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Australia’s state governments are recating angrily to proposed cuts in federal support for the countrey’s orchestras. “The cuts would be made at the Tasmanian, South Australian and Queensland orchestras and the redundancies would cost $3 million. Governments in those states say they are appalled by the plan. They say the Federal Government will use the report’s findings to centralise the nation’s arts resources in Sydney and Melbourne.”

A new Australian government report recommends reducing the number of musicians in the country’s major orchestras. The author of the report “doesn’t like to call them ‘player cuts’. He refers to ‘a reduction in the permanent establishment’ of the Queensland Orchestra (from 89 to 74 musicians), Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (from 74 to 56) and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (from 47 to 38, or a large chamber orchestra). ‘Any suggestion there be less players [will be] met with some emotion. But we’ve tried to be realistic and look at long-term viability’.”

“Sydney is the only city in Australia that can justify two orchestras, and it’s unrealistic for the others to expect world-class standards from even one, a new report says.”

The City of Chicago and its musicians have been on uneasy terms for several years. But “a multifaceted dialogue involving city officials, club owners, record-company and studio owners and music-industry veterans has created the Chicago Music Commission, which aims to raise Chicago’s profile internationally, turn its musical variety into a major tourist attraction and bring millions of additional dollars into city coffers and businesses. One city official called it the Chicago cultural equivalent of the Czech Republic’s “velvet revolution,” in which the communist regime quietly gave way to the coun-try’s first free elections in 40 years.”

David Patrick Stearns doesn’t think much of attempts to marry orchestra music with images. “My newest theory on the subject is this: Sight and sound are a perpetually uneasy marriage and always will be. So how about an annulment, or at least separate bedrooms – allowing cohabitation rights without the responsibility of mutual support? Even when video and music are successfully manipulated to work toward one goal, they just might compete for the same part of your brain and cancel each other out. Maybe sight and sound can happen simultaneously without everyone working so strenuously to achieve some unified statement. Maybe greater dividends arise from an un-unified statement.”

Why does music sometimes get stuck in your head? “A team from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, played music to volunteers while using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imagery to scan their brains. As the music was played, parts of the tune were cut. Researchers found volunteers mentally filled in the blanks if a familiar song was missing snippets, although the same effect was not seen with unfamiliar tunes. The brain activity was picked up by the scan and found to be centred in the auditory cortex.”