.

Just before the Dallas Symphony concert began Saturday evening, I noticed a woman in front of me cradling a baby sucking a bottle. Inevitably, at a quiet moment in the Saint-Saens Second Piano Concerto the baby started to cry. So daddy, who of course was sitting right in the middle of the row had to get up to take the baby out. All the rest of the people on the left half of the row had to stand up to let him out.

What were these people thinking, bringing a VERY young baby to a classical concert? I'm all for starting kids early on classical music, but shouldn't there be a policy about this? Ushers could be advised politely to ask parents not to bring babies into the concert hall, and offer ticket refunds.

Jaap van Zweden has been working such wonders with the DSO that it was a surprise to find him and the orchestra a bit sub-par in Thursday's opening performance. Too much of the concert felt rushed and not as polished as we've become accustomed to. (A commenter on the review suggest that Jaap switch to decaf at lunch...)

Well, I went back to the Saturday performance, which was quite a different experience. The "Young Juliet" movement of the Prokofiev was still quite a bit too fast (and too loud), and Jean-Yves Thibaudet and van Zweden pressed the second and third movements of the Saint-Saens right to the edge. (At a slightly slower pace, the second movement "dances" in a way it couldn't at this tempo.) But the whole concert came into focus, and under control, in ways it hadn't on Thursday. Apart from that frantic "Young Juliet," the orchestra played dazzlingly, and elegantly. And, boy, was the sound in the Meyerson glorious.

FIFTEEN DOLLARS to park in the Arts District!! That's the latest ripoff by the proprietors of the parking lots between the Meyerson Symphony Center and the Nasher Sculpture Center, and I hear in the area parking garages as well.

If Dallas really WANTED to discourage people from attending events in the newly enlarged Arts District, it could hardly do a better job. For the opening productions in the brand-new Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre, TXDOT piled on by closing Woodall Rodgers Expressway, making the area VERY hard to reach for many outlying folks. Dumb, really dumb.

Fort Worth got it right at Bass Performance Hall and Sundance Square. The big parking garage there is FREE after 6 p.m. If Dallas REALLY wanted people to come to its Arts District, it would do likewise.

The winspear's nifty Star Wars chandelier got applause, too, at Friday's night's "Otello," as its inverted cone of slender glowing tubes retracted into the ceiling just before the performance, leaving behind just a pattern of stars. It's great fun.

Former First Lady Laura Bush was there for Friday's opening "Otello," as was Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and lots of other notables. It was great to see Anthony Whitworth-Jones, the former Dallas Opera general director who helped get the Winspear project moving, with his delightful wife Camilla. Also Anthony's predecessor Plato Karayanis and his wife Dorothy; Plato certainly laid the groundwork for the Winspear. Santa Fe Opera general director Charles MacKay was there, too.

The ever-smiling Spencer de Grey, who led the Foster + Partners design team on the Winspear, was positively glowing, as was acoustician Bob Essert.

Major national and international publications were well represented at Friday's opening performance of the Dallas Opera's "Otello." New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommasini was there, as were Heidi Waleson of The Wall Street Journal, George Loomis of the Financial Times and William Littler from the Toronto Star.

Back when the Meyerson Symphony Center opened, 20 years ago, there must have been several dozen critics from around the world. But those were far happier--at least far more prosperous--times in journalism. These days, VERY few publications have much left in travel budgets. So we actually did pretty well to get the writers we did.

That, along with a shortage of bartenders, was THE consistent complaint at Friday's opening "Otello." There were the usual lines outside the ladies' rooms. But at least on the west side of the main floor, the guys were complaining that the men's room had only ONE stall along with, I think, six urinals.

From Scott Cantrell:

Jaap van Zweden has extended his contract as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra through the 2015-16 season.

Now starting his second season here, and a huge hit with musicians, audiences and critics, the Dutch conductor has signed a four-year extension to his initial four-year contract. The signing was to be announced at Thursday evening's DSO concert.

"It was obvious to everybody that we had a wonderful match from the beginning," said Doug Adams, president and CEO. "Even before the offer was made for him to come here, the orchestra felt this was a great match, and that has only become stronger through the first seasons."

"Clearly, he feels that we have the resources here at this orchestra, and within this city, to make the investments to make this a really great orchestra. Part of it is that the city has really welcomed him. He feels really comfortable here."

