Category: music

Equity warns its members not to work with Tucson’s Chamber Music Plus Southwest. But “we’re not a theater organization. It doesn’t fit. If we were a theater organization, where actors came in for a week at a time and you had costumes and sets, that’s Equity. What we do is no different than what the New York Philharmonic does. . . . It’s a guest appearance by an actor; it’s not an Equity situation. But they don’t seem to understand this.”

“That is nothing but torture. It doesn’t matter what the music is – it could be Tchaikovsky’s finest or it could be Barney the Dinosaur. It really doesn’t matter, it’s going to drive you completely nuts.”

“Now, in the 25th anniversary year of supertitles, such systems have been embraced by companies and audiences. The benefits are obvious. Opera is a form of drama, and that basic element of the genre becomes immediately apparent, even to neophytes, when titling is used. Still, as with subtitles in foreign films, supertitles come with built-in tradeoffs.”

“According to a recent survey by Shugoll Research, a pollster, more than 92% of the people who saw one of the Met’s performances in a cinema said they were likely to go to a performance at the Met or another opera house. As almost one in five of those surveyed said that they had not gone to the opera in the past two years, and around 5% said they had never been to the opera at all, the Met can justifiably claim that simulcasts are rejuvenating and expanding the audience for opera.”

“Giacomo Puccini was the most commercially successful opera composer there has ever been. At his death in 1924 he was worth well over £130m by today’s standards. Recently, fresh light has been shed on what went on in Villa Puccini 100 years ago.”

The signature sound of four unaccompanied male voices singing in harmony has been the roots of the style, but modernizers want new blood and fresh ideas. Supporters of the traditional style are also known as ‘kibbers,’ for the slogan ‘Keep It Barbershop.’ The traditionalists question the use of modern songs in barbershop harmonizing. Some say the chord structures don’t lend themselves to harmonizing because they are based on the blues, not classical sounds.”

“The EC has been investigating the way in which music royalties are collected after suggestions that the current system is unfair. At the moment, each of the 27 EU member states have separate royalty collection agencies, but it has been claimed that this means that each agency in fact enjoys a monopoly, therefore contravening European law.”

“CD sales have been a prime culprit in the sales dip, as they are off more than 16% from 2007 levels, which were significantly down from the year prior. Digital sales, however, continue to grow dramatically. Digital album sales are up 34% to 31.6 million units, which represent 15.5% of all album sales.”

Workers at Milan’s La Scala are threatening strike action next week that would cancel the first three performances of “La Boheme”

Researchers “put five of the ancient instruments and seven modern violins through the scanner. Stoel found that the ancient violins had more even wood density, possibly the result of even growth rings in the summer and winter. The researchers speculated that this difference might influence how vibrations travel through the wood.”