Category: music

“Coffee houses and lounges in cities like Portland, Ore., are featuring vinyl record listening sessions. Stores like Urban Outfitters are selling portable record players. Last fall Amazon.com started a vinyl-only section. Vinyl record pressing plants are ramping up production, and some musicians are selling albums primarily on vinyl, including coupons for MP3 downloads of the songs for portability’s sake.”

“The classical arts – which have safely huddled in posh theaters in all their stately, stationary dignity – are suddenly on the move, literally, in ways previously unimaginable. But let’s not start proclaiming that the future of the performing arts lies in warehouses and armories.”

The blues may be one of America’s most venerated musical traditions, but there’s considerable evidence that the genre is in trouble. “Its fan base is aging, key blues haunts have shuttered, and some of its up-and-coming musicians are struggling. Nowhere is the decline more evident than in Chicago, arguably the city that made the genre famous.”

It may not have the national reputation of some of New York’s better-known music venues, but the Knitting Factory has been one of the major centers of the city’s so-called “downtown music” scene for two decades. Still, times have been tougher recently, and the venue is simultaneously pulling out of Manhattan (in favor of Brooklyn) and expanding operations to Boise, Idaho and Spokane, Washington.

We think of musical instruments as being relatively static – times, styles, and genres may change, but it’s rare for an entirely new musical instrument to be invented and become widely played. But a century after the theremin mad its debut, “electronic whizzes are creating other clever electronic instruments.”

“I have seen the future of music, and it is advertising. In a business where the key product (recorded music) is being so relentlessly devalued that consumers expect to be able to get it for free, branding is seen not just as a growing revenue source but potentially the principal revenue source.”

“If US interrogators have been using pop songs as torture, as has been reported, then they may owe the songwriters performance royalties. Howard Knopf, a Canadian lawyer specialising in intellectual property, was first to raise the question.”

“Summer rock music festivals, long the preserve of teens and twentysomethings, are increasingly becoming familiar territory for a generation that still remembers the hits of the 1970s and ’80s even as it keeps up with current stars. Concert promoters are starting to cater to the needs of this older crowd of festival-goers, many of whom are looking for something more than mosh pits, fast food and porta-potties.”

“Every singer I have ever known works like crazy to get as high as they can and, once there, to polish the notes like brass knockers and use them as a juggernaut. That, however, is not what Natalie Dessay is about.”

New Jersey’s Metro Lyric Opera is celebrating a half century of producing opera on a shoestring budget. “The tight budget only allows… one day-long orchestral rehearsal at the Paramount and two for the chorus, plus sessions at a New York studio for the soloists.”