The contract extension commits van Zweden to 16 weeks per season, unusually generous in today's orchestra world, with possible additional weeks for touring. Adams declined to reveal the salary. Van Zweden could not be reached for comment.

I went to Tuesday night's dress rehearsal of "Otello," and really liked what I was seeing and hearing.

In last week's rehearsal and mixed-bag opening performance, the voices projected powerfully from the stage, but I wanted more presence and weight from the orchestra. They've now raised the adjustable orchestra pit one foot, and added some sound baffles behind the double basses in the back. The difference Tuesday was amazing. The orchestra was so much more a presence and active participant.

Having a full audience will change the sound, but all signs so far is that we've got an acoustically superb opera house.

Review of opening "Otello" performance should be online around midnight Friday.

TXDOT is closing Woodall Rodgers Freeway all weekend, precisely when the Dallas Opera its opening its first production ("Otello") in the Winspear Opera House and Dallas Theater Center opens its first ("A Midsummer Night's Dream") in the Wyly Theatre.

With national press (New York Times, etc.) coming to cover the openings, Dallas is really going to look like a screwed-up city for scheduling a huge traffic snafu at the same time. People already will be confused, finding their way to the new parking garage--whose entrance is from the Woodall Rodgers access road.

What a mess. What a stupid, stupid mess.

One problem at the new Winspear Opera House is inherent in the shape of the room -- wider from side to side, but shallower, than, say, the more typically shaped Bass Hall. That makes the room feel remarkably intimate, especially to the people in the center boxes and balconies. But the angles are going to be pretty bad for viewers (though not listeners) on the extreme sides of the orchestra level and the side boxes and balconies. I was on the extreme outer edge of the orchestra last night, and crucial moments in the pas de deux by New York City Ballet star Wendy Whelan and her substitute partner, Damian Smith, I had to take on faith. They were in upstage corners of the performing area, and they were simply invisible from where I sat.

This probably won't be much of a problem for operagoers. They are more focused on hearing than seeing, and canny directors generally don't put crucial scenes on those parts of the stage anyhow -- too risky for sound as well as sight. But for dance events and the touring musical theater shows that will be playing the Winspear, it could be quite frustrating.

At the Vienna Staatsoper many years ago, I bought side balcony seats at the last minute for a Gotterdammerung with an all-star cast headlined by Birgit Nilsson and Christa Ludwig. We were almost directly above the orchestra, and that massive sound from the Vienna Philharmonic was what the Winspear pit sound reminded me of on Thursday. But those were advertised as partial-view seats. For opera, it made a glorious memory. But on that same trip I was in seats at a German opera house that cut off too much from the ballet stage, and I remember not being at all happy.

I agree with everything my colleague Scott Cantrell said in his peek at the first gala at the Winspear Opera House last night. I have never heard the orchestral playing coming from the pit with such clarity and power in any other opera house in the world. Voices also project powerfully from the stage. When the chorus came out onto the stage apron in the first and last numbers, that sense that audience, orchestra and singers were all in one smallish room was overpowering.

Wouldn't it be wild, and swell, if the Dallas Arts District turns out to have the best opera house in the country standing next to the best symphony hall in the country (acoustically speaking, at least)? Wow.

My colleague Scott Cantrell had a early deadline and had to miss some of Scene 2, the second of three gala performances opening the new ATTPAC, last night. And anyhow, we were strictly forbidden from "reviewing" the performances, for no apparent reason. But surely no one can object when I say that last night's program at the Winspear Opera House was marvelously designed...and the final two three numbers were extraordinary. Christopher Wheeldon (whom many of the top dance critics call today's heir to the legacy of Balanchine and Robbins) created a large-ish work especially for the occasion, Tales of Offenbach. Let me cheat a little by saying that the piece's charm and bust-a-gut humor would make it a hit in the repertoire of any dance company in the world. The audience went wild for it.

The last number the two opera soloists, Thomas Hampson and Denyce Graves, performed -- the duet from Verdi's Macbeth in which the title couple murder the offstage king -- was hair-raising. International stage director Tim Albery helped the two stars act the piece to the hilt, and it was their best singing all night. Then the Dallas Opera chorus and orchestra wound up with choruses from the last act of Wagner's Die Meistersinger. Thrilling. When WILL we get to hear this masterwork in Dallas?

