Category: music

“Football managers and conductors are basically in the same line of business, and the good ones are cut from the same cloth. Most aim, ultimately, to conjure that old Bill Shankly miracle: getting their forces to play better than they ever thought they could. But it’s not always the big-name managers and maestros who achieve this.”

“Before A.R. Rahman received three Academy Award nominations for his contributions to ‘Slumdog Millionaire’s’ Indian-infused techno soundtrack, he was known across India as ‘the Mozart of Madras.’ He’s long been Bollywood’s best-known composer, a household name…. Like Rahman himself, the soundtrack has a vast range: It jumps from a punk song by the Clash to a Hindi anthem to an aching sitar solo.”

“[T]he Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County said that it would host six of seven events scheduled for the coming weeks by the Concert Association of Florida, which filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on Friday.”

Less than a month after the PSO board declined to renew the contract of music director David Commanday, the orchestra’s players have decided to join the American Federation of Musicians. A statement cites as factors “the board’s lack of consultation with the players regarding this decision, their lack of recognition for the players’ overwhelming support of Commanday, plus statements by Board Chairman John Day regarding the future direction of the Peoria Symphony.”

The board of the perpetually-strapped CSO wants to cut the core group of contracted musicians from 46 to 35 or even fewer. But the musicians themselves say that they’re underutilized and that “more shows, either through a larger orchestral season or in private contracted gigs, would help increase revenue and eliminate the urge to purge.”

With Baltimore Opera in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its season cancelled, some company members who found themselves available have launched Baltimore Concert Opera. The troupe takes its first public steps on March 25 with a concert performance of Don Giovanni. “And [there will be] no orchestra; to keep things financially manageable, there will be only piano accompaniment.”

“The problem with naming punk bands after terrorist bomb threats is that sometimes people take those threats seriously. Memphis International Airport was partly evacuated on Monday, after a visitor’s bicycle was spotted bearing the sticker of a folk-punk band. The name of that band? This Bike is a Pipe Bomb.”

“Mounting financial pressure from the withering economy is taking a further toll on the Florida Grand Opera, whose administrators said this week that they will not renew the contract for Stewart Robertson, FGO music director since 1998 and conductor of more than 40 of the group’s productions. Robertson’s contract expires in May 2010….”

“More than 60% of young people would rather give up sex than music, rising to 70% for 16-19 year-olds. […] 70% said they don’t feel guilty for illegally downloading music from the Internet. 61% feel they shouldn’t have to pay for music. And around 43% of the music owned by this age group has not been paid for.”

Ge Wang, a Stanford professor and director of the university’s Laptop Orchestra (“Imagine a rave at a Trappist monastery”), has co-created “a mesmerising application for the iPhone, which turns the mobile phone into an ocarina – a palm-sized, flute-like wind instrument that sounds like pan pipes.” More than 600,000 copies have been sold.