Category: music

“If we can tell anything about the [presidential] candidates from their campaign theme music, it may be this: They (or perhaps their aides) aren’t paying much attention to the lyrics.” So far this campaign season, Hillary Clinton is using a theme song that celebrates slacker apathy, Barack Obama wants us to think about what we’re tryin’ to do to him, and as for Mitt Romney, well…

“The San Francisco Opera’s 2008-09 season will boast a rich mix of repertoire – including two premieres and a classic work new to the company – as well as a number of debuting singers alongside well-known stars… [The company] also announced a nearly 50 percent reduction in the price of side orchestra seats and discounts on full and half series subscriptions.”

The Grammys “were supposed to be a balm to the ailing music industry, a 50th-anniversary celebration of artistry and longevity at a time of mass layoffs and sharply declining sales. Instead the music world began bracing for the latest havoc from the continuing strike by Hollywood writers, as a stalemate with the Writers Guild of America threatened to force record labels and organizers of the Grammy Awards to proceed with a show with severely diminished star wattage.”

“After five years of red ink that led to an accumulated deficit of almost $19 million in 2006, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra successfully balanced its books last season.” Ticket sales are up as well…

The “proposal to reduce each of EMI’s labels to a handful of talent scouts, plugged into a central marketing machine, is entirely logical. But, as recent comments by Robbie, Kylie, Coldplay and the Verve have made clear, big stars don’t like logic; they like being stroked.”

“For almost two years, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra has been wrestling with the one-woman law firm of Brenda Little. She’s a specialist in workplace law.”

The Utah Symphony & Opera has named Melia Tourangeau, head of Michigan’s Grand Rapids Symphony, as its new CEO. She seems to have been a bit of a surprise pick, and is not well known among orchestra managers nationally. Tourangeau will report for work in April, shortly after giving birth to her second child.

Saskatchewan’s Saskatoon Symphony has been struggling with fiscal problems and embarrassingly public internal spats over the last several months. Now, the orchestra’s chairman is attempting to dial down the rhetoric and get all sides to listen to each other. A fired cellist may be reinstated as a result, and other sour relationships may finally be addressed.

“The striking Hollywood writers guild says it will likely not allow its members to work on next month’s Grammy Awards telecast.”

“Music history is littered with worthy, beautiful, ingenious or simply charming pieces that have never received their full due. Some compositions are too unusual, some too conventional. Some decent composers get overshadowed by their genius contemporaries, while others get overtaken by world events.”