Category: music

“For years, conventional wisdom has been that leadership in the classical music industry should work to increase demand so that more young musicians can get jobs. Better funding, it is said, should be found to expand orchestras and develop audiences, and music should be cultivated at all levels. But for advocates of entrepreneurship such as [David] Cutler, it is the musician who must adapt to the shrinking and changing marketplace.”

“The latest sales period marked just the second July week when not one current album sold at least 100,000 copies since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data in 1991.”

“Best to get used to the Asphalt Orchestra: The musicians aim to pop up most any place but conventional concert halls. At the group’s first performance, on Wednesday, it sprang from a subway entrance as part of Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival. Yesterday’s Philadelphia performance grew out of Lincoln Center’s partnership with Amtrak.”

Morphestra is a collection of over 23 GB and 1100+ instruments and multis. Rather than reinventing the traditional orchestra, Sample Logic says it has created a modern day virtual instrument that “goes above and beyond ANY orchestral/effectual sample library geared for film, TV and game composers”.

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to undo the transformation of jazz into a sophisticated art music. But there’s no sense in pretending that it didn’t happen, or that contemporary jazz is capable of appealing to the same kind of mass audience that thrilled to the big bands of the swing era. And it is precisely because jazz is now widely viewed as a high-culture art form that its makers must start to grapple with the same problems of presentation, marketing and audience development as do symphony orchestras, drama companies and art museums.”

“The piece was scored for radios because Cage had absolutely no idea what sounds would come from their speakers. This was one of his first works that used chance operations to determine structural elements. His idea was to liberate music from his own taste, his concerns and his ego.”

“Radio audiences are turning to the soothing properties of classical music as a means of coping with the traumas brought on by the economic downturn, gloomy weather and summer exams, according to official listening statistics released yesterday. The national commercial station Classic FM and BBC Radio 3 have both apparently benefited from the desire of audiences to find some respite from the pressures associated with the recession.”

“Among the odd assortment of Festival opera this year, no production is more curious than that billed as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Actus tragicus. After all, the greatest ever Lutheran church composer never actually wrote an opera. Closer inspection … reveals this to be a modern assemblage of six of Bach’s sacred cantatas, fused together” — and so the question remains: “Why did he never turn his genius to the opera stage?”

“A recession is no time to launch a new summer music camp, especially one that would be free to inner-city kids. The sheer audacity of it is impressive. … John Littlejohn — that is his real name — says he didn’t raise as much money as he would have liked to launch his camp, dubbed Thrive City String Academy. So he shortened it and invited fewer kids.”

“The Houston Symphony announced Friday [Juny 31] that it will shutter administrative offices next week, furlough musicians and reduce conductor’s salaries next season to save nearly $900,000. The cuts will not change the concert schedule for next year, said Matthew VanBesien, the symphony’s executive director and CEO.”