Bravi tutti!

In today's review of the opening opera/ballet program at the Winspear Opera House, I didn't have room to note another problem.

The projected supertitles were dim and fuzzy. The type on a cheap 1985 dot-matrix printer would look better than that. I presume it will be fixed.

I finally got to see the Winspear Opera House's much ballyhooed chandelier and stage curtain Thursday night.

Designed by the building's architects, Foster + Partners, the chandelier is a set of more than 300 slender lighted tubes suspended in an inverted cone pattern. But as performance time approaches--in a witty response to the retreating chandeliers at New York's Metropolitan Opera House--the tubes retract into the ceiling, leaving just stars of light. It's airy and downright magical.

ATTPAC commissioned artist Guillermo Kuitca to decorate the stage curtain. In red and gold squiggles, it's another of his abstractions from seating designs of opera houses and concert halls, and it's striking. But, as with the Winspear's interior walls, it would be more attractive if the base color were anything but brown. Yuk.

The architects were certainly right to want a dark color in the room, so as to concentrate attentions on the stage. But anything but brown would have been less dreary.

For all the nice words about making the AT&T Performing Arts Center open and accessible, the City of Dallas worked pretty hard Thursday night to make it as impenetrable as Fort Knox.

I'd planned to have dinner at One Arts Plaza down the street, then walk the one block to the Winspear Opera House. But, no, the city had that block blocked off; you couldn't get there from here, or vice versa. A security guy said it was because the street improvements weren't finished, but the street looked far better than most downtown. So what should have been a one-block walk turned into a senseless three-block walk.

Dumb! And annoying as heck.

I really like architect Spencer de Grey's insistence that both people coming off the street and those coming up from the underground parking garage enter the Winspear Opera House TOGETHER. And, at least in clement weather, the porte cochere out front seems to work nicely enough.

But ALL that audience--all 2,200 people for a full house--gets threaded through only TWO doors. That doesn't make much sense, and it made for longish lines at the Thursday night opening gala. And it could be downright dangerous in the event (heaven forbid) of a fire.

The Living Opera, a five-year-old community opera company which performed at Richardson's Eisemann Center, is ceasing operations.

"It's been a difficult two years," board chair Michael Collier Bradley said in a press release. "The downturn in the economy hit arts organizations
all across the U.S., and many that were bigger and older than us have had to
close their doors. Thanks to the
generosity of one supporter we were able to mount our 2008 season, but earlier
this year we made the decision to defer our 2009 season to 2010."

But the company couldn't raise enough money for another season, which would have included the world premiere of 'The Legend of the Yellow Rose of Texas,' composed for The Living Opera by Gregory Sullivan Isaacs. The company previously presented Isaacs' one-man opera "Henry Faust."

Terry Price, director of music at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, has been named interim director of the Dallas Symphony Chorus. The DSO had to scramble to find an interim leader for the group after the Sept. 5 death of David R. Davidson.

Terry is a graduate of Tarleton State College and holds a master's degree in sacred music from SMU's Perkins School of Theology. He has sung in the symphony chorus and in the Orpheus Chamber Singers.

The chorus operates under the aegis of the DSO, which will conduct a search for a permanent chorus director.

James Levine, music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony Orchestra, has cancelled his fall engagements to undergo surgery this week for a herniated disc. He was to have led the BSO in Carnegie Hall's season-opening concert Thursday and the Met's "Tosca." He is expected to be back in time to lead the Met's "Rosenkavalier," opening Dec. 3.

Levine, 66, had surgery three years ago for a torn rotator cuff, resulting from an onstage fall, and last year had a kidney with a malignant cyst removed.

Amid all the to-do about the opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center's Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra isn't make a big deal of September's 20th anniversary of the Meyerson Symphony Center. But then there was a bit of a splash for the hall's 15th, when both architect I.M. Pei and the late acoustician Russell Johnson were on hand.

This is a good time, though, to remind folks of Laurie Shulman's nine-year-old book on the Meyerson. "The Meyerson Symphony Center: Building a Dream" (University of North Texas Press) could have been the typical bit of glossy coffee-table puffery. But, no: it's a riveting narrative of how this great hall arose from the ashes of a bankrupt DSO (in the early 1970s).

