Category: music

“[T]he instrumental sounds and full 100-voice choir that [Paul Henry] Smith coaxes from the machines, using a Nintendo Wii controller as his conductor’s baton, sound surprisingly acoustic, live, and real.”

“No, that’s not a person – it’s the name of a computer program written by University of California, Santa Cruz professor David Cope that, after nearly three decades of work, is about to release, uh, ‘her’ first CD through Centaur Records.”

Charlotte Higgins: “The wall of aggressive sound – of booing – that greeted the director and designers on the first night of Tristan on Tuesday was boorish, callow and just plain rude. In no other artform do artists – and it is always directors and designers – get such a hard time.” (Gosh, why might that be?)

“Violinists, bassoonists and timpanists in Cuba? Fine. A bevy of rich Americans? Sorry. The New York Philharmonic scratched its trip to Cuba at the end of October because the United States government was barring a group of patrons from going along.”

The production’s Cavaradossi, Marcelo Alvarez, “likens parts of Luc Bondy’s controversial new production of Puccini’s Tosca to a car wreck. ‘It’s like there’s an accident in the middle of street: People say, “Ah, I don’t want to go.” But they want to see the blood’.” (And yes, some tenors do think.)

“Directors should claim the freedom to reinterpret a work.” But productions that don’t go far enough in breaking with tradition, like Luc Bondy’s “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera, can be far less successful than an “unabashedly avant-garde approach to a staple,” like Achim Freyer’s “Ring” cycle at the Los Angeles Opera.

“[I]nside an oak-paneled studio on West 44th Street in Manhattan … a small team from Sony Music Entertainment performs the divine digital act of preserving the company’s archives,” digging “into a storehouse of recordings, from Sousa and Caruso to Dylan and Miles Davis, protecting the unique and the endangered from the erosions of the past.”

“Some announcers will remain. The Metropolitan Opera will still be heard on Saturdays. Religious programming will disappear. Don’t expect to hear much vocal music. Vivaldi? ‘Just about anything’.” (Well, except the sacred music.)

“‘I think that we have found a leader who is as smart as can be, and who is deeply and successfully experienced in leading an orchestra,’ said new board chairman Richard B. Worley. ‘I think she’s creative, and she has pizzazz’.”

“Because different kinds of music can on some level be construed as props in different (sub-)cultural tableaux with costumes, affected social postures, and so on, young people can define their dress, behavior, and language outward from the kind of music they listen to.”