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Talk about orchestral manoeuvres http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080204.SEGUIN04/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Music/ A young Montreal conductor has landed two high-profile gigs in Europe. It may be a while before Canada gets him back to lead an orchestra at home, writes Robert Everett-Green ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN February 4, 2008 How did he get that job? A lot of conductors must have had that thought about Yannick Nézet-Séguin recently, probably more than once. Till last spring, Nézet-Séguin was known mainly in the Montreal area, as the music director of l'Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal and a frequent conductor of l'Opéra de Montréal. His guest-conducting appearances elsewhere in Canada and the United States had been well received, and he had built a respectable library of recordings with the ATMA label in Quebec. It seemed only a matter of time before the 32-year-old Montrealer began to move up the ladder of orchestral jobs in Canada. Everything changed in April, when Nézet-Séguin surprised everyone (including himself) by becoming the next principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He will replace Valery Gergiev, one of the most prominent and exciting conductors on the planet. In November, the London Philharmonic announced that they too wanted a steady relationship with the young Canadian, who will become the orchestra's principal guest conductor at about the same time he starts work in the Netherlands next fall. His first gigs with his new colleagues are still months away, but Nézet-Séguin seems certain to become the most prominent orchestral conductor Canada has ever produced. Print Edition - Section Front getSLinks("topStoriesInSection","LAC.20080204.SEGUIN04",5); Historically, we've done better in the world's opera houses, both in singing and conducting. Wilfrid Pelletier was a fixture on the podium at the Metropolitan Opera in the forties, Mario Bernardi conducted Sadlers Wells in the sixties, and Yves Abel and Keri-Lynn Wilson (conductors of Nézet-Séguin's generation) both have busy careers, mainly in Europe. Nézet-Séguin had only done a handful of concerts in Europe before arriving in Rotterdam for his debut program as a guest conductor, some months after Gergiev had announced his departure. He knew they were shopping, and liked the idea of a job in Europe, but thought it would take another four or five years to get one. "I never imagined I was a real candidate," he said during a phone conversation, in advance of four performances in Toronto. "Maybe that's what got me the job, because I didn't act like someone who wanted the job. I just worked the way I always do." Even so, he was aware that he was coming under sharper scrutiny than usual, from players who have a lot of sway individually over who runs the show. "An orchestra in a search is always a strange animal," he said. "I could feel they were testing me more than usual, asking more questions, resisting things I was asking them to do, to see if I had the balls to go ahead." He describes himself as a risk-taker, willing to follow the impulse of the moment in performance even if it means colouring over the lines a little. That approach got a strong stamp of approval from the Dutch musicians, who voted unanimously in favour of his appointment. His candidacy was also helped by his repertoire, if only because it doesn't overlap much with that of his predecessor. Gergiev's programs included plenty of Russian works, while Nézet-Séguin favours French music and late-Romantic Germanic repertoire: the symphonies of Mahler and Bruckner, and the tone poems and orchestral songs of Richard Strauss. The same logic advanced Nézet-Séguin's case at the London Philharmonic, which was looking for a foil for its new principal conductor, Vladimir Jurowski. The orchestra had a "great tradition" in the works of Mahler and Bruckner during the reign of the late Klaus Tennstedt, Nézet-Séguin said, and they wanted someone to carry that on. He said he has been offered "almost total freedom" in programming his four concerts a year. Nézet-Séguin initially studied piano with Anisia Campos at the Conservatoire in Montreal, though he knew he wanted to be a conductor by the time he was 10. He was particularly impressed by his early experience of concerts in a park, given