Category: music

Computer and video game music might not have reached the same level quite yet, but soundtracks are now starting to get separate releases. Not only that, but composers with established reputations are starting to write them.

“The European Union proposes extending musicians royalties for 95 years as in the U.S., up from 50 years, under a plan to avoid cutting off income for artists as they retire.”

It’s a Guarneri, known as Giuseppe del Gesu. “A private treaty sale of the violin, dating from the 1740s, was negotiated by Sotheby’s, which declined to reveal the price paid. The figure was said to be ‘well in excess’ of the world auction record of $US3.54 million, which was achieved by a Stradivarius sold at Christie’s New York in 2006.”

The period-performance movement has treated the baroque cello as essentially the same instrument as a modern cello, only with gut strings and lighter “accessories” (bridge, tailpiece). But Sigiswald Kuijken says that “what we today call the baroque cello might be a neologism” – that is to say, it did not exist.”

Universal has placed ads to find singing monks for the album. “According to the label, the music’s popularity has exploded with the success of the plainchant soundtrack to the computer game Halo, which has sold more than 16m copies worldwide.”

“Researchers found that when an album got mention in more than 40 legitimate blog posts, sales were three times the average. If those albums were associated with major labels, sales jumped five times the average. Albums that got more than 250 blog mentions saw sales increases of six times the average.”

Pittsburgh Opera will be moving into a new rehearsal and office space this spring, which will allow the company more flexibility in scheduling, as well as giving it much-needed storage space for sets. Other plans are in the works as well, all part of an $8m improvement project.

“German conductor and pianist Christian Zacharias is coming to perform with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this weekend … and he’s decided to stay for a while. On Tuesday, Zacharias was named the newest artistic partner of the SPCO.” The orchestra works without a single music director, and instead has a rotating stable of “artistic partners,” each of whom programs and leads a portion of the season. Zacharias will take on the role beginning in fall 2009.

Canada’s CBC Records is apparently dropping its commitment to classical recordings in favor of music it hopes will attract younger listeners. And “even the non-classical outlook is cloudy… CBC Records has nothing “in the can” — industry jargon for a completed recording pending release — in any genre.”

“The concert hall is itself a fine musical instrument–an instrument that is an indissoluble constituent of the hearing experience (notice I didn’t say listening experience). A concert hall is acoustic architecture that interacts with and enhances music. An iPod is not. A sound-designed downtown club is not.”