Category: music

“As a composer I have avoided the orchestra, which is actually pretty easy for most composers to do since the orchestra largely ignores us. Much has been made about how despite what a wonderful timbral resource the orchestra is, there are so many limits as to what a composer can do with it based on the limits of rehearsal time and the weight of established conventions (on administrators, orchestra musicians, conductors, and audiences alike).”

“Radio broadcasters hate the idea of performance royalties — really, really hate it. They’re speaking up in Congress and on air.” Among the most vocal is Cathy Hughes, “the legendary founder of Radio One, the country’s largest chain of black radio stations.”

“After more than two decades, there is a new recording for what is increasingly being understood to be an American classic,” conducted by Marin Alsop. “But where’s Peter? No mention of Sellars is anywhere to be found on the Naxos three-CD set, as if Denver were the new China, where an inconvenient artist might be ‘disappeared’ Soviet-style.”

In response to a report that the thrice-postponed premiere of the piece was due to Wynton Marsalis’s creative block, the composer’s primary copyist writes, “I have the full score of the Blues Symphony complete with all seven movements. The piece is not being played in it’s [sic] entirety because of a lack of rehearsal time, not because the piece has not been finished.”

“Covent Garden is offering 11- to 14-year-old composers the chance not only to have a piece commissioned by the House, but also played there every night. OK, so we’re not talking about a full-scale work: the competition is to write a fanfare to replace the hideous, deafening school bell that is rung to mark the end of the interval.”

“Cameron Poole, 35, is believed to have siphoned off the cash over four years to pay for holidays, clothing, antiques and upgrades to his family’s £900,000 four-bedroom home…. He quit the orchestra in August and his former bosses — who receive in excess of £2 million a year from the Arts Council England — have launched a High Court action to recover the cash.”

“The worlds of music and science, as Mr. Glass sees it, are not that far apart. For starters, he is skeptical of science’s claim to objectivity. ‘Mathematicians are subject to the same kinds of enthusiasms as everybody else,’ ” he says.

“Geoff Smith believes he has come up with the first multicultural acoustic piano – what he has trademarked as a fluid piano – which allows players to alter the tuning of notes either before or during a performance. Instead of a pianist having a fixed sound, 88 notes from 88 keys, Smith’s piano has sliders allowing them access to the different scales that you get in, for example, Indian and Iranian music.”