Category: music

“Colorado Symphony president Doug Adams announced today that he is leaving the orchestra to become president of the Dallas Symphony, effective Sept. 8. Earlier this month, CSO music director Jeffrey Kahane announced that he will step down following the 2009-10 season – a move unrelated to Adams’ decision to accept the Dallas post.”

Ever since his 1994 debut, the mighty Illmatic, Queensbridge, N.Y.’s Nasir Jones has been hip hop’s Hemingway… No matter what Nas’s new disc is called, “it’s hip hop’s most cogent deliberation on the N word in decades” and it’s had the music press in an uproar.

“The surplus likely will be modest — $45,000 — but it reflects the long-sought turnaround for an organization that chronically overspent for decades. Officials say the orchestra hasn’t reported such a long streak of financial sobriety since 1937.”

“The century of modernism may have been bloody and ugly, but it was also full of beauty, and those who insist on closing their eyes and ears to it — whatever their reasons may be — are missing out on more than they know.”

“One hears, again and again, the same complaints about Lang Lang and Tan Dun — that two supremely gifted musicians have succumbed big-time to celebrity. And both do manage to frustrate even those of us who admire them enormously.”

If Seattle government’s current attitude toward nightlife existed 20 years ago, Sub Pop would never have happened.

“More than 2.3 million people were locked up in federal, state or local systems at midyear 2007, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and they want their Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd just like everyone else. Enter North Hollywood-based Pack Central, which runs a mail-order operation for about 50,000 prisoners. It stocks about 10,000 CDs and 5,000 cassette titles.”

Is the Louisville Symphony becoming a latter-day New Haven, Conn. — where Broadway-bound shows routinely came to smooth out kinks before heading for Manhattan? The orchestra recently hoisted a world premiere that was, in effect, an out-of-town preview for subsequent performances.

“Concerts by orchestras large and small, major and regional, will be presented over nine days. Hall rental costs will be covered by the festival, which will also handle production and marketing. Orchestras will be chosen according to one criterion: the creativity of the programs they propose. Under the umbrella of a Carnegie Hall festival, an orchestra can seize the chance to do something adventurous.”

“ABBA’s songs continue to endure as what scientists have dubbed ”earworms” 35 years after the band’s first album was released. Like those little bugs, the tunes burrow into our brains and keep hitting the repeat button. With all this renewed interest, we wondered if it was possible to break down scientifically why the music is so irresistible.”