Digital tracks now account for 7.7 percent of all album music sales. More than 115 million singles were sold across digital and physical formats.
Category: music
Barenboim’s Arab/Israeli Orchestra Cancels Mideast Concerts
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the group of young musicians from Israel and the Arab world founded and led by Daniel Barenboim, has called off upcoming performances in Cairo and Doha, Qatar. The ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas has prompted concerns about the musicians’ safety.
St. Louis Symphony Bucks The Downward Trend
“Numbers – for both revenues and bodies in seats – are up at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, where the 2008 holiday concerts did very well indeed. Despite the fact that the SLSO offered three fewer performances in 2008 than it did in 2007, attendance was up 3%, while revenues increased by 12.5%.”
England’s Opera North Moves Into Former Porno Theatre
“In the 19th century, the venue played host to minstrel and magic shows. In the 1970s, it served as a porn cinema. Now Leeds’ Victorian assembly rooms have been reinvented once again – as a new space for Opera North. Next week sees the formal opening of the Howard Assembly Room, the culmination of a £31m refurbishment of Opera North’s base, the Leeds Grand Theatre.”
Last Of The Piano Rolls
QRS Music Technologies, the sole remaining mass producer of the paper rolls used in mechanical player pianos, punched out its last of the iconic sheets last week. “The roll market has continued to decline, which is no surprise,” said an official of the company, which years ago began concentrating on digital piano technology.
Has Guitar Hero Taught Us Nothing? Strings Are Too Hard!
“Why are they still making guitars with ‘real’ strings that are difficult and boring to learn how to play and really make your fingers hurt? What is the point? Do we still slaughter our own cows? Dig our own wells? Work in the turnip fields for 18 hours a day, six days a week? No.” The solution is obvious: Redesign the guitar. Buttons only this time.
Juilliard West? LA’s Colburn School Invites Comparisons
“The conservatory and its 105 students occupy a cloister-style campus across the street from Disney Hall. Located here is also the Colburn School of Performing Arts, a community school where more than 1,500 preschoolers to adults study music, dance and drama. This year’s incoming conservatory class of 43 was selected from more than 400 applicants from around the world.”
Common Ground – Why Classical Music Needs Pop (And Vice Versa)
“Musical training used to fuel the fires of condescension (from both sides) and genre was to be worn like a badge of authenticity; ‘I am rock, you are classical and never the twain shall meet’. Personally, I am looking forward to a future characterised by unclassifiable, adaptable musicians, for whom style and training are mere tools.”
Terry Teachout’s 25 Top Recordings Of All Time
“To draw up a list like this is an occasion for nostalgia–and regret. My generation of music lovers (I was born in 1956) had access to records made by celebrated conductors, singers and instrumentalists who had been born as early as the 1830’s. But since I started writing about music for Commentary a decade-and-a-half ago, I have witnessed and chronicled the decline of the once-mighty classical-recording industry that preserved these performances for posterity.”
Saving New York City Opera
Anthony Tommasini echoes the widespread concern over the company’s near-dormant state and its leadership vacuum in the wake of the Mortier debacle. “Like the crippled Big Three automakers, City Opera will have to refashion itself into a more streamlined and focused company… Yet now more than ever, it should be bold.”