US orchestra study finds trumpet ‘riskiest’ instrument for spreading COVID-19

 

US orchestra study finds trumpet ‘riskiest’ instrument for spreading COVID-19. Picture: Getty

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM

A University of Minnesota study discovers the wind instruments that emit the most aerosols, and are therefore “riskiest” in the transmission of COVID-19.

Trumpets and oboes, as well as bass trombones, were found to be “high risk” compared to other brass and woodwind instruments, in new research into coronavirus transmission in orchestras.

Bass clarinet and tuba were found to be “lower risk”.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota found that while trumpets and oboes were the “riskiest” instruments for transmitting airborne diseases, none of the examined wind instruments were found to spread aerosols further than one foot.

Published last month in the Journal of Aerosol Science, the study investigated 15 musicians from the Minnesota Orchestra in an effort to help them return to live music-making in a COVID-secure way.

Researchers say their findings could provide “valuable insights into the risk assessment of airborne disease transmission and the corresponding mitigation strategies for different musical activities involving the usage of wind instruments”.

Read more: UK government’s latest guidance for live music-making >

Minnesota Orchestra plays for the first since the pandemic shutdown. Picture: Getty

In the study, researchers tracked the aerosols emitted from 10 orchestral woodwind and brass instruments: the flute, piccolo, bass clarinet, oboe and bassoon; tuba, French horn, trumpet, trombone and bass trombone.

The concentration of aerosols – tiny air particles that can contain viruses and lead to the transmission of airborne diseases like COVID-19 – produced from instruments, was then compared with the amount produced by players when simply breathing or speaking.

Read more: Singing ‘no riskier than talking’, UK study says >

“As higher aerosol concentration leads to an increased risk of airborne disease transmission, we categorise these instruments into low, intermediate, and high-risk levels,” researchers said.

The aerosols coming from instruments ranged from 20 to 2,400 particles per litre of air. When players were tested when breathing or speaking, they produced an average of just 90 and 230 particles per litre respectively. 

Trumpet, oboe and bass trombone players, in particular, were likely to produce more aerosols when playing, than while speaking and breathing. The researches termed these instruments “high risk” for transmitting airborne diseases.

The bassoon, piccolo, flute, bass clarinet and French horn were considered an “intermediate risk”.

Perhaps due to the tube length of the instrument, the tuba was termed “low risk”.

Scientists said mouthpiece designs could also affect the level of aerosols produced.

“All of this information I think is very useful for planning,” said Department of Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Jiarong Hong, who led the team. “Once we understand the risk level of different instruments, we can actually target the higher risk instruments. You certainly don’t want to have a group of trumpet players playing in a confined room because that will be a very high-risk activity.”

Osmo Vanska rehearses with the Minnesota Orchestra, of whom 15 members participated in the coronavirus study. Picture: Getty

University of Hong Kong microbiologist Dr Ho Pak-leung said the study could influence orchestral seating arrangements going forward, as the arts world looks for ways to perform live safely in pandemic times.

“Those wearing masks could sit closer, while those who can’t wear masks should sit further apart,” Ho said, adding that a distance of 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) between unmasked players would be safer.

Ho said plastic screens between players could help block some big droplets, but attested that good ventilation is still crucial in reducing the risk of transmission through tiny particles.

Researchers also recommended social distancing, putting masks over instruments and using portable filters. They found that a single-layer mask blocks 60 percent of the particles without significantly reducing sound quality. Two layers block 75 percent with a slight drop in sound quality, while three layers block 92 percent but cause a substantial dip in sound quality.

Minnesota Orchestra is currently performing for online audiences only, in small groups of no more than 25 musicians. The full orchestra consists of around 90 musicians.

Read more: Minnesota Orchestra breaks with Minneapolis Police, ‘will no longer use for concert security’ >

President and CEO Michelle Miller Burns said the orchestra is now planning “a multi-layered approach to safety onstage and backstage that involves COVID testing, light quarantining, wearing masks, maintaining distance between musicians, and investigating bell barriers and air purifiers – all in the interest of mitigating as many risks as possible”.

She added: “This important research will benefit organisations beyond ours, and we are pleased that the University’s findings can now be shared with school groups and other ensembles to help inform and guide their decisions and safety strategies.”

Rockmusiker Spencer Davis ist tot

 

Bekannt wurde der britische Musiker in den 1960er Jahren mit Songs wie "Keep On Running". Nun ist SpencerDavis im Alter von 81 Jahren in Los Angeles gestorben.

