Category: music

“[T]he global financial crisis is providing fodder to all manner of musicians, from rock legends and country singers to folkies and rappers. Contributions from rappers are especially notable, with more and more hip-hop artists forgoing, or at least decreasing, lyrics about excessive materialism in favor of ones about the common man’s economic grind….”

John Mellencamp: “Now that the carnage in this industry is so deep you can hardly wade through it, it’s open season for criticizing artists, present company included, for making a misstep or trying to create new opportunities to reach an audience…. If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other’s problems.”

“The search is at a frightening moment, not because there are no prospects, but because time and time again in the last two decades, the orchestra has failed to cultivate meaningful, long-term relationships with guest conductors. The one long-term connection it has is with Simon Rattle, whose agent has signaled a strong no. All the other promising leads – except one – have been here only once and are scheduled for a single visit next season.”

“Hiring Steel could be a brilliant one-stroke solution to all these needs, but it also represents an unnerving leap of faith. For one thing, he is new to opera. Like President Obama, Steel is plunging into a crisis with a record that is promising but thin. He professes to be unfazed.”

The chorus says that “the economic downturn had claimed a substantial portion of the chorus’s investments — necessary financial reserves, given that ticket sales and contributions had failed to cover the group’s operating expenses for the past three years. By shutting down at the end of this season, ‘we’re trying to end . . . in a way that avoids bankruptcy’.”

More than 60 people applied, and 25 were chosen to show off a stunning variety of musical instruments of their own devising.

“The pop-music business has turned out to be the canary in the economic coal mine, a small example of the enormous financial buckling that is now global. The numbers are still dropping for musicians, but their responses to this problem have become more creative, sometimes to the point of desperation.”

“Hundreds of tapes were pulled from a barn in southern Pennsylvania, recordings made at high schools, dances, fairs, festivals, and auditoriums in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere. It was a fantasy collection, more than 1,000 unreleased live recordings by country music royalty. Most were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a few dating to the 1940s.”

“Just comparing the season brochures gives a palpable feel of the change in fortunes: Next season’s is much flimsier, 20 pages instead of 40.”

“Musicians and industry players alike say success is tricky to gauge in an era when fame from a commercial placement or a rush of blog postings can disappear as quickly as it comes.”