by Charles Dutoit and l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. "Dutoit would introduce pieces and be very accessible, and that had a big impact on me as a little boy," he said. "If it had not been for this, I would maybe never have been a conductor." He began singing in the Catholic Cathedral choir when he was 8 or 9, eventually became a section leader, and took over as music director at age 18. He did extra work in harmony, analysis and history at the Conservatoire, but only took one year of formal conducting study, with Raffi Armenian. "My main conducting teacher was actually my piano teacher, because a conductor is also an interpreter," he said. "She was a very old-school teacher, very strict and demanding. She wouldn't allow any compromise in my piano study just because I wanted to be a conductor. I remember some years, I was really angry with her, because she wanted to develop some aspect of my playing that I considered very superficial. But I'm so grateful now. I couldn't have wished for a better teacher." He spent a couple of summers at a choral-conducting workshop in Princeton, N.J., and a year of informal study with Carlo Maria Giulini, whom he followed around Europe, sitting in on rehearsals and occasionally meeting with the conductor. Nézet-Séguin was much impressed by Giulini's "very simple and human approach to everything, to the music and to the musicians. He was very calm and respectful and collegial, whether he was working with l'Orchestre de Paris or a Spanish youth orchestra. I didn't know what to do with the amount of respect he was showing me." Gradually he realized that he was being taught the value of an open, trusting attitude, toward others and inevitably toward oneself. Ironically, he never had much contact with his first conducting hero, Dutoit. "I tried twice to get permission to attend rehearsals with the OSM. I wrote them two letters, that were never answered." The usual route for young Canadian conductors trying to get noticed is to enter competitions, leave the country, and jockey for an assistant's job with some well-known conductor. Nézet-Séguin was considering those options when l'Orchestre Métropolitain asked him to become its music director in 2000. "When they offered me the job, I was really ready to leave, and become an assistant somewhere else," he said. Some people even counselled him to do that anyway, because they feared that if he stayed in Montreal with the city's "second" orchestra, he would be seen as a merely local conductor. "I'm very thankful that Canada trusted me very early," he said. "Because I did not really expect that." He remains fiercely loyal to his home town and his first orchestra. When the Berlin Philharmonic approached him with an offer to conduct three concerts in December, he turned them down, because he was already booked to perform several school concerts with l'Orchestre Métropolitain. "It's a matter of survival, musically and personally, to be part of my own community," he said. His parents and two sisters, who are all teachers, still live in Montreal, and he expects to return often once he takes up his posts in Europe. And he plans to take Canadian music with him in the other direction. His Dutch audiences are probably ready for more Canadian music: Montreal's Claude Vivier may actually be better known in the Netherlands than in Canada, thanks to a major retrospective of the late composer's music at the Holland Festival several years ago. "Rotterdam is a very modern city, and is known for its modern architecture and contemporary art," Nézet-Séguin said. "But the orchestra is quite conservative. So one of the goals is to develop the range of repertoire and to try to be more daring." It sounds like a good berth for a young conductor with an appetite for risk. The next question on this side of the water is whether we'll ever get him back, to lead a major Canadian orchestra. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a Tchaikovsky program with l'Orchestre Métropolitain at various Montreal-area venues from tonight through Friday (http://www.orchestremetropolitain.com). He performs music of Tchaikovsky and Dvorak with pianist Yundi Li and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on Feb. 13, 14 and 16 at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall; and Bach's St. Matthew Passion with Toronto's Bach Consort at Eglinton St. George's United Church on Feb. 15.

