ArtsCriticATL.com

In the past decade, Atlanta’s period-instrument scene has been richer than in comparable cities thanks to two independent ensembles. Today, both face daunting financial obstacles.

Atlanta’s other historically-informed band, New Trinity Baroque, does have its five-concert season booked, although…

A bit of international news with local interest: Former Atlanta Symphony Orchestra artistic administrator Frank Dans, who joined the ASO in 1994 and left in May 2006 to take the same job at the more prestigious Cleveland Orchestra, one of the so-called “big five” American orchestras, is leaving the United States to become general manager of Kuala Lumpur’s Malaysian Philharmonic.

People who listen to live concerts on their computers, take note: Donald Runnicles conducts Wednesday evening at the BBC Proms festival in London, and you can hear the whole thing for the next seven days. His orchestra is the BBC Scottish Symphony, the band he’ll lead as chief conductor starting this fall. I wrote about the Proms just after the festival opened for the summer, and I’ve managed to eavesdrop on some exceptional concerts.

No surprise, the embattled Atlanta Boy Choir (ABC) has pulled 72-year-old Fletcher Wolfe (left), the group’s founding director, out of retirement and named him its interim artistic director. A board member told me Wolfe would serve “at most a year” until the permanent chief was hired, although the wording of Wolfe’s letter to parents (see below) isn’t specific.

Read today’s AJC update and read my take on the boy-choir meltdown here.

With a locally known and respected conductor in place, the ABC’s primary…

For its final concert of the summer season, the Atlanta Symphony turned over the steering wheel to a conductor who doesn’t yet have a driver’s license. At 16, Ilyich Rivas is not yet a finished artist, but he’s got a spark of personality in his conducting, and he can get a stage full of musicians to follow his every command. Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, reviewed in Monday’s AJC, he was making his U.S. professional conducting debut.

Why is 16 such a big deal? As I wrote in a preview last week:

“Outstanding young violinists or…

Last month, the Atlanta Boy Choir (ABC) asked for the resignation of its artistic director, David White. I’d heard White and the choir perform just a couple of times over the past eight years, and wasn’t especially impressed with the results — not a poor performance, by any measure, but below the national standards set by other Atlanta groups such as the Spivey Hall Children’s Choir. (I think it was Robert Shaw who, with a fundamentalist’s zeal, proclaimed, There are no bad choirs, just bad choirmasters.)