Category: music

“There is little to demonstrate that social music causes social problems and much to suggest that violence in music is simply a truthful reflection of existing urban tensions. It needs to be heard and understood rather than censored and restricted.”

“The Songwriters Association of Canada [is proposing] a $5 monthly fee on subscribers’ Internet bills that would make it legal to download music and hopefully save the failing music industry… The fee – amounting to an estimated $500 million to $900 million annually in Canada – would be administered by a collective of artists, songwriters, music publishers and record labels.”

How do you get thousands of Canadians interested in your orchestra? Put some hockey in it, of course. “Wednesday night, trail-blazing Montreal maestro Kent Nagano will lift his baton to conduct what is perhaps the world’s first symphonic ode to hockey.”

Peter Dobrin says that the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new marketing strategy and 2008-09 season announcement show that the orchestra is serious about engaging new audiences. “To give you some idea of the scale of change, consider the fact that only half the orchestra’s presentations next season will follow the traditional concert format. That’s practically a revolution.”

A composer writes music, it disappears, then reappears, seemingly spontaneously, decades later. How is it, asks Frank Oteri, that music goes in and out oif fashion?

Orchestra programming has become a complicated process of give and take…

A BBC programmer “has sparked controversy by suggesting that men “tend to be more interested in the intellectual side of music”, while their female counterparts’ relationship with the art form is one rooted in emotion.”

Paul Mawhinney owns a music archive numbering more than three million records and 300,000 CDs, from “the first CD ever produced” to Elvis Presley’s Sun Records 45s, but he’s finally had enough. The entire collection, indexed and catalogued, is now for sale. Value? He thinks $50 million, but the reserve eBay price is $3 million.

“Given the blazing individuality of Nielsen’s voice, it’s puzzling that he has yet to find a firm place in the international repertory… Orchestral players, percussionists excepted, tend to groan a little when Nielsen shows up on their music stands, [and] audiences, for their part, often go away from Nielsen performances pleased but a little dazed, not sure what hit them. Lately, though, Nielsen has been gaining ground.”

“The North Korean government has agreed to a live national broadcast of the New York Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang next week, the orchestra said on Monday — an unheard-of event in that isolated country… However, it was not clear how many North Koreans had television and would actually be able to see the broadcast.”