    

Der Gründer der "Spencer Davis Group" starb in einem Krankenhaus der kalifornischen Stadt. Todesursache sei eine Lungenentzündung gewesen, teilte sein langjähriger Manager Bob Birk mit. Der 1939 in Wales geborene Spencer Davis sang, spielte Gitarre und Keyboard. Er hatte die nach ihm benannte Band 1963 gegründet, die bald mit Songs wie "Gimme Some Lovin" und "I'm a Man" Erfolge feiern konnte. "Keep On Running" und "Somebody Help Me" schafften es Mitte der 60er Jahre auf Platz eins der britischen Singlecharts. Viele weitere Titel schafften es in die britischen Top 40.

Spencer Davis (r.) zusammen mit seinen Bandkollegen Steve Winwood, Muff Winwood, Pete York

Seine Musiker-Karriere begann Davis während eines Studiums an der Universität Birmingham. Er trat zusammen mit zukünftigen Stars wie dem späteren Rolling-Stones-Bassisten Bill Wyman und dem Fleetwood Mac-Mitglied Christine McVie auf. In den 70er Jahren zog Davis nach Kalifornien, nahm später Solo-Alben auf, arbeitete mit anderen Musikern zusammen und tourte um die Welt.

Sein Manager Birk würdigte ihn als hochmoralischen, sehr talentierten, gutmütigen, extrem intelligenten und großzügigen Menschen. Davis hinterlässt seine Partnerin June und drei erwachsene Kinder.

qu/rb (dpa, ap)

Hans Rott - Symphony for string orchestra

Victor Borge - His Music and His Life

Early life and career

Victor Borge was born Børge Rosenbaum on 3 January 1909 in Copenhagen, Denmark, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His parents, Bernhard and Frederikke (née Lichtinger) Rosenbaum, were both musicians: his father a violist in the Royal Danish Orchestra,[5][6] and his mother a pianist.[7] Borge began piano lessons at the age of two, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy. He gave his first piano recital when he was eight years old, and in 1918 was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, studying under Olivo Krause. Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler, Liszt's student Frederic Lamond, and Busoni's pupil Egon Petri.

Borge played his first major concert in 1926 at the Danish Odd Fellow Palæet (The Odd Fellow's Lodge building) concert hall. After a few years as a classical concert pianist, he started his now famous "stand-up" act, with the signature blend of piano music and jokes. He married the American Elsie Chilton in 1933; the same year he debuted with his revue acts.[8] Borge started touring extensively in Europe, where he began telling anti-Nazi jokes.

When the German armed forces occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940, during World War II, Borge was playing a concert in Sweden and managed to escape to Finland.[9] He travelled to America on the United States Army transport American Legion, the last neutral ship to make it out of Petsamo, Finland,[10][11] and arrived 28 August 1940, with only $20 (about $365 today), with $3 going to the customs fee. Disguised as a sailor, Borge returned to Denmark once during the occupation to visit his dying mother.[12]

Move to America

Even though Borge did not speak a word of English upon arrival, he quickly managed to adapt his jokes to the American audience, learning English by watching movies. He took the name of Victor Borge, and in 1941, he started on Rudy Vallee's radio show.[13] He was hired soon after by Bing Crosby for his Kraft Music Hall programme.[14]

Borge quickly rose to fame, winning Best New Radio Performer of the Year in 1942. Soon after the award, he was offered film roles with stars such as Frank Sinatra (in Higher and Higher). While hosting The Victor Borge Show on NBC beginning in 1946,[15] he developed many of his trademarks, including repeatedly announcing his intent to play a piece but getting "distracted" by something or other, making comments about the audience, or discussing the usefulness of Chopin's "Minute Waltz" as an egg timer.[16] He would also start out with some well-known classical piece like Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and suddenly move into a harmonically similar pop or jazz tune, such as Cole Porter's "Night and Day" or "Happy Birthday to You."

Borge's style

One of Borge's other famous routines was "Phonetic Punctuation," in which he read a passage from a book and added exaggerated sound effects to stand for all of the punctuation marks, such as periods, commas, and exclamation marks.[17] Another is his "Inflationary Language," in which he added one to every number or homophone of a number in the words he spoke. For example: "once upon a time" becomes "twice upon a time", "wonderful" becomes "twoderful", "forehead" becomes "fivehead", "anyone for tennis" becomes "anytwo five elevennis", "I ate a tenderloin with my fork and so on and so forth" becomes "I nined an elevenderloin with my fivek and so on and so fifth".[14]

Borge performing before an audience in 1957

Borge used physical and visual elements in his live and televised performances. He would play a strange-sounding piano tune from sheet music, looking increasingly confused; turning the sheet upside down or sideways, he would then play the actual tune, flashing a joyful smile of accomplishment to the audience (he had, at first, been literally playing the tune upside down or sideways). When his energetic playing of another song would cause him to fall off the piano bench, he would open the seat lid, take out the two ends of an automotive seat belt, and buckle himself onto the bench, "for safety." Conducting an orchestra, he might stop and order a violinist who had played a sour note to get off the stage, then resume the performance and have the other members of the section move up to fill the empty seat while they were still playing. From off stage would come the sound of a gunshot.

