Category: music

The breakthrough rapper smashed the record this week when the track spent its 17th week on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart – the only song to do so since Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s duet One Sweet Day set the record in 1996. – The Guardian

“Two weeks ago, the Maryland-based National Philharmonic announced that it was planning to close because it had run out of money. Now, the group has an embarrassment of riches. On Tuesday, the orchestra administration said that it had raised the funds needed to stay open, while on Monday night, a local musician and businessman presented to the board a concrete proposal to save the year-round regional orchestra.” – The Washington Post

True, music directors don’t usually get involved in labor disputes. Also true is the severity of the money crisis, and the unlikeliness of Alsop being able to help with that. But Baltimore music critic Tim Smith writes that if anyone has the stature and the right to say enough is enough, it’s Alsop. – Tim Smith

“The long-running case — which carries potentially large ramifications around the use and licensing of samples in the wider music industry — revolves around a two-second drum sequence from Kraftwerk’s 1977 song ‘Metall auf Metall’ (Metal on Metal), which producers Moses Pelham and Martin Haas sampled and looped in Sabrina Setlur’s 1997 song ‘Nur Mir.'” – Billboard

Avi Shoshani and Martin Engstroem are the joint artistic directors of the Tsinandali Festival, whose house ensemble, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda (music director of the National Symphony in D.C.), is an orchestra of specially chosen young musicians from the three republics of the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) as well as Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. – Bachtrack

Helen Leahey, the aptly named ‘Bass Queen’, sang from a D5 to a D2 note at an incredibly deep 72.5 hertz(es) in her attempt at the Music School Wagner in Koblenz, Germany. – Guinness World Records

Curtis President Roberto Diaz: “Yesterday we communicated with all of you in a way that was not consistent with our values. We have understandably lost your trust and for that I am profoundly sorry.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

“Out of respect for all those involved, we request that you refrain from discussing this matter publicly, online, or on social media,” Curtis spokeswoman Patricia K. Johnson wrote in an email to the Curtis community shortly after the story was published. – Philadelphia Inquirer

One DJ explains it this rather charming way: “If you’re 21 now, you can get all kinds of music much faster. You can stream it or listen to it via YouTube … My generation had to buy the records and that took a while to get to a certain point … so inevitably people get to jazz as it is the holy grail when it comes to music.” – The Guardian (UK)

Hollywood changed rock, and rock changed Hollywood – and television, and records, and … well, see for yourself: “Rather than disguising rock ‘n’ roll’s commercial production by proposing it as folk music, these narratives emphasized all its various industrial components, and usually they culminated in a televised grand finale in which stars lip-synced to their hit records and where rock ‘n’ roll was positioned as a subsector of broadcast TV. This created a media hierarchy dominated by Hollywood: rock ‘n’ roll is contained in television, and television is itself contained in cinema.” – Berkeley News