Category: music

Nancy Novograd of All Tame Animals talks about training and providing the four-legged performers who appear in Metropolitan Opera productions from time to time. She tells how one gets horses to let opera singers mount and dismount, cleaning up after Figaro’s donkey, and all about the borzoi who sang along with Renée Fleming.

In the ’90s, “[it] was acceptable to be angry and sexy, and in pop culture there were finally a bunch of role models: Courtney Love, Liz Phair, and Kathleen Hanna, to name just a few. Sadly, that potent combination of female rage and sex appeal has slipped out of the mainstream.” Is sexy anger in rock ripe for a comeback?

“‘Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog,'” Google wrote. “‘Thank you for your understanding.’ Jolly as Google may be, none of the bloggers who received these notices are ‘understanding’ in the least. “

“Cuban composers of both this century and the last tend to blur the boundaries of ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ and to assert Cuban identity through various traditional vocabularies. This melding and merging of genres is a theme, and a process that keeps Cuban musical life of all kinds infused with energy.” Not that Americans would know firsthand.

“An anonymous donor has issued a $10 million challenge grant to jump-start a $20 million fund to increase the Dallas Opera’s artistic quality and help recruit a first-rate general director.”

The Honolulu Symphony may be in dire condition, but the opera company that began in 1960 as a subdivision of that orchestra seems to be, on its own small scale, in fine shape, with healthy ticket sales and enthusiastic audiences. The golden anniversary season’s major production is no less than Wagner’s Die Walküre.

“A simmering feud between senior members of the Penang State Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Pessoc) and its new board reached a crescendo when Pessoc officials went to the musicians’ homes and took back musical instruments they have been using for years.”

“In a simulcast with similar events in Boston, Chicago and Houston, [Los Angeles] students heard about a musical competition that will give them the chance to perform alongside their city’s orchestra in concert, as well as a chance to receive instruction from professional musicians in their schools.”

“The Industrial Revolution had a significant impact on allusions to space in music, says Sally Childs-Helton, an ethnomusicologist at Butler University. … ‘We have heard songs that date back to Tin Pan Alley and earlier, back to the turn of the 19th century.'”

Alward, the British former head of classical music at EMI Group Ltd., “will replace Michael Dewitte, the festival’s managing director until December, who is now under investigation for fraud and embezzlement, [the Austrian magazine] News reported in a preview of tomorrow’s edition.”