Category: music

NPR Music will broadcast certain concerts from two fabled music festivals in Newport, Rhode Island, starting this weekend with the Folk Festival, and next week with the Jazz. “Newport’s trying something different this year,” said the host of All Songs Considered. “It’s a good start, and I think it’s a good idea for us to be on the ground floor.”

The British tabloid, The Sun, is offering up cheap tickets to opening night at the Royal Opera House, and making quite a production about it. “What’s brilliant – and important and true -about the Sun’s take on opera is that they see no reason to pretend that it’s a polite, elegant, decorative artform – they are determined to communicate that it is dirty, dangerous, sexy and nasty… Good for them.”

The conductor and artistic director of the Saskatoon Symphony, who has been embroiled in internal disputes for months and actually went so far as to sue six of his musicians for defamation, has officially left the orchestra. Negotiations on a buyout of his contract are continuing.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is not generally counted among the UK’s most famous orchestras, but the arrival of a dynamic young Russian conductor has the Liverpudlians playing with renewed vigor, says Norman Lebrecht. “His concerts are electrifying, the audience age has dropped by two decades and some of the new string players look barely out of school. Attendances are up 40 percent since he arrived.”

“Everyone has the right to think that their music is best, including the teenagers who hurry through Toronto’s Bathurst subway station to escape the classical music played through the PA system to deter them from hanging around. But only classical fans and organizations believe that the quality of their music gives it and them a natural entitlement to the lion’s share of public funding.”

“Recent studies in the U.S. and in Britain, for instance, suggest that among the general population, as many as one in six people has some form of tinnitus, a disease of the microscopic nerve endings in the inner ear that causes sufferers to hear ringing, buzzing, humming, roaring or chirping sounds in their head… But among musicians, the overall number is as high as 40 per cent.”

“The Kansas City Symphony had record revenue and attendance for the 2007-08 season… The Classic Series saw subscriber and single-ticket revenue grow by 10 percent each to $1.2 million, completing the third-consecutive year of growth.”

Contrary to a published statement from its director of marketing, Ohio’s Dayton Philharmonic says that it has no intention of performing in Columbus during the 2008-09 season, even if the Columbus Symphony’s entire season is canceled. “”We feel that any performances by the DPO in Columbus would completely send the wrong message.”

“Many people within the music industry are claiming that we’re losing our ability to appreciate sound properly. All kinds of factors are responsible, they say: cheap listening devices; listening on the move; and compressed audio file formats… that allow huge amounts of music to fit on to portable devices.” But the emotional response we feel to music seems to be the same regardless. Is it possible that sound quality isn’t that important?

Donald Rosenberg says that the Columbus Symphony debacle is both tragic and unnecessary. “It appears the orchestra’s board has lost the will to find a solution… The Columbus Symphony musicians are going out of their way to commit themselves to their city and their conductor, [but the] board’s actions make an orchestra lover’s hair stand on end.”