Category: music

“This is a remark so ill-judged that one wonders whether Mrs Hodge has ever been to the Proms. She certainly seems unaware that they have long ranked as the most magnificently international and inclusive celebration of any art form anywhere on the planet. Tickets are cheap, access is easy, and there’s something on the programme for everyone.”

Hard to tell. “If nothing else, the impact might simply be cultural. One official brought up on a diet of revolutionary tunes said he knew nothing before about classical music from the West. Emerging from the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre he admitted, “Now I like it.” The Philharmonic did achieve something.”

Art fairs generate tremendous buzz for contemporary art. “Why isn’t this happening in the new music world? Is our club still too exclusive? Why not have a composer fair?”

“The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events — I’m thinking in particular of the Proms — is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease with this.”

John Work had an exceptional ear and could transcribe into musical notation tunes he heard whistled on the street. Once, while waiting at a train station in Macon, Ga., he heard a man singing on the platform and captured an original lyrical blues called “Ain’t Gonna Drink No Mo’.”

Jill Sobule, whose witty and poignant writing first attracted attention with the song “I Kissed a Girl,” has set up a Web site asking fans to donate money so she can make a new CD. She set a goal of $75,000 and, in a month, she’s made about $54,000.

“While Wal-Mart’s negotiations with the labels have yet to take place, the proposal is already causing agita at the majors. Some consider the proposal a non-starter, others say further negotiations might eventually yield a workable solution, and a few see it as appropriate, given the big picture.”

Chicago Opera Theater (not the Lyric), is allowing patrons and anyone to vote — at a dollar a vote — for one of the operas it will produce in 2010. They are calling it “The People’s Opera.”

“Frances-Marie Uitti, an American cellist and composer now living in Amsterdam, has a different idea. Over the course of several decades, she’s become expert at playing with two bows at once – one in the normal position atop the strings and the other between the strings and the body of the cello – so that the number of string combinations available to her increases instantly.”

“What exactly did the message of Gershwin and Dvorak mean to the North Koreans? And how much of it got through?” In the wake of the New York Philharmonic’s trip to Pyongyang, there seems to be far more questions than answers.