Category: music

“The conflict is rooted in proposed base salary cuts of 28% in the first year, from $104,650 to about $75,000. Management says the cuts are crucial to the survival of the recession-battered DSO, which is hemorrhaging cash and mortgaged up to its piccolos. The players say the cuts would downgrade the orchestra permanently from its status among the country’s elite.”

“Scottish Opera plans to halve the working hours and salaries of its acclaimed orchestra in a radical scheme to save money, … paying the [54] musicians for 26 weeks’ work a year.” The company, which went dark in 2005-06 in order to avoid collapse, presents four to five mainstage productions a year.

“Some of Broadway’s best are taking the stage for New York City Opera’s forthcoming new concert series … Performers including Kelli O’Hara, Christine Ebersole, Donna Murphy and Michael Cerveris will appear on behalf of the company as part of the new series, which kicks off with the opera’s fall gala, ‘An Evening with Christine Brewer’.”

“Over the course of his career Andrea Bocelli has sold millions of records, helped to close out the 2010 World Cup in a grand finale concert, performed ‘Jingle Bells’ with the Muppets and been praised by no less an authority than Celine Dion. But he has never performed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.” This oversight is now being remedied.

“Criticism is not an exact science, and the paper would have done its readers a service by regularly publishing contrasting points of view on the city’s No. 1 cultural venture. Instead, the editors came off looking like a bunch of spineless small-timers who let the Cleveland Orchestra roll them.”

“It rips the mask off the studio tricks for your everyday music fan. If someone wants to sing and they want to know how reverb or phasing or flanging works, they can play with it.”

“You remember the frenetic pace of the Dutoit summers, and the number of programs and concerts and park concerts he did. Glad we are not in that ringer anymore, but there must be some middle ground somewhere.”

Boston fans still give Levine credit for making the orchestra play better when he’s there, but at this point he usually isn’t. “My sense is that the public and the musicians themselves are very frustrated with the situation,” Eichler says, “as surely Levine must be as well.”

“The [Australian] state’s second orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, which supports ballet and opera performances at the Arts Centre, appears to be in crisis following the loss of more than half of its management this year.”

“With record sales dwindling and digital downloads the medium of choice — 62% of first-week sales of “The Suburbs” were digital — the music business is showing even more signs of flattening, a reality evident at labels throughout Southern California.”