His musical sidekick in the 1960s, Leonid Hambro, was also a well-known concert pianist.[18] In 1968, classical pianist Şahan Arzruni joined him as his straight man, performing together on one piano a version of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, considered a musical-comedic classic.[19]

He also enjoyed interacting with the audience. Seeing an interested person in the front row, he would ask them, "Do you like good music?" or "Do you care for piano music?" After an affirmative answer, Borge would take a piece of sheet music from his piano and say, "Here is some," and hand it over. After the audience's laughter died down, he would say, "That'll be $1.95" (or whatever the current price might be). He would then ask whether the audience member could read music; if the member said yes, he would ask a higher price. If he got no response from the audience after a joke, he would often add "...when this ovation has died down, of course." The delayed punchline to handing the person the sheet music would come when he would reach the end of a number and begin playing the penultimate notes over and over, with a puzzled look. He would then go back to the person in the audience, retrieve the sheet music, tear off a piece of it, stick it on the piano, and play the last couple of notes from it.

Making fun of modern theater, he would sometimes begin a performance by asking if there were any children in the audience. There always were, of course. He would sternly order them out, then say, "We do have some children in here; that means I can't do the second half in the nude. I'll wear the tie (pause). The long one (pause). The very long one, yes."[20]

In his stage shows in later years, he would include a segment with opera singer Marilyn Mulvey. She would try to sing an aria, and he would react and interrupt, with such antics as falling off the bench in "surprise" when she hit a high note. He would also remind her repeatedly not to rest her hand on the piano, telling her that if she got used to it, "and one day a piano was not there – Fffftttt! " After the routine, the spotlight would rest on Mulvey, and she would sing a serious number with Borge accompanying in the background.

Later career

Borge appeared on Toast of the Town hosted by Ed Sullivan several times during 1948. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States the same year. He started the Comedy in Music show at John Golden Theatre in New York City on 2 October 1953. Comedy in Music became the longest running one-man show in the history of theater with 849 performances when it closed on 21 January 1956, a feat which placed it in the Guinness Book of World Records.[21]

Continuing his success with tours and shows, Borge played with and conducted orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,[22] the New York Philharmonic[23] and London Philharmonic.[24] Always modest, he felt honored when he was invited to conduct the Royal Danish Orchestra at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1992.

His later television appearances included his "Phonetic Punctuation" routine on The Electric Company in a filmed sketch.[25] He would also use this sketch on The Electric Company's LP record to follow, during its "Punctuation" song.[26] In addition, he appeared several times on Sesame Street,[27][28][29][30] and he was a guest star during the fourth season of The Muppet Show.[31][32][33]

Victor Borge continued to tour until his last days, performing up to 60 times per year when he was 90 years old.

Other endeavors

Borge made several appearances on the long-running TV show What's My Line?, both as a celebrity panelist, and as a contestant with the occupation "poultry farmer" (the latter was not a comedy routine; as a business venture, Borge raised and popularized Rock Cornish game hens starting in the 1950s).[34]

Borge helped start several trust funds, including the Thanks to Scandinavia Fund,[35] which was started in dedication to those who helped the Jews escape the German persecution during the war.[35]

Aside from his musical work, Borge wrote three books, My Favorite Intermissions[36] and My Favorite Comedies in Music[37] (both with Robert Sherman), and the autobiography Smilet er den korteste afstand ("The Smile is the Shortest Distance") with Niels-Jørgen Kaiser.[38]

In 1979, Borge founded the American Pianists Association (then called the Beethoven Foundation) with Julius Bloom and Anthony P. Habig. The American Pianists Association now produces two major piano competitions: the Classical Fellowship Awards and the Jazz Fellowship Awards.[39]

London Coliseum reopens with a performance of Mozart’s Requiem...

 

... and a “collective moment of remembrance”

The Coliseum Theatre, London. Picture: Getty

By Kyle Macdonald, ClassicFM

0

The voices and orchestra of English National Opera will come together for a poignant performance of Mozart’s choral masterpiece.

One of London’s great theatres will reopen its doors for performances of Mozart’s Requiem and a powerful moment of musical remembrance for all that has been lost during a deeply troubling year.

The English National Opera concerts at the London Coliseum will take place to socially-distanced audiences on 6 and 7 November. ENO Chorus and Orchestra will be conducted by their music director, Martyn Brabbins, and four of the country’s finest soloists will be on stage – soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn, mezzo Dame Sarah Connolly, tenor Toby Spence and mighty bass Brindley Sherratt.

