Category: music

“You realise there’s something hugely missing now. And I think that’s fun and creativity. That was the main thing. And I think the problem is that in the last 10-15 years it’s become about money and the money men are now running the companies, whereas traditionally it’s always been the creatives. So I think that’s a long-term thing and that’s important for the general health of the industry.”

“A leading technology company is set to launch a new digital music file format which will embed additional content for fans including lyrics, news updates and images in what could be a successor to the ubiquitous MP3 file.”

“Sweden, long considered one of the world’s most welcoming havens for digital piracy, is now showing signs of turning back toward legal, licensed music, both online and in stores. Music sales in Sweden rose 10.2 percent last year, according to the recording companies’ international trade group, even as they fell by nearly 10 percent worldwide, continuing a nearly decade-long downward spiral.”

“The reasons that conductors’ gender is still an issue for us are twofold: there are still too few female conductors in charge of orchestras (apart from Jane Glover at the Royal Academy of Music, there are no women currently in posts high up the orchestral or operatic hierarchy anywhere in Britain), and the methods and opportunities for training conductors here are pitifully patchy.”

“As many feared, jazz gigs in pubs have significantly diminished since the 2003 Licensing Act, with its cumbersome and bureaucratic new licence requirements for live performers. The news that the government was finally thinking of modifying it to exempt small venues got an audible sigh of relief.”

“Clearly, the survival of orchestras involves the reduction of their cost base, and for that to happen, managements across the country need to make their financial situation transparent to their musicians and make them full partners in creating fiscal viability for the enterprise.”

“It’s one hell of a gamble. Not only is the 42-year-old Gilbert still, in conducting terms, a baby, he is also virtually unknown, having spent eight years in the relative sticks of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. And yet the mission he has been given is to transform the orchestra and return it to the world-class form that it enjoyed under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. No mean feat.”

“In a market that is “rigged by piracy” it is non-English language music which suffers the most when the music industry tightens its belt.”

“The Long Beach Symphony announced today it has reached an agreement with a musicians’ union that would allow the orchestra to proceed with its current season and avoid canceling the 2010-11 season.” Last week the orchestra’s board “had voted to ax the 2010-11 season unless the two sides could reach an agreement by Jan. 22.”

“If you don’t like patter songs or find ¬Basingstoke inherently funny, Gilbert and Sullivan – a kind of late-Victorian Monty Python – probably isn’t for you. Second-rate productions can, undeniably, be ¬tedious. Speech and music have to be seamless; timing is vital; the mechanism is as precise – and as likely to malfunction if done hamfistedly – as Rossini.”