Category: music

“I am the artistic director of the Met. I think people like to think I’m just a marketing person, but the fact is these artistic decisions, whether you like them or not, are coming from me. They’re not coming from any board members. I made it very clear when I was hired that I am making all artistic decisions here.”

“These concerts are unusual in that the artists are not physically there — they join the show via an internet video call, and a band or musician they have collaborated with beforehand gives their music a proper performance. … If your government won’t let you play your music, a sympathetic band in the U.S. will step in.”

“Oregon Symphony President Elaine Calder has agreed to a four-year contract extension that will keep her at the top of the performing arts group through 2014.” She is credited “with building relationships with musicians and the community, growing ticket revenue, cutting expenses and retiring $7 million in long-term debt.”

“Before Samuel Zygmuntowicz begins building one of his famed instruments, he walks into his wood room and runs his hands over the many slabs, shingles and samples of lumber he’s been collecting since the 1970s.” A visit with one of America’s top luthiers in his Park Slope studio.

“Nick Eanet, who joined the Juilliard String Quartet less than a year ago as first violinist, is resigning for health reasons.”

For several years, packs of teens had been loitering at the front doors of the London Public Library, blocking entry and intimidating some patrons. Last week, the library started playing a two-song rotation of Vivaldi and Mozart over the public address system at the doorway and the problem just melted away. (Who says classical music isn’t relevant?)

“So which came first, the sad minor third in music or the sad minor third in speech? Have centuries of music in minor keys conditioned us to the sound of sadness, or has music through the ages drawn from the cadences of our speech and heightened its emotional power?”

“It’s a story about careful science, less careful journalism, and of course, death threats.”

“Protest songs — at least the kind that galvanized thousands at a time during the labour struggles of the 1920s and ’30s, anti-nuclear and civil rights marches in the 1950s, the anti-Vietnam war rallies in the 1960s and the economic upheavals in Britain during the Thatcher years — seem to have disappeared from the landscape.”

“There is less agreement about what alternatives these orchestras should pursue. We love to invoke “21st-century relevancy” without having the slightest notion of what “relevancy” truly means. Is it to entertain? To educate?”