Category: music

“Jaap van Zweden conducts his first concerts as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra [this week.] Also this week, Doug Adams takes over as president and chief executive of the DSO… These two men, the Dutchman who gave up one of the world’s top orchestra violinists’ posts to pursue conducting and the native Texan who left television management for the orchestra world, are set to transform Dallas’ 108-year-old orchestra.”

“Keith Lockhart is starting his 11th — and final — season as music director of the Utah Symphony this weekend with mixed feelings… He oversaw the hiring of a quarter of the current members of the symphony in the past 10 years.” But dreams of international tours and multiple recordings have never quite become reality, and the orchestra has been in and out of fiscal trouble during his tenure.

Commentators often decry the seeming inability of today’s musicians to engage their fans in political protest, but don’t tell that to the organizers of this year’s DNC and RNC Conventions. “For two weeks straight, both in Denver and in Minneapolis, Rage Against the Machine, a rap-metal band formed in 1991 and known for its big noise and ferocious politics, formed an ad-hoc convention in opposition to both major parties.”

Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, is ten years old, and its construction changed the fortunes of its primary tenant forever. But getting it built was a massive project, undertaken at a time when the orchestra was in dire financial straits, and the electorate was in no mood to publicly finance a concert hall.

“Right now, according to the numbers published at Billboard.biz, album sales are down about 10.8% year to date. Through early June, they were down 11.7%. Through a stretch in June and early July, album sales were down 9.8%, and through late July and August they are down 9.3%. Those numbers show continued format substitution and challenges for the album format. The year-over-year improvement in the latter half of the year is a recurring trend over the last few years.”

“Yes, we all know old-school plastic records have a certain charm. But so do old churches, horses, the monarchy, salt and shake crisps and pre-decimal coinage. That doesn’t mean we want the return of threepenny bits, droit du seigneur, witch burning and streets knee-deep in dung from the royal family’s horses, does it? The resurgence of vinyl is a symptom of the dread diseases of authenticity and nostalgia – the terrible co-joined twins of cultural decline.”

Britain’s Sun tabloid offered tickets to Covent Garden to its readers. “On paper, the initiative appears to have worked. Covent Garden confirmed to me that all 2,226 seats for the first night of Don Giovanni, with Simon Keenlyside as the bare-chested Don and Marina Poplavskaya as vengeful Donna Anna, were sold to people who bought the Sun on July 30. Rumor has it that not all of them are regular Sun readers.”

“For the first time in centuries, the harp-like strings of the epigonion have been plucked — well, at least virtually. A group of researchers used computer modeling to simulate the ancient Greek instrument, then knocked out a medieval musical number and put their creation up on the Internet.”

Washington National Opera has announced that it will air a live simulcast of its production of La Traviata on the state-of-the-art Jumbotron at Nationals Park. “Beer and hot dogs will be served. Admission is free.”

“The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has announced a commitment for a $5 million anonymous gift. The gift is designated for several immediate uses: operating expenses, special audience development initiatives, revenue enhancements, “capacity building” and research and development.”