Category: music

The Metropolitan had seemed to have regained some of its glamor. NY City Opera looked as if it was staking out a new direction. Then the recession hit and some bumbling board decisions at City Opera showed just how precarious the Lincoln Center companies’ fortunes are…

“There are a lot of young composers in their 20s and 30s who are very anxious to appeal to the same audience that would listen to indie rock. But they are creating a level of musical discourse that’s just really bland. I don’t think it will have a very long shelf life. The bottom line is art really can’t be made easy and palatable without simply losing its meaning and importance.”

“Classical music is returning to the AM radio dial, right where K-Mozart used to be. Starting Feb. 15, KGIL-AM (1260) will devote a four-hour block every Sunday to the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony… And beginning Feb. 16, there will also be a classical music interlude from 8 to 9 on weeknights: Exploring Music With Bill McGlaughlin.

The company’s board decided at the end of January to cancel this spring’s two productions, Daughter of the Regiment in March and La Bohème in May, due to a severe drop in ticket sales and donations. “But even if someone wrote a check for $500,000, [the company’s managing director] said, she couldn’t say if part of the season could be salvaged.”

Faced with the economic downturn, the company has frozen administrative salaries, opted for relatively inexpensive works (not yet announced) to stage next season, and will give four rather than five performances of each opera. But there’s no reduction in the number of productions planned, and there are no salary cuts or layoffs expected.

“Buoyed by record-breaking ticket sales in the past two seasons, the Oregon Symphony is barreling into its 114th season with violins blazing… with more of everything: more stars, more concerts, more matinees.”

Richard Einhorn – the composer of Voices of Light, the popular work inspired by Dreyer’s silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc – has written a new a multimedia oratorio titled The Origin, with texts selected from On the Origin of Species as well as Charles Darwin’s autobiography, letters and notebooks.

“A musical experience with a difference is being previewed at the National Museum Wales in Cardiff – an attempt to recreate the sound of the Neanderthals.”

“Stewart Robertson as the company’s most prominent musician, has been criticized for weak artistic leadership, as evident in inconsistent casting, the disastrous mounting of the comically bad operetta Szulamit in 2004, and the deteriorating quality of the company’s orchestra, which led to a contractor change at the end of last season.”

“In times like these when household names are vanishing daily, the loss of a record label hardly qualifies for national mourning. But the abolition of Decca is more than just another colophon going to the wall. Decca represented something to artists and record buyers.”