Category: music

“Last year, when [Rebecca Greenstein and Bryce] Smith were performing in a children’s cabaret, they realized that their summer calendars were wide open. So just as terms like ‘credit default swaps’ were becoming part of the language, they created the Opera Manhattan Repertory Theater, a company for young and emerging singers.”

“Scratch the Orchestras of Pasadena. No, the financially up-against-it Pasadena Symphony and Pasadena Pops have not gone belly up, but their new management has determined that the name the formerly independent organizations had adopted when they merged in 2007 was a flop.” Now dubbed the Pasadena Symphony Association, it “has raised about $2 million since November, when it declared a fiscal emergency, laying off staff and canceling several concerts.”

The Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, Peter Gelb, “played down the recent Chagall deal,” in which the opera house put up its two iconic murals as collateral for an existing loan. “‘We have no intention of giving up the Chagalls,’ he said. ‘We don’t think it’s a major event.'” In another financial maneuver, the Met is requesting “an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut from its singers next season.”

“Going big took on a whole new meaning at the National Arts Centre Tuesday, where the Ottawa centre’s 57-member chamber orchestra revealed that it will perform two mammoth Mahler symphonies next season, including the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand.” Mahler’s first (“Titan”) and eighth symphonies are both on the bill for the first time next year, along with another large Germanic piece, Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan.”

“The global economic crisis has forced world-renowned Czech piano maker Petrof to hit the soft pedal and switch production from grands to lacquered kitchen furniture.”

“Tonight the Philharmonia Orchestra is performing Schoenberg’s vast, gorgeously late-romantic Gurrelieder, complete with six soloists, chorus and speaker, at Birmingham Symphony Hall. On the website it announces ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back.’ We are so confident that you will enjoy this wonderful concert, that we will give you your money back if you don’t!'”

“The San Francisco Symphony’s 2009-10 season will include six commissioned world premieres and inaugurate Project San Francisco, a new initiative featuring two-week residencies by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and composer George Benjamin.” While the symphony “has seen its endowment income drop 25 percent and trimmed its administrative costs last year,” it says ticket sales and fund-raising are steady, and it “has no plans to scale back programming.” Also, it has a new four-year contract with its musicians.

“Video sharing website YouTube has announced the players in the symphony orchestra it recruited online. Two UK-based winners will join musicians from 30 countries to participate in a three-day classical music summit in New York City. … The shortlist of 200 entrants was published on 14 February, and the YouTube community then voted for its favourites to play in the world’s first online orchestra.”

“After seasons of offering discounts to college students and hosting preconcert social events, the [Boston Symphony Orchestra] this season is trying to throw open its doors even wider, selling $20 tickets to anyone under the age of 40. Those concertgoers would be spring chickens for the BSO, where the average age of attendees is 49 and the average season-ticket holders is 54.”

“Likely the biggest classical organization to have a presence is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which built an electronic replica of the city’s Art Deco music palace in Second Life and hosted its first concert there in September 2007. Spokesperson Millicent Jones reports that more than 105,000 visitors have popped in to hear all or part of the program, presented in recorded video, rather than with orchestra avatars.”