Category: music

“ASCAP CEO John LoFrumento cited budgetary reasons. Asked when the program would return, he responded, ‘We will be discussing its future as we go forward, but at this time we have no definitive projection.’ It is an unfortunate turn of events for classical music coverage, an ever shrinking area that, now more than ever, deserves all the recognition it can get.”

“Between 2003 and last year, more than 3,000 record stores closed in the U.S. Today, there are 185 record stores in the L.A. area, down from 259 at the beginning of 2007. But as mass marketing of LPs faded, some listeners began rediscovering vinyl. It’s not just older fans who grew up with the decades-old format who attest to its tangible pleasures. Younger listeners raised on torrent files can see LPs as a kind of talisman too.”

Florida Grand Opera canceled the series for lack of ticket sales and difficult fundraising. The series was launched with much hype and lavish promotion this season.

“Rock music blaring from boomboxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets. The huge flightless insects are a fearsome sight as they advance across the desert in armies of millions that march over, under or into anything in their way.”

“The problem I’ve always had with most pre-concert talks of any serious length and/or depth is the inverse relationship between the quality of the talk and my desire to hear the subsequent performance; in this case, after nearly 75 minutes of speaking, performed excerpts, and slides, the last thing in the world that I felt like doing was sitting through a performance of the piece in question!”

“The online social networking site helped a Switzerland-based artist manager who was vacationing in Israel track down a New York pianist performing in Colorado and book him for a concert in Colombia.”

“Ageing artists such as Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney will see copyright protection on their recordings in the EU extended from 50 to 70 years after a vote by MEPs yesterday. The EU internal market commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, had proposed up to 95 years, but many EU states, which have a joint say with parliament, balked at such a long period.”

Not long after Kurt Masur was appointed the Philharmonic’s music director, he got the idea that the Park Avenue Armory, which could hold almost 5,000 people, could be the perfect place for “something like the BBC Proms concerts in London, which attract many thousands of listeners to the cavernous Royal Albert Hall every summer. […] An official of the Philharmonic deputized to scout the terrain, he added, had gone back to report: ‘This is not a concert hall. This is a dump.'”

“[T]he acoustics are pretty good, and [Christopher G. Dolan] finds time to concentrate. ‘I sit at red lights, open up a score and memorize two lines,’ he said. And his audience is enthusiastic… enough to applaud, even whistle.” Dolan has even landed an audition while on his route.

“Dreams and fantasies aren’t easily conjured in live theater during the best of times – much less those in which Opera Company [of Philadelphia]’s L’Enfant budget was cut from $250,000 to $150,000 in mid-season. But at a time when fantasy should be less practical than ever, theatrical capabilities have caught up with the imaginations of some of the 20th century’s most fantastical minds.” Which is to say, technology has stepped in where busy scenery might have been.