Ancien maillot jaune du Tour de France 2007, Linus Gerdemann a remporté samedi le Tour d'Allemagne à l'issue de la huitième et dernière étape, un contre-la-montre de 34 km enlevée par son coéquipier et compatriote Tony Martin. Le Suédois Thomas Lövkvist et le Slovène Janez Brajkovic complètent le podium.

Déjà vainqueur cette saison dans les rues de Monaco, Charles Pic (Tech 1 Racing) revient sur le devant de la scène en s'imposant à domicile. Pour l'emporter, Pic a bataillé ferme face à Miguel Molina (Prema Powerteam) et Fabio Carbone (Ultimate Signature), qui rejoignent le Français sur ce podium.
Le soleil et le public sont au rendez-vous pour le départ de cette première course du week-end en Formula Renault 3.5 Series. Miguel Molina (Prema Powerteam) se place sur la première ligne avec James (...) - World Series / Giedo van der Garde

Le PDG de Monceau Fleur, Laurent Amar, peut avoir le sourire. Il vient de gravir la première marche du podium mondial du commerce de Fleurs au détail

Week-end chargé pour Salim Sdiri qui, sur le podium de la longueur au meeting Golden League de Bruxelles vendredi, sera samedi, à Charléty, au sein d'une l'équipe de France, composée également de Hurtis, Tahri, Benabbad, Boslak, Mbandjock ou encore Clavier, pour disputer le très confidentiel DécaNations, à Charléty, face à des adversaires (Etats-Unis, Russie, Allemagne, Espagne, Ukraine), réduits à cinq après les défections de la Grande-Bretagne et du Maroc et loin d'aligner leurs têtes d'affiche pour l'occasion. Malgré un genou douloureux, Sdiri sera fidèle au poste pour tenter dé défendre le premier titre conquis l'an passé par les Bleus lors de la dernière édition, avant d'enchaîner dès dimanche un troisième rendez-vous avec la réunion de Rieti, en Italie.

Engagé dans le concours de la longueur vendredi, à Bruxelles, Salim Sdiri, sans démériter, s'est hissé à la troisième place grâce à un meilleur saut, le sixième et dernier, mesuré à 7,92 m.

Le Kényan Eliud Kipchoge s'est imposé vendredi à Bruxelles sur le 5000 m. Le médaillé d'argent des Jeux Olympiques de...

Les Kenyans ont trusté vendredi le podium du 5000m du meeting Golden League de Bruxelles. En 13’06’’12, Paul Kipchoge s'est imposé devant Isaac Songok (13'06''71) et Mang'Ata Ndiwa (13'07''46).

Akon has done it again - created controversy in the Caribbean. This time, Guyana is his territory of choice. At a concert in Guyana's National Stadium that was part of the regional Carifesta celebrations, the hip-hop singer was crowd surfing his way across the sea of fans as he tried to reach a camera platform in the middle of the audience. A few celebrity-struck supporters got there before he did and there seems to have been a skirmish as Akon tried to mount the platform. Once he alighted onto the stand, he slapped one of the women hard enough to send her reeling off the podium.

Video footage of the incident is all over the Internet and Guyanese bloggers are interpreting this latest Akon outburst as a demonstration of the singer's misogyny. Living Guyana questions why the country's mainstream media failed to mention the incident in their coverage of the concert:

In all the local reports about this concert why did (they)…not report that Akon physically assaulted two females in full view of thousands of Guyanese?

Akon has a reputation of assaulting people in various forms. He dry humped with a fifteen year old young lady in Trinidad and threw a boy off the stage in the US. This guy is clearly a lunatic and needs to be locked up (sounds familiar?) to protect him from continuing his assault on innocent people.

He is even more outraged when he finds out how much Akon was paid for his performance, calling it “a US$160,000 slap in the face of Guyanese women”:

This Akon incident is another example of the kind of eye pass Guyanese have come to suffer and in fact happily tolerate. Imagine 20,000 people were there and not one had raised this moment of abuse of a Guyanese woman. Any man with any principles would have defended this woman.

This is a travesty. We call on Minister Rohee to condemn Akon and to bar him from ever entering Guyana again. Whoever this lady is she needs to get a good lawyer and sue this idiot.

Interestingly enough, Guyana911 places the blame squarely at the feet of the ladies:

Earlier when those clowns tried to get on stage…they were pushed off. You don't interrupt a concert or a national event like that. When that happens sometimes physical effort is needed to straighten out stuff.

If those two jokers want to crawl on the platform, whats Akon to do? Stand and hold the mic and just watch them? Or is he supposed to perform and ignore them while they show off their shit.

He should of punched their ass off. Teach them some self control.. Everybody knows Akon rightfully hates a woman that shows her ass off.

I'm not seeing how what Akon did was wrong.

Either way, Signifyin' Guyana thinks there are bigger issues at stake:

One of the really bothersome negatives I encountered during Carifesta was something bigger than its lack of focus (I'm still scratching my head about the relevance of some of the events, for instance), but Akon presence aside, my biggest problem with it all was the lack of inclusion of younger voices on discussions about the condition of the Caribbean region.

