Category: music

“The Sphinx Competition has become a signature event in classical music, doling out more than $100,000 in prizes and scholarships annually to music schools, and opportunities to perform with top American orchestras. Beyond the competition, the Sphinx Organization oversees a growing empire of education programs.”

“On a recent weekend, ticket sales for the Met broadcasts reached $1.65 million, pushing Charles Gounod’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to No. 11 in North American movie box-office receipts, according to Variety.”

“The stakes are higher this year for the Recording Academy, with a major branding effort well underway that includes new licensing deals and, eventually, the opening of a Grammy museum in downtown Los Angeles. There are a week’s worth of splashy events across the city tying into the show, which will be attended by about 15,000 people from all corners of the music industry.”

The San Diego Chamber Orchestra has hired Tyler Richards Hewes, production manager of San Diego’s Mainly Mozart, as its new executive director.

“In the last 15 years, Tom Lord has established himself as the pre-eminent jazz discographer, especially in the technological sense. He began offering his massive jazz discography as a series of expensive (and, cumulatively, weighty) printed paperback books in the early ’90s before offering the entire 34-volume series on CD-ROM about five years ago. Now, he’s made an even more important breakthrough by making the whole works available online.”

“The Songwriters Association of Canada is proposing a $5-a-month licensing fee on every wireless and Internet account in the country, in exchange for unlimited access to all recorded music. The deal would put $1 billion annually in the pockets of artists, publishers and record labels, according to the songwriters group.”

”This is more program-driven than the traditional symphony orchestra. Between us, we can provide enough work for enough people and we should have a large enough music community to serve several needs. That’s really the objective.”

“Evil Machines, a new opera devised and directed by Monty Python star Terry Jones, looks set to come to London. Starring singing tumble-dryers, a giant red telephone and a 15ft-tall vacuum cleaner, it has just opened in Portugal, to standing ovations.”

“In a strange anachronism, reggae has long offered groundbreaking music – its experimental impulses explored through roots, dancehall and dub – but for the past two decades that music has been dependent for exposure on what, in most of the rest of the world, is considered the preserve of collectors only: the seven-inch single.” But the vinyl is getting scarce an some worry the music will die with it.

Those are the backstage rumors, writes Peter Dobrin. Chritophe Eschenbach is in the last few months of his contract as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra…