Category: music

“[Her] voice, girly, breathless, tentative, is her own twice. No one else would dare try to sing with it the way she did. It’s tempting to say her voice is a cross between Betty Boop’s and … whose? One writer said Chet Baker’s, which is perfect. She was cute, femme cotton candy drizzled with a contradictory syrup of opium and Bleecker Street espresso.”

“Maybe he should have been a lawyer instead: The performer Victor Willis, better known as the original police officer in the campy band the Village People, has filed suit against a resuscitated version of the group, saying it is using his likeness and voice in its performances.”

“The Soloist, the upcoming movie about a cellist who became homeless, has struck a chord with American orchestras. They are mobilizing to help feed the hungry. At least 163 orchestras in 45 states are expected to participate in food drives in late March, a month before the movie’s release on April 24, the League of American Orchestras said Tuesday.”

“The Metropolitan Opera, contending with biting economic woes, laid out a 2009-10 season on Tuesday that includes eight new productions but is also notable for scaled-back ambitions.”

On the Philadelphia Orchestra’s European tour, cellist Udi Bar-David is making time for extracurriculars, but not of the self-indulgent variety. His focus instead is a program called Intercultural Journeys, an endeavor that “seems quixotic, on some days even impossible: Arab-Jewish musical fusion.”

“Less than two years after Sony Music Entertainment made a daring move by hiring the legendary music producer Rick Rubin to run its Columbia Records label, the company is learning a lesson from baseball: sometimes the best players don’t make the best managers.”

The jazz label is 70 years old this year. “The quandary for Blue Note is how it can remain the pre-eminent jazz label while surviving as a profitable business.”

The Official Charts Company has finally created a hit parade of “purely classical” music. I know, I know, it’s a wishy-washy definition – when has classical music ever been “purely” anything? But at least it’s better than the sham that is the current chart, which is coyly called “combined classical”, for which any album can qualify so long as it contains 60% classical music in its makeup.

“No longer is a good or even a great performance good enough. Now we must have performances free from the “slightest glitch.” And since no one — not even a singer of Ms. Hudson’s manifest talent nor a violinist of Mr. Perlman’s virtuosity — can guarantee that a live performance will be 100% glitch-free, the solution has been to eliminate the live part. Once, synching to a recorded track was the refuge of the mediocre and inept; now it’s a practice taken up by even the best artists.”

“The Grammy telecast was filled with eye-popping and eyebrow-raising performances, from Radiohead’s collaboration with a college marching band to a televised black-and-white throwback performance from Jay-Z, T.I., Lil Wayne, Kanye West and a very pregnant M.I.A.”