Read more: What live music is back and are there classical concerts near me? >

English National Opera said in reopening its doors it wanted to provide audiences with an opportunity to reflect upon and to commemorate the difficulties the UK has faced during the coronavirus pandemic.

Annilese Miskimmon, artistic director of English National Opera said they want to acknowledge the impact, suffering and loss brought by COVID-19. “Mozart’s Requiem is the perfect music to provide a moment of reflection for our audiences, for a collective moment of remembrance,” she said.

Missing Live Theatre campaign, London. Picture: Getty

In July, the main doors to the London Coliseum were wrapped in pink tape, as part of the Missing Live Theatre campaign to support the theatre industry. In a few weeks, they will be opened again. Find out how you can get your tickets on the ENO’s website.

London Coliseum is one of the largest theatres in London with 2,359 seats in pre-socially-distanced times. As well as their resident opera company, English National Ballet also calls the theatre home.

Why are iconic arts venues like the Royal Albert Hall facing closure?

Royal Albert Hall faces £20m shortfall. Picture: Getty

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London

1K

The Royal Albert Hall is a beacon of UK arts and music, hailed by the government as a “crown jewel” venue. So why does it need £20m to survive?

The Royal Albert Hall is in an “extremely perilous” state, its chief exec has said. The independent Kensington concert venue has launched an appeal to raise £20,000,000 for its survival, following overwhelming damages by the coronavirus pandemic.

Since its enforced closure in March, the great hall has lost £18m in income and £6.5m in refunded ticket sales. Now, after six months with no income, its reserves are exhausted.

What about the £1.75bn arts package?

Well, indeed. After finding out it wasn’t eligible for any of the government’s emergency grants, the Albert Hall applied for a repayable loan which, if confirmed, will arrive in December.

Chief exec Craig Hassall said this still leaves the hall in a “perilous” position. 

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"Six months on from enforced closure, and circa £18 million down in lost income, we are not eligible for any of the Government’s emergency grants,” he said in a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee meeting, in which he was consulted on decisions around allowing arts venues to reopen.

“This leaves us in an extremely perilous position, with no way of replacing our lost income, apart from a Government loan which may or may not materialise.”

Read more: What are the latest rules for rehearsals, concerts and live music venues? >

Dowland’s ‘Lacrimae antiquae novae’, performed with new lyrics at Wigmore Hall

An exclusive session with Stile Antico, filmed by Classic FM.

Why can’t venues like the Albert Hall put on shows yet?

Since 15 August, concert halls and theatres have been permitted to open their doors to live audiences, as long as they are socially distanced. Unfortunately, this means inviting in less than half the capacity a venue would normally be allowed to take in.

As Andrew Lloyd Webber once again pointed out yesterday, shows need at least 70 to 80 per cent capacity in order to break even. And that’s before they can start making any money.

Venues also need time to plan shows – around four to five months, for most operas, musicals and plays. It’s therefore impossible to plan the staging of a Christmas ballet, for instance, when venues don’t know if regulations might change again at the last minute.

What venues desperately need, is a date in the diary for when they can reopen with full audiences. That’s Stage Five of the government’s five-stage roadmap, a timeframe for which is not clear.

Read more: Will pantomimes and ballets be cancelled this Christmas? >

The Royal Albert Hall. Picture: PA

So, where’s the money going to come from?

It’s been a frustrating time for arts venues, as many remain unable to put on shows, and a much-hoped-for government funding boost is yet to make it to the hall’s main stage.

RAH’s chief exec said concerns over the hall and other independent, non-government-funded venues were raised “months ago”, and that the venue now faces “a bleak future”.

“We raised concerns months ago about the potential for independent, unfunded organisations such as the Royal Albert Hall to miss out on Government support, and especially having been held up by Government as a ‘crown jewel’ that must be saved.

“We are fortunate to have supportive members and private donors who have given generously, but unfortunately, the Rescue Package fanfare has given many potential donors the false sense that we are being sufficiently supported elsewhere,” he said.

“The Royal Albert Hall now faces a bleak future unless it can secure not only a repayable Government loan, but also urgent donations to plug our current £20 million shortfall.”

London's iconic arts venue. Picture: PA

Are there venues that won’t survive this pandemic?

It’s a real possibility. The Albert Hall was warned in July it would go bust next year, without support. London’s Royal Opera House faces a similar reality, with its chief exec Alex Beard warning a few months ago that it would not survive past Autumn with its current reserves, while the Southbank Centre has warned of 400 job losses.

Then there are smaller, regional venues. Southhampton’s Nuffield Theatre has already announced it has gone into administration – although it appears now that that had less to do with the pandemic, and more to do with Arts Council England withdrawing all its funding in the middle of lockdown.