Category: music

Tony Tommasini says stories about declines in classical music don’t jibe with his experience. “In my experience classical music seems in the midst of an unmistakable rebound. Most of the concerts and operas I attended this year drew large, eager and appreciative audiences.”

“Sales are down all over, but hip-hop has been hit particularly hard. Rap sales fell 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and that trend seems to be continuing. It’s the inevitable aftermath, perhaps, of the genre’s vertiginous rise in the 1990s, during which a series of breakout stars figured out that they could sell millions without shaving off their rough edges.”

“The RIAA’s legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only “created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies.”

It’s been nearly two months since the Jacksonville Symphony management locked out its musicians, and no progress has been made toward a settlement. More worrying, the staredown will likely make it difficult for the JSO to attract new donors and supporters even once the musicians return. And no one seems to agree on what the right recipe for fiscal stability includes.

Early on in the Jacksonville Symphony lockout, the orchestra’s board chair made an off-the-cuff remark to a reporter: “I really do respect our musicians, but there’s something about a 37-week year and 20 hours a week that doesn’t seem too onerous.” That sound bite has been repeated everywhere in the music world, and for the musicians, has come to symbolize a management mindset completely at odds with orchestral reality.

The court-appointed receiver whose job it was to steer the cash-strapped Jerusalem Symphony out of a sea of debt has resigned his position, signaling that the JSO is once again able to function on its own. Fiscal challenges will undoubtedly continue, but for an orchestra that faced extinction only a few months ago, the announcement was cause for celebration.

“There is no doubt that it’s time to inject some fresh blood into the [Utah Symphony & Opera.] In fact, it is long overdue… Too often in the 5 1/2 years since the symphony and opera merged has the musicians’ input been neglected or been merely given token consideration… Selecting a new music director also needs to be done carefully, although time is running out to find [Keith] Lockhart’s successor.”

Chicago’s WFMT radio is arguably the most successful and innovative commercial classical music station remaining in the US. Much of the station’s drive comes from longtime general manager Steve Robinson, who has worked to “adapt the station’s offerings to a rapidly shifting broadcasting environment, making WFMT less stuffy and more appealing to a broader spectrum of listeners and listener tastes.”

80 years ago in the hardscrabble town of Camden, New Jersey, a conductor who had galvanized an orchestra and its community suddenly became public enemy #1 when his 25-year-old lover turned up at a police station with a gunshot wound to the gut.

The big orchestral headlines regarding music directors may have been made in New York and LA this year, but the Detroit Symphony feels that it snared a gem of a leader in Leonard Slatkin. “Slatkin is the whole package. His musicianship won over the musicians while his commitment to education, his willingness to fund-raise and think broadly about an orchestra’s role in urban life, make him, as DSO president Anne Parsons put it Monday, ‘the ultimate partner.’ [And] Slatkin gets the Midwest.”