The artistic director of the Fulham Opera (which is doing Die Meistersinger this summer) says there’s good reason for smaller opera halls: “The immediacy, the storytelling, the quality of the voices up close and personal … the joy that radiates off the stage. I don’t think people fall asleep in our shows.” – The Stage (UK)
Category: music
Tanglewood’s Bet On Staying Relevant
Unlike some new facilities attached to performing arts complexes — the Kennedy Center’s REACH extension, opening in September, comes to mind — TLI is not aiming to be radically new or different. Its mission includes expanding the older, more affluent audience it already cultivates in the region. – Washington Post
Why Do American Orchestras Keep Running Into Financial Trouble?
The Balitmore Symphony is not alone; almost every concert season sees news stories about a U.S. orchestra facing potential ruin (often with a strike or lockout raising the stakes). Why? There’s the “cost disease” phenomenon as well as longer-term trends that, say some observers, may see orchestras in cities 100 miles or less apart merge. – The Baltimore Sun
World’s Largest Grand Piano, Almost 20 Feet Long, Installed In Concert Hall
Instrument maker David Klavins’s custom-built 470i piano, with a vertical steel frame six meters (19.7 feet) long and strings up to five meters (16.4 feet) long, has been installed in a new concert hall in the Latvian port town of Ventspils. – Yahoo! (AFP)
Contemporary Opera’s Inspiration? Hollywood
Joshua Kosman: “There is one thing that all of these works have in common. They share the challenge of standing alongside originals that live in a single, unchanging form in an audience’s collective memory.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Tanglewood Moves Into The Thriving Lecture Business (But Yes, It’s Mostly Lectures About Music)
“With the opening this summer of the Linde Center for Music and Learning, the campus’s first major construction project in a quarter of a century, [the Boston Symphony’s summer home] is dramatically expanding its programming of lectures, talks and master classes.” Reporter Michael Cooper pays a visit. – The New York Times
The Long, Slow Implosion Of Woodstock 50: A Timeline
“January 9, 2019: Everything’s Just Peachy …
March 5, 2019: … Or Is it?”
– Vulture
Inside The Final Collapse Of Woodstock 50
“Seth Hurwitz was on a bike trip riding across Europe when news of his last ditch effort to save the long-suffering Woodstock 50 festival had leaked out.” – Billboard
Woodstock 50 Is Cancelled For Good
Less than a week ago, it looked like the endlessly troubled festival was saved, with a move to Maryland from upstate New York (where no one would give them a permit). But within a day of the location change, the scheduled bands (who’d already been paid) started pulling out. – Rolling Stone
Spotify Adds 8 Million Users, Now Has 108 Million
Spotify expects to add between 2 million and 6 million premium subscribers in the third quarter, and hopes to reach between 120-125 million paid users by the year’s end. The company also said the audience for its podcasts — a primary target for future growth, in which is has invested hundreds of millions of dollars — has grown 50% over the first quarter of 2019. – Variety