Category: music

Canada’s CBC Radio 2, which traditionally has aired classical music nearly around the clock, is undergoing a dramatic overhaul which will see classical largely confined to a midday show. Mornings will feature a mix of classical and soft pop, and afternoon drive will be all pop, with an emphasis on Canadian artists.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is planning a gala performance in March 2009 to celebrate the company’s 125th birthday. The 2008-09 season will also include a new production of John Adams’s “Dr. Atomic,” five other new productions, and an expansion of the Met’s popular digital simulcasts in movie theaters worldwide.

String instruments have four strings. They just do. Any standard string instrument with more or less than four strings is either a gimmick or broken. But wait: 5-string violins (which have the four violin strings plus a viola’s C,) are gaining popularity among teachers, fiddlers, and any number of other serious musicians.

“Classical music itself is not an enemy to common values in a multicultural society. And no one can seriously believe that western classical music is beyond the ken of Britain’s ethnic minorities.” So why are the faces at classical concerts still so overwhelmingly, unchangingly white?

To many close observers of the London music scene, the UK culture minister’s decision to attack the BBC Proms as unfriendly and inaccessibly seems, if not actually offensive, certainly bizarre. “Over more than two months, the Proms provide the most sustainedly accessible high-quality musical festival anywhere. They are just about the most inappropriate target in the world of subsidised classical music.”

“Linda Bardutz, the principal cellist of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra who was fired in December, has been reinstated… The decision to fire Bardutz, [who has played in the SSO for 18 years,] emerged from issues surrounding a cancelled concert on Nov. 28.”

“The music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir resigned Tuesday after nearly a decade at the front of the world-renowned ensemble.” Craig Jessop will be replaced by the choir’s associate director, Mack Wilberg.

The rising young Russian conductor, Vladimir Jurowski, is considered a serious candidate to become the next music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. But what would Jurowski be like week-to-week as a chief conductor? It’s still very hard to tell…

“The Royal Opera House has said it will stop using a promotional poster for a Verdi opera after an actor complained that it had been distorted in a demeaning way.”

“The Tenori-On doesn’t produce its own distinctive sounds, and in that respect is a combination of synthesiser and sequencer, the two inventions that are responsible for electronic music. It might just end up as a fun performance tool rather than a widely used recording device, but what fun it is.”