Miscellany

The Berlin Philharmonic, recovering from last month's confusion, has chosen Kirill Petrenko as its next chief conductor. I was less impressed by his 2013 Bayreuth Ring than were many of my colleagues, but I admired his work in Ariadne and Khovanshchina at the Met, and a Digital Concert Hall stream of his most recent Berlin outing, in 2012, suggests a strong chemistry with the orchestra. So far, his involvement in new music seems limited, though he will lead Miroslav Srnka's South Pole in Munich next season....  Harry Lawrence Freeman's long-lost opera Voodoo is revived in New York this weekend, in a joint effort by Morningside Opera, Harlem Opera Theater, and the Harlem Chamber Players. The Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia will mark the occasion with a two-day conference.... Tonight at NYC's River to River Festival, Roomful of Teeth presents Caroline Shaw's music, film, and theatre installation Ritornello.... Read Allan Kozinn on June in Buffalo.... Kyle Gann speaks on Nancarrow at the Whitney today, as part of the museum's Nancarrow Festival.... Tanglewood, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Tanglewood Music Center, is offering streaming audio from its archives. No fewer than thirty-four celebratory commissions will be presented this summer or in future seasons... Spectrum NYC is hosting a three-concert festival devoted to the restlessly inventive English composer Richard Barrett. It begins tonight and ends on June 30.... At the Luminato Festival in Toronto this weekend, close to a thousand musicians will perform R. Murray Schafer's gigantic oratorio Apocalypsis — a project possibly inspired by Adrian Leverkühn's Apocalypsis cum figuris, that most influential of nonexistent works. Colin Eatock has a preview at Classical Voice North America. The CBC will provide a live broadcast on June 28.... For Music and Literature, Doyle Armbrust has written a discerning introduction to Anna Thorvaldsdottir, whose tremendous piece In the Light of Air appears this summer on the Sono Luminus label. Also coming soon from that source is a Nordic Affect disc called Clockworking, featuring works of Anna, Hildur Gudnadóttir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Hafdís Bjarnadóttir, and Thurídur Jónsdóttir.