Category: music

A Friday afternoon announcement said that Janelle McCoy would be leaving after this year’s festival (which begins Friday) and that her job is being eliminated due to budget cuts. In 2017, she was behind the dismissal of Halls, ostensibly for a racist remark made to a singer who insisted that the remark wasn’t racist and he wasn’t offended (except by the firing). – Eugene Weekly

He’s already got the building: the spectacular Royal Opera House, Muscat, which opened in 2011 and is reportedly the Omani capital’s second-most-popular tourist attraction. The Economist looks at Sultan Qaboos’s reasons for funding European opera and a few of the difficulties in making the form work in the conservative Arab Gulf. – The Economist

General director Michael Capasso’s original plan when the company emerged from bankruptcy in January 2016 called for 72 performances of 13 operas in 2018-19 to mark the company’s 75th anniversary. – Washington Post (AP)

Leaving people’s personal abilities to distinguish high sonic quality from low sonic quality out of this conversation, there is a virtually insurmountable issue with mass adoption of hi-res audio: acoustic environment. – Shelly Palmer

And what was Universal Music Group doing in the 11 years between the fire and the news of the fire? Hmmmm. The lawsuits claim UMG was reaping hundreds of millions of insurance damages in confidential settlements.- at least half of which money is due to the musicians, they say. – Los Angeles Times

Possibly! Studies certainly show that singing in groups forms cohesion quickly and increases warm feelings toward strangers both quickly and strongly. Even group singing across hundreds or thousands of people can increase in-group bonding. – Aeon Magazine

The Music Publishers Association may long for the past, but they’re also trying to plan for the future. “There still is not a lot of ‘jumping to digital’ at professional orchestras since the operations of these organizations are determined by lots of tradition. They ‘want digital as an option, but not the only thing they do.’ They ‘send digital perusal scores to conductors who don’t want to carry stuff around. But when it comes to concert-time, 99.9% is paper.'” – NewMusicBox

Jacobin Magazine’s take on the Baltimore Symphony musicians’ lockout emphasizes worker solidarity, even for elite musicians. “A lockout is probably the nastiest of tactics used by orchestra management to force union musicians to sign lackluster contracts. Lockouts take the power of withholding their labor out of the musician’s hands. Management does this for good reason, since orchestras with strong unions, aided — crucially — by community and audience support, have repeatedly used militant tactics to their advantage.” – Jacobin Magazine

So much that President Macron just awarded him a Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest award for civilians. – BBC