Category: music

Metro-DC-Based National Philharmonic Says It’s Out Of Cash And Is Closing

The freelance orchestra, based at Strathmore in the Maryland suburbs, was founded in 1983 and performed two to three dozen concerts a year. The announcement said that the orchestra would need an additional $150,000 to save the upcoming season, and its president told Anne Midgette, “The National Phil would be delighted if a donor would come forward or funding were to come through for its operations.” – The Washington Post

The Great Composer Schumann — Clara Schumann — Is Still Being Overlooked, Even In Her Bicentennial Year

“What we have here, in other words, is the painful and all-too-familiar story of two creative dynamos in the same house, only one of whom was allowed to give full rein to their artistic impulses. Yet the music that Clara did produce is astonishingly fine.” Joshua Kosman fills us in on what most of us have been missing. – San Francisco Chronicle

Audit Finds ‘Substantial Uncertainty’ About Baltimore Symphony’s Viability, Says Management

“The organization’s independent auditor for the fiscal year that ended on Aug. 31, 2018, concluded that ‘there is substantial uncertainty about the BSO’s ability to continue [for one more year] as a going concern,’ the BSO said in a news release. The BSO did not respond to multiple requests that it provide a full copy of the audit.” – The Baltimore Sun

Spotify Slammed For Its “Dance Like Nobody’s Paying” Ad Campaign

The campaign comes after longstanding complaints about the company’s royalty payments, not to mention its attempts to appeal the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase songwriter rates by 44% over the next five years and its recent determination that it had overpaid music publishers by an undisclosed amount in 2018 and is requesting a refund. Predictably, songwriters and music industry pros aren’t happy about the new campaign, which seems to add insult to injury after the above incidents. – Variety

The Break Out Break-dancing Millennial Counter-Tenor

The singers who performed in operatic works by Handel or Vivaldi in the eighteenth century were the musical celebrities of their day, and Jakub Józef Orliński’s approach is to gleefully inhabit that space of stardom, rather than to handle the repertoire as if he were a reverent museum curator. “I treat Baroque music as, basically, pop music, but in their time.” – The New Yorker

The Classical Musicians Who Created The New Live-Action ‘Lion King’ Score Because Representation Matters

The African American and Black musicians who make up the Re-Collective Orchestra recorded a chamber-music version of Black Panther‘s “All the Stars Are Open.” Hans Zimmer heard it, and then he asked the musicians to record the score for the Disney behemoth’s live-action version of its massive 1994 hit. For bassoonist Lecolion Washington, the experience “felt like an acknowledgement that who makes art, and the stories they bring, holds as much value as the art itself.” – WBUR (Boston)