Category: music

“I explained the importance of retrieving my bag by the following day since I was following the Philadelphia Orchestra to Korea and then China…. ‘Philadelphia Orchestra’ turned out to be a fairly magical pair of words.” But the lost-baggage people “were even more impressed when I said that [the bag’s contents included] a shopping bag from the Juilliard School of Music bookstore.”

“Studies done in past decades make clear that, up through the 1960s, the median age for classical music in the U.S. was around 30. … [Greg] Sandow doesn’t pretend he has any quick fixes for a complex socio-cultural problem, but he does believe part of the solution involves thoroughly overhauling the ways classical music is being packaged, marketed and presented.”

For its premiere at Dallas Opera, the “mise-en-scène incorporates both traditional stage spectacle and the latest in 21st-century opera-house technology. So audiences can watch the crew of the Pequod (singers as well as expert climbers) scamper up rigging. And, thanks to projections on those big sails, they can also savor the whaler’s long journey from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific.”

“[O]nly one thing matters when it comes to Diane P. Wood, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and University of Chicago law professor who is believed to be among the president’s top picks to replace outgoing Justice John Paul Stevens. … It might even be more important than her stance on abortion. Wood is an oboist.”

The Philharmonic presents its first fully-staged opera, Ligeti’s Grand Macabre, next month. And it’snot stopping there: “Though it hasn’t yet been announced, [Alan] Gilbert is planning to bring to the Phil the first complete New York production of Olivier Messiaen’s five-hour opera St. Francis of Assisi, … tentatively planned for 2013.”

“Cellist Tony Woollard was sifting through material for his CD of recordings by British composers when he made a remarkable discovery – a previously unrecorded work by Sir William Walton. What makes Woollard’s find all the more extraordinary is that the piece was written for the Prince of Wales 40 years ago.”

“The Metropolitan Opera, hobbled by the ailments of its maestro, James Levine, has moved to bolster its musical direction by appointing a principal guest conductor, only the second in its recent history. He is Fabio Luisi” – who has stepped in for Levine several times this season to general acclaim.

“When will Canada grant equal status to those whose hearts are more likely to be set aflutter by the sound of great music in a concert hall than by the sight of goons on skates smashing one another into the boards? I have a dream, a personal feel-good movie, in which the crowds roar their approval as the artist team rallies and the scoreboard flashes Hockey Night in Canada 4, Cultural Weekend 6.”

“Though it does not say so explicitly,” a new book that covers four generations of classical musicians in the city “underlines the extent to which the white and black classical music worlds operated separately, or maintained an uneasy coexistence. (The city had two musicians unions for decades: Local 77 for whites, and, from 1935 until 1971, Local 274 for blacks.)”

“I think the strongest message the White House could send to our nation about classical music is that it’s actually enjoyable. There’s a certain gravitas associated with the office of the president, but music should represent a way to break free of that. There’s no better way to send a signal about the benefits of classical music than to show Obama having fun listening to it.”