(Courtesy of The Canadian Press) OT: How about also raising the spending limit for shopping in the US. Would be nice if we could come back after a a day with $500 CDN (goods) and week with $2000 CDN (goods)

(Courtesy of CNBC - Mad Money) Video + Article

Début de récession dès cette année, croissance quasi-nulle en 2009, hausse du chômage et dérapage des déficits: l'Europe doit s'attendre à une vraie crise économique après celle des marchés financiers. Pour en lire plus...

La récession sera «profonde et durable» et devrait coûter quelque 3,5 millions d'emplois à l'Union européenne en 2009, estime l'exécutif des 27 dans des prévisions publiées lundi. Pour en lire plus...

Le constructeur automobile japonais amincit sa liste de paie dans son usine anglaise de Sunderland, face à la chute des ventes de voitures en Europe. Pour en lire plus...

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7725979.stm Published: 2008/11/13 09:47:01 GMT © BBC MMVIII

Le premier groupe sidérurgique mondial, ArcelorMittal, annonce la suppression de 9000 emplois dans le monde, dont les deux tiers en Europe. Aucune précision quant aux emplois au Canada. Pour en lire plus...

Les bourses asiatiques clôturent en forte baisse, jeudi, dans le sillage des marchés nord-américains. À Tokyo, le Nikkei a dégringolé de près de 7%. La morosité règne aussi en Europe. Pour en lire plus...

L'indice phare de la Bourse de Tokyo perd 11 % de sa valeur dans le sillage de Wall Street, qui a connu sa pire journée depuis 1987. La chute se poursuit en Europe. Pour en lire plus...

Un calme tendu régnait jeudi sur les marchés boursiers, qui ont ouvert à la hausse en Europe, à la veille de grands rendez-vous financiers à Washington. Pour en lire plus...

YUL-Barcelona increased to 4 weekly frequencies (from 3) YUL-Venezia increased to 3 weekly (from 2) YUL-Nice increased to 4 weekly (from 3) Total number of international daily departures in Summer 2016: 11

Et voici plein de nouveaux Montréalais en puissance... http://www.mri.gouv.qc.ca/portail/_scripts/Actualites/ViewNew.asp?NewID=10177&Menu=default&lang=fr&strIdSite=bru http://www.mri.gouv.qc.ca/PDF/actualites/NouvAffiche%20Bruxelles%20International%20Day.pdf Pas mal fait ce site: http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/placeauquebec/fr/

http://journalmetro.com/actualites/montreal/350694/luc-ferrandez-montreal-doit-faire-preuve-dambition/

GFCI 16 provides profiles, rating and rankings for 83 financial centres, drawing on two separate sources of data - instrumental factors (external indices) and responses to an online survey. 105 factors have been used in GFCI 16, of which 42 have been updated since GFCI 15 and 4 are new. New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore remain the top four centres. All fourt centres lose.points in the GFCI ratings but retain their relative ranks. New York remains the top centre but by only one point on a scale of 1,000. Following GFCI 15, London remains just behind New York due to uncertainty over the UK’s position in Europe, regulatory creep and the UK appearing to be less welcoming to foreigners all being contributing factors. ... Montreal went from 16th to 18th but still is in the top 20 !! http://www.zyen.com

(Courtesy of The Globe and Mail) First stop London, next stop global domination!

voiçi quelques images j'ai pris de l'entrée de la gare de Lille Europe:

