Category: music

“Faced with nearly 40-percent-empty houses and the threat of bankruptcy, musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have agreed to a freeze on minimum salaries for next season, early negotiations for a new contract, and a hiring freeze with certain qualifications.”

“Born in La Plata, Argentina to Romanian-Jewish immigrants nearly 50 years ago, Golijov now lives just outside Boston, as one of the world’s most admired composers. The reason why his music connects so magnetically with performers and audiences alike is its clear appeal to the senses.”

“When the Kronos Quartet hit its stride during the late ’80s, its concerts were powerful, absorbing affairs, not despite their extra-musical trappings but in part because of them. Surprisingly, Kronos has spawned relatively few imitators. But in a larger sense the Kronos influence is everywhere.”

“Last year saw a 21% drop in the number of people in the U.S. buying music — both digital and physical — compared with 2007, according to figures released Thursday by NPD Group, a market research firm.”

German violinist Christian Tetzlaff “says he needs only six hours of sleep, doesn’t suffer from too many traveler’s bugs and hasn’t canceled a concert because of illness in 15 years. A bigger problem: He is not very organized. He lost his sheet music between Ottawa and Toronto last year….”

“Modern [sic] classical music is so widely disliked by audiences because the human brain struggles to find patterns it needs to understand the compositions as music.”

In today’s classical music, “there are only mezzo-sopranos: should you wish to employ a contralto, you will search the websites of singers’ agents in vain. Have women’s voices changed over the past 50 years, as the result of something put in the water or taken out of the diet? Or have contraltos merely gone into embarrassed hiding?”

“As the day of the first class approached, I got a little anxious. Would I be expected to actually write some music? After all, at the final class, [American Composers Orchestra] musicians were going to be on hand to play some of the new compositions. And how could I possibly pull something (music) out of nothing (thin air)?”

Jun Märkl, music director of the Opéra and Orchestre national de Lyon, “has been butting heads with that orchestra’s general director, Laurent Langlois, since the latter’s appointment last May.” The conductor has filed a lawsuit charging “that Langlois’s meddling has violated the terms of his contract.”

In what may be a first for the ubiquitous Grammy-winning opera star, Fleming is traveling way downtown in her new album, ‘Dark Hope,’ in which she performs pieces by indie-rock bands including Muse, Arcade Fire, Band of Horses and Death Cab For Cutie.” The closing track will be Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”