As medici.tv’s Chief Content Officer I spend a lot of time thinking about classical music—and a lot of time on the internet. Here’s my selection of the top five news items you need to see this week if you want to stay in the know.
Satie at 100: a portrait of an enigmatic yet oddly accessible composer (The New York Times)
To mark the centenary of Satie’s death (July 1, 1925), The New York Times reflected on classical music’s “slipperiest” composer. Satie’s music is both extremely easy to listen to—American composer Virgil Thomson wrote that Satie is the only composer “whose works can be enjoyed and appreciated without any knowledge of the history of music”—and incredibly hard to pin down. He is legendary in musical circles for his surprising score indications (like asking musicians to perform “with tears in your fingers”) and outside of them for his melancholic Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, staples of relaxation playlists everywhere.
Dive into his very, very unusual world with this documentary:
27 “new” Satie pieces reconstructed for a new recording project (Gramophone)
Gramophone spotlighted a remarkable centenary project: Satie: Discoveries, a new album of 27 previously unknown works pulled from dusty notebooks and backroom archives. The pieces include whimsical café songs, dreamy vignettes, and minimalist sketches—offering a more colorful, playful view of Satie’s world. Pianist Alexandre Tharaud leads the recording with some unexpected collaborators, including star cellist Gautier Capuçon… on piano four-hands. Reconstructed by musicologist James Nye and composer/violinist Sato Matsui, the collection expands the Satie canon just in time for his 100th anniversary.
Hollywood actor Jonathan Bailey plays his own theme tune on the clarinet (Classic FM)
In a behind‑the‑scenes video from the Jurassic World Rebirth scoring session at Abbey Road Studios, actor Jonathan Bailey — known from Bridgerton and Fellow Travelers — actually plays the clarinet live with the orchestra. After being invited by composer Alexandre Desplat to sit in rehearsals, he got the opportunity to play solo during an emotional cue tied to his on-screen character. Bailey described the moment as “the highlight of my career,” calling it “magic and serendipity” to contribute musically to his own film role.
New analysis considers the stage time given to female composers (Limelight)
Limelight magazine reported on a new report by Donne Women in Music analyzing the 2024 BBC Proms programming, which introduces a crucial metric: stage time. Across 89 concerts and 7,193 minutes of programming, 47% featured at least one female-composed piece. But women’s works made up only 13.5% of total works and just 8.6% of total stage time. It’s a clear call: inclusion must be more than statistical, it must be substantial. A must-read for anyone rethinking programming equity!
Conductor Valery Gergiev returns to Europe for the first time since 2022 (Operawire)
Russian conductor Valery Gergiev will appear in Italy this summer at the Un’Estate da Re festival in Reggia di Caserta, North of Naples—his first performance on European soil since February 23, 2022, the night before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Previously a regular on all of the world’s most prestigious stages, Gergiev is a known Putin supporter and has been largely blacklisted by international musical institutions, despite continuing to conduct widely in Russia, Iran, and China.