With larger-than-life characters including Ross Perot and Mort Meyerson, this is a real page-turner of political dramas, of battles lost and won. It's as compelling a chapter of Dallas history as you'll find in any book. I couldn't put it down when I first read it, and I had the same experience when I picked it up again recently.

It's too bad, too, that the DSO hasn't done more to honor Meyerson, who really was the champion of champions in bringing the building to fruition.

SMU paid tribute Sept. 22 to the late Robert T. Anderson, the organ professor who for more than three decades made SMU one of the country's leading training centers for concert, academic and church organists. And it was great to see so many of his proteges from far and wide, including Wolfgang Rubsam from Germany, Carole Terry from Seattle and Ross Wood from Boston.

At Perkins Chapel, where Bob played many a service, current SMU organ prof Larry Palmer and RTA proteges George Baker and Chris Anderson (now associate professer of sacred music at Parkins School of Theology) played the organ. And remembrances were spoken by organist Barbara Marquart Burton, SMU voice prof Barbara Hill Moore and retired sacred-music director Carlton R. Young. Barbara's memories were especially warming--and appropriately funny.

Bob was a small man, but an outsize personality: smart as could be, with wide-ranging interests, wickedly funny and a fabulous cook and party host. His most famous expression, rising into a falsetto then dipping into a sonorous baritone, was, "Oooh, how VUL-gah." He could be ferocious if he felt a student or friend hadn't lived up to his expectations, but he could also go far out of his way to help a student in any kind of need.

It was Bob who arranged the scholarship that enabled me to go to SMU, and he was as much a mentor to me as to any of his graduate majors. I was one of those legions of students from modest backgrounds that he introducted to finer things in life ranging from French cuisine to modern furniture to King's College Choir.

I wasn't even an organ major, but I sat in on Bob's classes and I don't think I missed an organ recital or organ-department "do." In an age when organists were becoming increasingly specialized, I marveled that Bob could play Sowerby on a 1930s E.M. Skinner with as much love and pizazz as he played Scheidt on a 17th-century Schnitger, that his repertory ranged from ancient tablatures to avant-garde scores with the ink barely dry.

It was sad to see the phenomenally energetic man we knew in the 1960s and 70s gradually incapacitated by Parkinson's disease. He moved to Honolulu in 2001 so his brother, Ron, could oversee the increasing care he needed. He died there in May.

But I treasure a thick file of letters I received from him over the years -- he was a formidable correspondent -- and each year around Chrismas I will miss the annual jam-packed Christmas letter recounting his adventures of the year.

Thanks to KERA blogger (and former DMN colleague) Jerome Weeks for pointing out something I skimmed over in the NY Times obit of recording pioneer Wilma Cozart Fine. Although born in Mississippi, she grew up in Fort Worth and attended what was then North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas).

Her first job out of college was as a secretary to Antal Dorati, during his 1945-49 stint as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; she followed him to the Minneapolis Symphony. From there she went on to an important career as a record producer for Mercury and other labels, collaborating with the recording engineer who became her husband in 1957, C. Robert Fine. The "Living Presence" recordings they produced in the 1950s and 1960s became talismans in audiophile circles; I fondly remember collecting their original LP incarnations back in the 1970s. Done with minimal-microphone techniques, they remain some of the most stunningly natural-sounding recordings ever produced. Mrs. Fine came out of retirement in 1989 to supervise painstaking CD remasterings of many of those recordings.

She died Sept. 21 at her home in Harrison, N.Y.

Stirring--that's the adjective that kept coming to mind during the Thursday morning memorial service for David R. Davidson. Director of the Dallas Symphony Chorus and director of music and arts at Highland Park United Methodist Church (and, before that, of Highland Park Presbyterian), David died Saturday after a 2-1/2-year battle with cancer.

A respected and beloved figure in choral- and church-music circles, David planned his own memorial . And it was a doozy, with Jaap van Zweden conducting a good chunk of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Chorus. Combined, the chorus and HPUMC Chancel Choir must have numbered about 400 singers, and the well-trained sounds they made all but raised the roof in C.H.H. Parry's "I was glad." There were stirring solos, too, from alto Rebecca Campbell, tenor Karl Dent and baritone Donnie Ray Albert, and organist Bradley Welch played the church's soon-to-be-dedicated new Dobson organ.

Between prelude music and the service itself--with readings, prayers, touching memories and homily--it was a two-hour-and-twenty-minute extravaganza. But, assembled in only a few days, everything was done almost as well as it would have been under David's own direction. He would have been proud.

