Category: music

It may be that Karlheinz Stockhausen had to die in order that his music might live. How much of it is worth hearing is a matter of contention. Posterity will remember Stockhausen chiefly as the man who wrote the first piece of electronic music that did not sound like a bad telephone line in a thunderstorm.

The Sureyya Opera House, which opened Friday and becomes the sixth opera house in the city, will host performances three nights a week by the Istanbul Opera and Ballet.

“The Paris Opera and National Library are putting on display two sealed urns containing recordings by opera greats of the early 1900s such as Nellie Melba and Enrico Caruso. The recordings were buried on Dec. 24, 1907, in an effort to preserve the leading voices of the era.”

“Following on the heels of the San Francisco Symphony’s rosy year-end fiscal report, the San Francisco Opera is ending its year with a $40,437 surplus on an annual operating budget of $61.1 million, a big boost in contributions and an increase in revenue from ticket sales.”

The Crocodile Cafe was at the center of the Seattle music scene in the 1990s. “Word of the closure spread quickly through the city’s music blogs, with surprised Croc fans mourning the passing of a place that played such a vital part in Seattle’s vibrant club scene in the 1990s.”

“Sales of Latin digital albums numbered 477,000 units by December 10, according to Nielsen SoundScan — 1.6 percent of all Latin albums sold. That figure is still significantly less than the 10.4 percent portion of album sales overall that were digital, but far exceeds the 293,000 digital album sales tallied for Latin music in 2006.”

“Why are so many people paying top dollar (or cents) to download music that’s only a fraction of a CD’s quality? Because convenience, and portability, trumps quality in our Apple-centric world.” But maybe there’s room for something new…

“It opens up the creativity right at the band level to let us explore any idea we come up with, as opposed to the old days when the record company dictated what you looked and sounded like. Now, we can build a fan base without even leaving our living room. We don’t need a record contract to be heard.”

What’s happening at the Seattle Symphony is “a cautionary tale of how the relationship between performers and a long-term leader can go awry and how, in an artistic hothouse, a tangle of emotion and politics can veer out of control and take on a life of its own.”

“Mixtapes, which often include previews of unreleased songs and casual freestyle rhymes, were seen as instrumental in the rise of stars including 50 Cent and Lil Wayne. Now, Tyree Simmons and others argue, the industry’s crackdown on unlicensed mixes has backfired by quieting buzz and contributing to a sharp slide in rap sales.”