The banking system in eastern Europe is increasingly vulnerable to a severe economic downturn, Moody’s has warned, saying western European banks with local subsidiaries are at risk of ratings downgrades. “The relative vulnerabilties in east European banking systems will be exposed by an increasingly tougher operating environment in eastern Europe as a result of a steep and long economic downturn coupled with macroeconomic vulnerabilities,” Moody’s said in a report. The ratings agency said it expected “continuous downward pressure on east European bank ratings” because of deteriorating asset quality, falling local currencies, exposure to a regional slump in real-estate and the units’ reliance on scarce short-term funding. Eurozone banks have the largest exposure to central and eastern Europe, with liabilities of $1,500bn – about 90 per cent of total foreign bank exposure to the region. Shares of the handful of banks with substantial investments in eastern Europe – led by Austria’s Raiffeisen and Erste Bank, Société Générale of France, Italy’s UniCredit (which owns Bank Austria) and Belgian group KBC – tumbled after the ratings agency said it was concerned about the impact of a slowdown and the ability of the parent banks to support their support units in the region. The Austrian banking system is the most vulnerable, with eastern Europe accounting for nearly half of its foreign loans, while Italian banks are exposed to Poland and Croatia and Scandinavian institutions to the Baltic states. Central and eastern European currencies have come under intense pressure in recent weeks. The credit crisis has raised fears over the region’s ability to finance its current account deficits and slowing global growth has heightened concerns over the health of its export-dependent economies. The Polish zloty plunged to a five-year low against the euro on Tuesday, while the Czech koruna hit a three-year trough against the single currency and the Hungarian forint falling to a record low. The Prague and Warsaw stock indices meanwhile fell to their lowest levels in five years, while the smaller markets of Budapest, Zagreb and Bucharest skirted close to multi-year lows. The euro dropped to a two-month low against the dollar on Tuesday on heightened concerns over eurozone banks’ exposure to the worsening conditions in eastern Europe. Amid the growing sense of crisis in eastern European economies, Hungary on Tuesday outlined plans to save Ft210bn (€680m, $860m) this year to prevent an increase in the budget deficit. Hungary’s economy is expected to contract by up to 3 per cent this year, much more than earlier expectations. Antje Praefcke at Commerzbank said eastern European currencies were in a “self-feeding depreciation spiral.” “The creditworthiness of local banks, companies and private households, who hold mainly foreign currency denominated debt, is deteriorating with each depreciation in eastern European currencies, thus further undermining confidence in the currencies,” she said. Ms Praefcke said further depreciation of eastern European currencies was thus a distinct possibility, which was likely to undermine the euro. “The collapse of these currencies is likely to constitute a risk for the euro,” she said. “So far markets have largely ignored this fact, but are unlikely to be able to maintain this approach if the weakness of the eastern European currencies continues.” Western European banks have piled into the former Communist countries in recent years as economic growth in the region outpaced domestic gains. The accession of 10 new members to the European Union in 2004, and of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, added to optimism about the region. In 2007, Raiffeisen and Erste Bank earned the vast majority of their pre-tax profits in eastern European countries including Russia and Ukraine. Since the onset of the global financial crisis, Hungary, Latvia and Ukraine have all received emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund, with other countries in the region expected to follow.

L'avalanche de mauvaises nouvelles pour l'économie de la zone euro devrait continuer lundi avec la publication des nouvelles perspectives de Bruxelles pour 2009 et 2010, alimentant l'inquiétude sur l'ampleur de la récession et des déficits. Pour en lire plus...

