Category: music

“Vaughan Williams died 50 years ago tomorrow. He had a good innings – he died at 85 – but his death was symbolic of another death: that of contemporary classical music as a mainstream cultural activity.”

“The federal funding has helped to generate $40 billion in cultural business: Last year, 21 Canadian companies, with financial assistance from ProMart, the Ontario government and the Canadian consulate, went to a music trade mission in Tokyo. Most of them came away with significant deals. The federal investment was $80,000, and $1.4 million in recording, distribution and touring contracts were signed.”

“Music sites that tell you Beethoven is the performer, that “Allegro” is the name of the piece, that the piano soloist might be the Berlin Philharmonic. I find these experiences endlessly frustrating. I don’t understand how something so simple has to be so hard to figure out. (I take that back. I do understand. Believe me, I really, really do. But it still makes me crazy.)”

“Visual artists Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg analyzed over 10,000 songs to find out which parts of the human body were mentioned the most and broke down the resulting data by genre. The result: An interactive graphic work called “Listen” that correlates musical genres with the body parts they mention the most, as part of their ongoing Fleshmap project.”

“Nike Wagner, the great-granddaughter of the composer Richard Wagner, has joined forces with Paris Opera chief Gerard Mortier to challenge her cousins Katharina and Eva for the leadership of the Bayreuth opera festival.”

“The public clash between the disillusioned singer and the company that nurtured her talent has all the makings of an enthralling opera. Unfortunately, this real-life crisis could significantly damage Australia’s biggest performing arts company and its reputation.”

“If it weren’t for Detroit and Philadelphia, the history of modern jazz would be a lot shorter and a lot less hip. But when you narrow the focus specifically to bass players, the connections become even more striking. The roll call includes more gods per capita than from any other city.”

The company that made the first electric guitar and whose instruments were popularized by the Beatles in the 1960s can’t make them fast enough. “We’re back-ordered two years,” company owner John Hall said. So he raised prices on all 6- and 12-string guitars and basses by as much as 20 percent this year to cool demand. “It hasn’t completely done that,” he admitted.

The Casablanca Festival attracts an estimated 2 million people for free concerts at a dozen venues. Casablanca’s is only one of about 400 yearly festivals sponsored by authorities across that country. But “the Moroccan state’s promotion of cultural events and leisure activities hangs from a political skeleton. The country’s increasingly powerful Islamist groups view it as a deliberate attempt to deviate youth from traditional Islamic values.”

“Historically a top orchestra in terms of salaries, the PSO musicians base is now ninth in the country and moving further down at nearly every announcement of a major orchestra settling a contract.”