Category: music

“France has become a center of stylistic blending. They do it so well in part because it resonates with their cultural history, but also because the current wave of immigration from Africa has produced a conflictual combination of obsessive anxiety and fascination. … In French pop one hears what France could become if it got over its hysteria about immigrants.”

“Like many top American ensembles, the Philharmonic has fluctuated between worship of the glorious past (pretty damn good, no?) and the altogether messier business of interacting with these living guys (I’ll give it to them, we can be unpleasant!); sometimes the pendulum swings by the decade and sometimes by the week. We see and read about it all.”

“The crooner took three of the four trophies he was up for yesterday – the Juno Fan Choice Award, Single of the Year and the coveted Album of the Year for his latest release, Crazy Love.”

“Travel disruptions from Europe’s volcanic ash problem have brought a heavy measure of turmoil to the classical music world. More than in many other fields, its practitioners — conductors, singers, pianists and other instrumentalists — depend on plane flights.”

“So was the good Stravinsky a Russian Stravinsky? Well, what makes a Russian a Russian? By citizenship Stravinsky was not Russian after 1918. By cultural orientation, it could be argued, he stopped being Russian in 1922.”

Increasingly, band that have “made it” are creating their own labels and promoting other bands on them. “Watch out – these band-members-turned-A&Rs might just be getting it right.”

“Opera Australia has blamed its first financial loss in six years on the tourist downturn and poor programming choices in 2009 and it expects to report another deficit for 2010.”

“Today, through a combination of top quality soft synths, Sonar, Sibelius, and a screen reader called JAWS, I’m able to create in a diverse collection of genres governed only by my own musical taste and the professional opportunities that present themselves.”

“The Oregon Symphony is asking the city of Portland for $200,000 to help it get to Carnegie Hall next year. The request appears on a list of special appropriations in the mayor’s 2010-11 budget. But the orchestra’s request comes at a difficult time – with a tight city budget in an election year – when the needs of police, schools, firefighters and transportation are dire.”

Violinist Murray Somerville: “I watched this [Tennessee] fiddle player, and his bowing looked so much like a Baroque violinist’s – the loose wrist, the grip high on the bow. When I asked where he’d learned these techniques, he said ‘I just play the way my daddy taught me’.”