There were emotional moments, to be sure, and hearing that great roar of hymn singing from congregation as well as choirs certainly put lumps in this throat. But there were also quite a few hearty laughs during reminiscences. All told, it was a rousing tribute to a musician and a real prince of a human being that all of us lucky enough to have known and witnessed his handiwork will miss.

In David's memory, the DSO is replacing the Barber "Medea's Dance of Vengeance" in next week's concerts with the Barber "Adagio for Strings," which van Zweden conducted at the memorial service.

Claus Peter Flor, former principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, was a big fan of Dallas Symphony Chorus director David R. Davidson, who died last week at age 60. After learning of David's death, Peter sent these touching thoughts:

A conductor who wished to be working with David Davidson had to fulfill three unspoken conditions:
- absolute knowledge of choir music and anything that was necessary to achieve a faithful interpretation;
- knowledge of the beauty of the human voice, and how difficult it is to constantly renew that beauty;
- utmost confidence in his, David's, work in preparing the choir from the first rehearsal up to the actual concerts.

If David felt he could entrust/lend "his choir" to a conductor, this "guest conductor" invariably met with success.

David never offered, and certainly never imposed, his assistance to a conductor right away - he always waited for that conductor to show his willingness to appreciate David's great experience and profound humanity.

For those who were able to win his friendship it was a wonderful gift.

I was lucky to be among those to earn his friendship. It is a gift I will carry with me for the rest of my days.

... and so Johannes Brahms' "German Requiem" once again impresses upon us its great and eternal significance:

Great grief has befallen us in these days - and for many of us it is a very personal and private grief - but even with tears in our eyes we should, with great happiness, whisper to each other: It was a privilege to have known and accompanied him on his earthly journey, with his singing and his music making.

Rise all, and bow with deepest gratitude.

Diva extraordinaire Patty Breckenridge called to alert me that a group of Dallas theater artists are banding together to create a holiday CD, all profits of which will go a a local shelter for battered children. Individuals (Kim Whalen, Natalie King, Gary Floyd, Breckenridge herself), pairs (Cedric Neal and Liz Mikel, Doug Miller and Marisa Diotalevi, Jenny Thurman and David Coffee) and assorted groups will be going into the studio between Aug. 23 and Sept. 13. Julie Johnson will be bringing a whole band along with her.

Look for the CD in theater lobbies before the end of the year.

Sad news this week: the death of music critic, program annotator and lecturer Michael Steinberg, at age 80.

In my years of covering Tanglewood (1980-1987), as critic of the Albany (NY) Times Union, I quickly learned to spot Michael's program notes at Boston Symphony concerts. By then, he had moved on to the San Francisco Symphony, as artistic advisor and publications director. But the BSO was still using some of the notes he had written when working for that orchestra, and they were instantly recognizable in contrast to contributions from his successors.

(The BSO had offered him the job in part to spirit him away from his post as music critic of The Boston Globe. His reviews could be tough, and at one point the musicians of the orchestra voted to ban him from their concerts; but nothing came of that.)

Michael went on to write notes for the New York Philharmonic and Minnesota Orchestra as well. His notes were immensely learned, but they wore their sophistication lightly. There was nothing "teachy" about them, and yet when you finished reading them you realized how much you had learned. In more recent years, his notes on some of the most popular repertory were gathered into three books, one each on symphonies, concertos and choral music. There's no finer writing on music anywhere,
and I go back to them again and again.

I met Michael maybe 15 years ago, when he agreed to serve on a panel I was coordinating. His contributions were wise and witty, and afterward I got a postcard from him. It just said, "So nice to put a face with a respected name." Coming from him, that was a lovely compliment.

Robert Dodson, director of the division of music at Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts since May 2008, will leave the job at the end of August.
He will become director of the School of Music at Boston University's College of Fine Arts. The new job will take him back to the city where he served from 2004 to 2007 as provost of the New England Conservatory of Music.
This is a huge blow to the music division, where in a short time Dodson had soothed longstanding antagonisms. He was enormously popular with the music faculty, who credited him with openness, cool professionalism and personal warmth.
"The biggest thing he did was increase the department's presence in the community," said José Antonio Bowen, dean of the Meadows School. "He was very vi