Tata lance la voiture la moins chère du monde AFP Édition du mardi 24 mars 2009 Alors que l'industrie automobile en Europe et aux États-Unis fait les frais de la crise, Tata lance la voiture la moins chère du monde, la Nano, dont les premiers modèles seront livrés en juillet en Inde. Les consommateurs visés? Les millions d'Indiens qui ne peuvent s'offrir une voiture classique. Des problèmes ont toutefois retardé la production de la Nano, qui soulève aussi l'ire de certains écologistes. Mumbai -- Le groupe indien Tata a lancé hier la voiture la moins chère du monde, la Nano, un véhicule «révolutionnaire» à 2000 $US pour les classes moyennes émergentes de l'Inde, mais aussi pour l'Occident en pleine crise économique. «Nous sommes ravis de présenter la Nano à l'Inde et au monde», a déclaré Ratan Tata, président du conglomérat éponyme, lors d'une cérémonie en grande pompe à Mumbai pour cette mini-automobile à ultra bas coût «offerte au peuple indien et plus tard à d'autres marchés ailleurs dans le monde». Promise aux Indiens au tarif record de 100 000 roupies (2000 $US) dans sa version la plus rudimentaire, la Nano pourrait être vendue en Europe en 2010-11 --mais à 5000 euros -- avec des équipements répondant aux normes de sécurité et de pollution, avait annoncé M. Tata au salon automobile de Genève en mars. Alors que l'industrie automobile en Europe et aux États-Unis fait les frais de la récession, «la situation économique actuelle rend [la Nano] plus attrayante», a-t-il relevé. En Inde, les commandes débuteront le 9 avril pour des livraisons en juillet, a précisé le patron de la filiale Tata Motors, Ravi Kant. Tata vise les dizaines de millions de foyers indiens positionnés entre les classes urbaines bourgeoises et les milieux défavorisés et qui ne peuvent pas s'offrir une voiture classique. «J'ai observé ces familles sur des deux-roues: le père au guidon d'un scooter, son fils assis devant lui, sa femme juchée derrière et tenant leur bébé», racontait M. Tata l'an passé. «La Nano leur fournira un moyen de transport à quatre roues, sûr et abordable», a-t-il plaidé hier. Déjà dévoilée au monde entier en janvier 2008, cette «voiture du peuple» est animée par un minuscule moteur de 624 cm3 -- celui d'une bonne moto -- qui la fera plafonner à 105 km/h, sans freins ABS, ni direction assistée, ni climatisation. Mais à peine 50 000 exemplaires devraient être produits cette année, contre une prévision initiale de 250 000 unités par an, en raison d'obstacles rencontrés par Tata Motors qui ont retardé de plusieurs mois la mise en production. En octobre, le premier groupe automobile indien avait dû abandonner l'usine de la Nano quasiment achevée dans l'État du Bengale occidental et en construire une autre au Gujarat. Après y avoir investi 350 millions $US, Tata avait été poussé hors du Bengale par des paysans ulcérés par la réquisition de leurs terres pour en faire une zone industrielle. Et comme l'usine du Gujarat ne sera pas terminée avant la fin de l'année, Tata a rapidement assemblé ses premiers modèles dans un autre site. «C'est un lancement à la va-vite», a critiqué Mahantesh Sabarad, du courtier Centrum Broking, qui se dit par ailleurs «inquiet de la demande des consommateurs» au vu de «la contraction des salaires et [des] craintes pour l'emploi» en Inde. De fait, la dixième puissance économique de la planète est violemment frappée par la crise mondiale, notamment avec une baisse de la consommation, le moteur de la croissance. Déjà, les ventes de voitures ont chuté de 20 % fin 2008, après des années de progression à deux chiffres. Avec la Nano, «j'en aurai pour mon argent», s'est toutefois félicité Hasmukh Kakadia, un cadre financier qui veut se débarrasser de sa Ford Fiesta achetée à 13 000 $US. «Dans une économie en berne, je réfléchirais à deux fois avant de mettre de l'argent dans une nouvelle voiture. Mais pas pour celle-là», a-t-il dit. Reste que la Nano alarme les écologistes: «Un mode de transport pas viable pour l'Inde» avait dit en 2008 l'Indien Rajendra Pachauri -- président du Groupe international d'experts sur le changement climatique (GIEC) et prix Nobel de la paix 2007 -- dont le pays est déjà le troisième pollueur de la planète.

MaltBroue de Cabano, qui produit cinq types de malts pour la fabrication de la bière, souhaite devenir le principal fournisseur des 60 microbrasseries du Québec qui s'approvisionnent principalement en Europe et aux États-Unis. Pour en lire plus...

L'Organisation mondiale du commerce approuve les sanctions nord-américaines imposées à l'Europe en réaction à l'interdiction d'importation en Europe de boeuf canadien et américain contenant des hormones de croissance. Pour en lire plus...

La Banque centrale européenne (BCE) abaissera son taux directeur d'un demi-point de pourcentage cette semaine, prévoient les experts. Pour en lire plus...

La confiance des chefs d'entreprises et des consommateurs s'est effondrée en novembre à son plus bas niveau depuis 23 ans dans l'Union européenne. Pour en lire plus...

Les vendeurs et les constructeurs automobiles canadiens suggèrent à Ottawa de mettre en place un incitatif de 3500$ pour les consommateurs qui changent leur veille voiture pour une neuve, comme cela se fait en Europe. Pour en lire plus...