Category: music

“Almost alone among investments, important violins have proved immune to economic downturns… During the market upheavals of recent weeks, spot gold prices bobbed at around eight hundred dollars per ounce. The best Stradivarius violin, on the other hand, could have gone for something like seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars per ounce. That’s twelve million dollars for an avoirdupois pound of wood.”

And while doing so, England’s hottest young composer talks about how writing music has changed for him: “I used to look a little bit to the left and the right of the music and I would often come at the music from the side. Now I kind of try to attack it head on.” (So what was he doing? Click and see…)

Hyun-Su Shin, a 21-year-old woman who has never studied outside South Korea, took the €30,500 First Grand Prize, the Prince Albert II of Monaco Prize for best recital (€6,100) and two additional awards.

“A refugee from the abortive Gerard Mortier era at New York City Opera has landed on her feet. Jane M. Gullong, the company’s former executive director, has been appointed president of the Brooklyn Philharmonic… Mortier eliminated Ms. Gullong’s position at the opera, where she had worked since 1994.”

The economy may be in the tank, but the musicians of upstate New York’s Rochester Philharmonic have to be happy with the new contract they’ve just approved, which will give them a 14% salary bump over the next three seasons. “Ticket sales are 21 percent higher than expected for concerts so far [this year.] Additionally, there has been no decline in corporate giving.”

“The Toronto Symphony Orchestra chalked up its third consecutive surplus last year, beating past box-office records and playing to 10,000 more people than in 2006-07… The orchestra ended the year with a modest surplus of just over $28,000, even though it spent $1.7-million more on concert production. Buoyant fundraising allowed the TSO to transfer $4-million to the the orchestra’s endowment fund.”

“The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony needs to come up with new ways to raise money rather than relying on ‘crisis fundraising,’ says the orchestra’s executive director… The history of the symphony has been one of crisis,” but leaders are hoping that a more systemic approach will enable to organization to address its problems without constantly seeming to be on the verge of bankruptcy.

La Scala’s gala opening is being threatened by a strike for the second year in a row, as the union representing the famed opera house’s choir and orchestra members balks at a new contract offer. But in a sign of how fractious such arrangements can be, all of La Scala’s other unions have already agreed to the deal, and are protesting the musicians’ union’s holdout.

Wait – wasn’t much of the country music world (and its fans) behind John McCain? Sure – “The GOP and Nashville hitched themselves to each other as far back as the Nixon years.” But, says David Browne, as country ruled the charts through the years of conservative political dominance, Nashville churned out “too many Southern-adult-contemporary ballads and obnoxious power chords.” Some time in eclipse might be just what country music needs.

The arts world’s Mr. Turnaround, called in by board chair Susan Baker in the wake of the company’s dark season and the loss of Gérard Mortier as artistic director, isn’t taking the helm himself. “I’ve been asked by Susan and the board of the opera to help them write a plan for going forward. It’s very specific… If they asked me [to take over], I’d say no.”