Category: music

Watching a composer consider – with the help of some of his 2,000 Facebook friends – just how to score his new concerto for trombone and wind instruments.

Halloween in the Castro, a satirical “horror opera” by Jack Curtis Dubowsky which premieres in October in the titular San Francisco neighborhood, features “a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, the ‘unseen spirit’ representing a neighborhood resident who was bashed, a ‘bitter queen’ who doesn’t feel beautiful anymore, and a politician.”

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck, “whose initial three-year contract began in fall of 2008, will now remain in his post until at least 2015-16. … The extension is unusual for its length and for how early it came in the conductor’s tenure.”

“Showmen in different eras touch different chords for different generations. This is the age of instant messaging, sound bites, of atomized culture, with information packaged for our convenience in morsels, and Mr. Lang is embraced for more than his winning smile and playing very, very fast.”

“The main trick is to get people to embrace the fact that, without this job, you couldn’t put on an opera because there’s no way to rehearse or for anyone to know what to do. … The maestro, the singer, the language coach, they all work together, but they can’t actually do what they need to do without a repetiteur.”

“For music where pitch specificity is extremely important,” – much contemporary and early music – “a variance of a semitone can be extremely disorienting. …[S]uch-and-such singer’s technique doesn’t effectively serve the music.”

The $1 million check from board chairman Richard P. Simmons was part of a 2006 challenge grant. “It softens the blow that the PSO did not end last season in the black and is not expecting to do so in the coming season due to the financial climate….”

“Among the tens of thousands of applications created for Apple Inc.’s iPod Touch and iPhone are more than 100 that transform the devices into music makers…. Professional musicians are increasingly embracing the more sophisticated digital instruments, using them in live performances, DJ sets and recordings.”

This list by the critics of London’s Telegraph includes 100 titles, many of which (as happens when newspaper critics do these things) are by dead performers. Among the rules offered with the list are “Buy British” and avoid Karajan, Lang Lang and Richard Clayderman.

“Though classical music isn’t supposed to make you want to drink (quite the opposite), that option is increasingly available in trendy New York settings better known for indie rock.” For performers and audience, a club venue makes for a very different experience.