Champion For Music: Sylvia Kunin, seen here in 2014, provided support for numerous in the classical world.
"In 1955, Sylvia Kunin founded the Young Musicians Foundation in Los Angeles that provided support and a showcase for budding classical-music talents — including conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, guitarist Christopher Parkening and soprano Shirley Verrett — long before they were world-famous....Kunin, 101, died Feb. 12 in a Seattle retirement community. She had had a recent fall and was in declining health, said her son, Barry Eben. The YMF is still going strong. Other musicians who got an early boost not only from the foundation but also from classical music television shows Kunin hosted beginning in the early 1950s include violinists Misha Dichter and Glenn Dicterow, conductors Lawrence Foster and Henry Lewis and cellist Nathaniel
Michael Tilson Thomas with Sylvia Kunin in earlier days
Rosen....'She was a very diminutive figure, but her energy was colossal,' Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said in an interview this week. The YMF orchestra was his first, at 20, as music director. 'One minute she could be very charming, even flirtatious, and the next she would belt out, 'Oh, c'mon!' if she sensed any of the grandiosity that can come with classical music.' She was not just a fan of the music. Kunin was a piano prodigy who won
Early photo of Young Musicians Foundation with Shirley Verrett in the front center
competitions and studied with Artur Schnabel in prewar Europe. The fact that her career faltered helped fuel her drive to pave the way for others....In 1954 came her follow-up show, Debut, with musicians competing for $1,000 scholarships. To lead the show's orchestra, she hired Henry Lewis, a double-bass player in the Los Angeles Philharmonic who had long wanted to conduct but was not getting opportunities. 'The podium was a long way away for a little black kid growing up in Los Angeles,' he told The Times in 1985. Kunin gave Lewis, who went on to a long career conducting at the Metropolitan Opera and other venues, the chance. 'Sylvia was always interested in finding someone who had something special to say,' said Lewis, who died in
Conductor Henry Lewis with his then wife opera singer Marilyn Horne
1996....She and her husband, actor Al Eben, moved to Hawaii, where he had a recurring role as the medical officer in the TV series Hawaii Five-0. While there she started a new TV program featuring student musicians, Musical Encounters, for distribution to schools and showings on public television. It continued when she and her husband returned to L.A. in 1975. After Al Eben died in 2003, she moved to Seattle to be closer to her son and his family. The production of Musical Encounters continued there and at the end of the last show, featuring a young soprano in 2012, surprise tributes from Thomas, Parkening and others were read. Kunin, then 99, stood and addressed the audience in a still-strong voice. 'I'm glad I was able to live this long,' she said. 'I really feel very lucky. You can't be luckier.'" [Source] Learn more about the YMF by clicking here. Watch a wonderful video of Sylvia Kunin from March 2014 about the creation of the Young Musicians Foundation.
The complete YouTube Symphony Concert from Sydney, Australia, has been posted online. The section with Renée Fleming is 41:49-45:11 and features the soprano singing Mozart's canon "Caro bell'idol mio" with the YouTube Symphony Children's Chorus and Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. Click here to launch the video.
Leah Crocetto has been chosen as one of 20 singers to compete in the 2011 Cardiff Singer of the World competition to be held in Wales this June. She will represent the USA in hopes of winning the grand prize of £15,000 or even the £5,000 prize for lieder. The complete list of participants is after the jump.
The soprano was born 1980 in Adrian, Michigan. She has three younger sisters and as part of a big extended Italian family she says she has been listening to Luciano Pavarotti sing since she was in the womb. At 4 years old she would walk around the house singing "Non ti scordar di me" and "Nessun dorma" along with the record. Her father introduced her to all genres of music including Bob Dylan, the Rat Pack and even Earth, Wind & Fire. Her mother plays the piano, organ and clarinet. Both parents sang in choir and her father was even in a rock-n-roll band. She has one sister in politics that she says has a great voice. She saw her first operas when she was in fifth grade, Carmen and Tosca.
"Pace non trovo"
Tre sonetti del Petrarca (Liszt)
Growing up she attended private schools that were bible-based and after graduating high school she attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago where she studied with Arnold Rawls. She only stayed at the school for a year and a half, but continued to study with her teacher. At 20 she took part in the Utah Festival Opera program for young artists. By 25 she moved to New York where she starting singing jazz and cabaret, including Sam's Club on 46th Street. To make ends meet she waited tables at the Olive Garden in Times Square. After her father became ill, she moved back to Michigan to care for him and got a degree in acting at Sienna Heights University. Her father passed away in 2009.
"'To me,' he said, 'my relationship with the San Francisco Symphony is the happiest it’s ever been.' The 'sense of adventure' continues with audiences and the musicians, he added. In Miami Beach, he is exhilarated by the new center and eager to explore the technological potential of the campus. Other than maintaining his appointment as principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, he said, he accepts 'very few guest appearances with orchestras in Europe.' There are things he misses, like opera. 'Once in a while,' he said, 'I wonder what I could do with Salome.' But there are many conductors in opera houses who perform these works exceptionally well, he added. Increasingly, he focuses on what he is best suited for." [Source]
"The story of how the world's most celebrated living architect came to design an ingenious new music-academy campus and concert hall in Miami Beach goes back almost 60 years, to a rather prosaic circumstance: Frank Gehry, then a young, unknown Los Angeles architect, baby-sat a precocious 8-year-old named Michael Thomas. A few years later, the piano prodigy would shoot to fame as an orchestral conductor under his full name, Michael Tilson
