Category: music

The troubled Honolulu Symphony is seven weeks behind in paying its musicians and staff. And “with just weeks left in the symphony’s 2007-08 season, officials say the century-old institution needs $1.5 million to $2 million to pull itself out of debt.”

Open warfare has exploded in the hallowed halls of the Deutsche Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

“It’s a service that marries the largest music community with the most comprehensive catalog of music online. Users can discover and consume virtually any piece of music for free on the internet, or if they want to make it portable they can buy it…. Modern music is all about letting users define their experience. And now, with this new model, we’re letting them do that and the music industry is able to make money at the same time.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber is receiving a special award at this year’s Classical Brits, and Norman Lebrecht is appalled. “It is not Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mission to challenge the ear and mind. He is not a classical composer by any known measure. He is a popular entertainer of inestimable attainments.”

How is it possible that pianist Grigory Sokolov, a certified star in Europe, draws little attention in America? Shouldn’t a world in which the internet brings everything to everyone break down such barriers? Maybe not. Sokolov “should remind us not only of our persistent parochialism but also of our delusions about technology.”

Yamaha is out with the latest version of its Disklavier self-playing piano, and this one comes, for the first time, with an internet connection. “It lets you subscribe to live-piano ‘radio stations.’ For $20 a month (or $200 per year), you can tune into channels like Classical, Broadway or Rock. Your grand piano can now play itself all day in that musical style.”

Martin Scorsese’s new IMAX concert film of the Rolling Stones is getting plenty of attention, but has everyone forgotten that there was a classic concert film of the same band produced back before they got so… well, old? “The film took a long time to reach theaters. But when it was released in 1974, it was with all the hoopla of a live concert, booked into big theaters like New York’s Zeigfield.”

It may not get much play in America, but the annual Eurovision song contest is a big deal overseas. National pride is at stake as much as musical notoriety. So you can just imagine the reaction when France this year submitted a song to the contest featuring (gasp!) English lyrics.

Composers Tan Dun and Philip Glass each had big premieres last week, and David Patrick Stearns detects a similarity in their career paths. “These composers seem oddly immune to failure. They have acknowledged downturns, but not ones that stick.” Basically, few seem to care whether either of them has actually written a good piece anymore.

“Imagine a bizarro world where all the 25-year-olds want Mozart and all the 60-year-olds want adult-contemporary,” and you’ll have an inkling of what the American Catholic church is going through right now, musically speaking. “Although everyone says rock Mass is long dead, there are parishioners still complaining about it.”