Category: music

“Colorado Public Radio (CPR) said Wednesday it will stage an unusual three-day on-air fundraising drive for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (CSO) that will include a live broadcast of a CSO performance featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma.”

“Punters and employees at the Eros Centre in Leipzig [will] be treated on Friday to six musicians and a singer from the city’s Forum for Contemporary Music (FZML) performing ‘licentious and erotic’ works.”

“According to L.A. Opera, ‘The 110 Project’ tells the story of four central characters as it travels through 70 years of L.A. history” in communities along the freeway. “So what will the opera sound like? You guessed it: the music is said to be inspired by freeway sounds….”

“Composers and lyricists are among the few Hollywood creatives without a collective bargaining agreement. Services like orchestration, conducting and music performance are covered by American Federation of Musicians (AFM) agreements, but not the act of writing music or lyrics.”

“Part of the appeal of percussion music is visual.” Indeed, “the extramusical elements may be the reason percussion music is so popular with audiences, and often draws crowds that are substantially younger than average.”

The Washington Post‘s classical critic answers ten questions about the decade past, covering such issues as the decline of record labels, the rise of the Web, hits (in both senses) at the box office, and the trajectory of classical radio. And she predicts the future. (“Classical music will survive. I predict that.”)

“How many tweets does it take to cover the entire span of opera history? The San Diego Opera wants to find out and has launched a Twitter project in which it will tweet about everything from Monteverdi to Mozart to Philip Glass on a daily basis. With more than 400 years to cover – and at a rate of two tweets per day – the project could take years to finish.”

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia has tapped Belgian Dirk Brossé, 49, to succeed pianist/conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, its music director for the past 16 years. Solzhenitsyn is departing “a year before the end of his current contract,” becoming conductor laureate next season, when Brossé begins his four-year contract.

The appointment “is the culmination of a three-year artistic courtship between Mr. Feinstein and Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.” The singer and pianist will direct a new popular music series as “part of a larger plan to broaden programming.”

“The event was called to order by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, banging a gavel to quell the applause that greeted her appearance, and then provoking laughter with her witty (and knowledgeable) observations about the links between opera and the legal profession, citing all the operas that have courtroom or jail scenes.”