Category: music

“Elizabeth Hurley, development director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and former vice president for development at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has been named executive director of the Grant Park Music Festival, effective Dec. 7.”

“[T]o hold up orchestras, and their relationship with conductors, as a business model is to subscribe to an idealized view of classical music as a happy sphere of beautiful golden tones. It doesn’t reflect most orchestras’ reality. Orchestras are notoriously dysfunctional places….”

Calling the lavish compensation of Carnegie Hall stagehands “an old story,” executive director Clive Gillinson “declined to say whether he would seek to reduce [stagehands’] earnings in future” but said that “reducing overtime by sharing work with others … would have a negligible effect on costs.”

“Carnegie declined to say what portion of its $70 million budget (down from $84.5 million two seasons ago) was devoted to stagehand costs, and it is not clear how much those costs contribute to, say, a $154 top-price ticket for a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert next week.”

“Composers and lyricists are among the few creatives left 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.”

“An attempt to top the Guinness world record for largest guitar ensemble, with 3,000 players performing Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ at Sunday’s West Fest concert in Golden Gate Park, fell short by about 2,950 participants – and some of those may have been playing ukuleles.”

Says the coloratura soprano, “Andalusia has everything, the music, the roots in Moroccan culture, the architecture, the beauty of the country, the pride of the people. The women are strong and free, but they don’t neglect their femininity. All of this is in flamenco music and flamenco dance. You make music with your feet.”

“Other singers have made the shift — what is unusual is that a tenor should return to his baritone roots at the end of his career. Critics have suggested that the conversion is part of an elaborate preretirement strategy; the singer hoping to end his career on, so to speak, a low note.”

“Originally expected to return from back surgery last week, Levine will now miss the complete cycle of nine Beethoven symphonies that he had programmed and the BSO had promoted enthusiastically.” Former New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel will fill in for him at Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall.

“Is this just the latest changing of the guard, as middle-age maestros move up the ladder and eminent conductors in their 80s … shed important posts? Or are the latest crop of baton-wielders, like tennis phenoms, obtaining expert training and top talent agents earlier than before?”