With the opening of the 2008-09 Concert Season, conductor JoAnn Falletta is celebrating her tenth anniversary as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra frequently shortlisted as one the best in the United States and continues to thrive even as subscriptions are down elsewhere. Falletta’s is a name also familiar from recordings; in just short of two decades she has managed to make more than fifty of them for labels such as Naxos, Koch, Delos, Albany and others. The list of orchestras that Falletta has guest conducted over the years — posted at her website at http://www.joannfalletta.com/ — is so dense that it’s blinding. However, if this were 1978, rather than 2008, such credentials as Falletta has racked up as a conductor would have been impossible. AMG’s Uncle Dave Lewis caught up with Maestro Falletta over the phone in late July.
 
 
AMG: When we first met, it was during the promotion for the Golabek Sisters’ Koch disc of Poulenc’s Babar; you were still with the Long Beach Symphony then.

JoAnn Falletta: Indeed, I have been away from California a long time now. I’m very happy in Buffalo, but I still remember California, and miss the orchestra.

AMG: Do you have a jet-setting life, holding down posts in many places and commuting, like some conductors?

JAF: Well I also led the Virginia Symphony in Norfolk, so I would travel back and forth between Virginia and Buffalo. Before I came to the Buffalo Philharmonic, I had the position in Virginia and went back and forth between Norfolk and Long Beach! I do conduct in different parts of the world, but it works out to be a very good mix. Even when I was commuting between Long Beach and Virginia, I found it stimulating.

AMG: When did you decide you wanted to be a conductor?

JAF: I fell in love with the symphony orchestra –- and the repertoire –- when I was a little girl. My family and I went to lots of concerts, and I was so impressed with the orchestra and the fact that so many people were focused together, the level of cooperation, everyone working together to make it happen.

I owe a debt to my great teachers – Sixten Ehrling and Jorge Mester. I also took master classes with Leonard Bernstein at Juilliard; he was an icon, someone who really showed what an American musician could do. On the podium he was spectacularly flamboyant and uninhibited –- wonderful!

AMG: To most outsiders, the Buffalo Philharmonic is known for the legacy of Lukas Foss and its commitment to contemporary music. Is that reputation something you maintain with the orchestra now?

JAF: In Buffalo, we continue to perform American composers and we build on what Lukas Foss did, which made Buffalo world-famous for spearheading new American music. At the time that Foss did it, it was sometimes challenging to audiences; they were so overwhelmed by the transition from the classical European model of Josef Krips and William Steinberg to the contemporary American music of the 1960s. But he established the American voice in Buffalo, and this is a part of our legacy.

We have had our own record label in Buffalo for several years –- Beau Fleuve — and work extensively with Naxos. Right now, we are working on a multi-CD project with John Corigliano on Naxos –- a release this September including Three Hallucinations from Altered States and the world premiere recording of Mr. Tambourine –- Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, with a second CD including Phantasmagoria and the Red Violin Concerto with our concertmaster, Michael Ludwig. It’s great to be able to work with John, both in rehearsal and in the recording studio. We will also be releasing on Naxos the world premiere recording of Daron Hagen’s opera Shining Brow, based on the early years of Frank Lloyd Wright and a John Adams recording including The Chairman Dances, Slonimsky’s Earbox, and Naïve and Sentimental Music. We have been doing a lot of new music, including composers such as Miguel del Aquila, Michael Daugherty, Jacob Druckman, Lukas Foss, Federico Ibarra, Aaron Kernis, Arturo Marquez, Behzad Ranjbaran, Roberto Sierra, Joan Tower, Persis Vehar, Chen Yi, and Ellen Zwilich; the audiences have been very receptive to it.

AMG: I might be asking for trouble in saying so, but it appears to me that composers are producing new music a bit easier to deal with than they did in Foss’ time.

JAF: Many composers now have a great desire to be vitally connected with the audience. They care about communication, and audiences open up to the music because the quality is very high. Composers are anxious to make those connections, and it doesn’t mean that they have to write romantic music, or in a conservative style.

AMG: Heretofore, I have been scrupulously avoiding the inevitable “female conductor question,” but there is still the notion that women conductors are unusual. I saw one of Antonia Brico’s last concerts, and I came away thinking that she was more impressive than the music she made. That was thirty years ago, but recently when your colleague Marin Alsop took over Baltimore there was some measure of opposition, and the Vienna Philharmonic still bars women members as a matter of policy. Where do think we might be now, versus what it was like in Brico’s time?

JAF: One major difference is that we have equal access to training; women conductors no longer need to be self-educated, as we are accepted in conservatories. No one here in the United States seems to feel it is a big deal anymore, though Europe is still more conservative in some respects. But there is still much more acceptance then there was just 20 years ago. Bear in mind that it’s a difficult profession for men or women, but it has changed a lot for the better in these respects.
 

JoAnn Falletta, Buffalo Philharmonic — Charles Griffes: The White Peacock

JoAnn Falletta, Buffalo Philharmonic — Frederick S. Converse: Flivver Ten Million

Michael Ludwig, violin, JoAnn Falletta, Royal Scottish National Orchestra — Erno von Dohnányi: Allegro risoluto e giosco from Violin Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 43

Andrew Russo, piano, JoAnn Falletta, Prague Philharmonia — Paul Schoenfield: Dog Heaven from Four Parables

 

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