Category: music

The Opera’s home at Lincoln Center, which it shares with City Ballet, is getting a makeover. “The plan, approved by the ballet and opera boards on Friday, would seem to leave the opera at a considerable disadvantage. The company will be virtually homeless for a year, potentially losing revenue, visibility and momentum.”

“Why on earth should musical capacity be ‘natural’ to human beings? It’s hard to see what the evolutionary point of it might have been. Birds and other animals make complicated sound-patterns, of course, but there’s no evidence that they hear melody and harmony in the way that we do.”

Instead it ends the year with a deficit of $190,000 on a budget of $32 million. “The DSO was heading toward a deficit of about $2 million until 11th-hour largesse from a handful of its most generous donors stopped the flow of red ink.”

“The one thing Stockhausen had more than any other composer of the 20th and 21st centuries was unshakeable self-belief. And yet, the man behind the public persona remains something of an enigma.”

Why is some 100-year-old music still conidered “new” while other music seems to blend into the comfort of history?

Violin maker Hans Johannsson, artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Andreas Eggertsen are trying to “reinterpret the traditions of 17th- and 18th-century violin making using today’s technology and a contemporary visual aesthetic.”

The rapper admitted that his label, G-Unit Records, faces challenges, particularly since hip-hop listeners are “embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music”. Instead of showing patience and support as artists develop, labels “peddle ringtones, not records”.

“For better or worse, we are living in a visually-dominant culture and for music to have meaning within our culture, it needs to be seen to some degree. And in that regard, music is not unique.”

“Just the very fact that the North Korean people would know that the Philharmonic was able to visit Pyongyang and play would be a clear signal that relations between the North and the U.S. are improving.”

“Curiosity about history and intellectual curiosity are indissoluble. You don’t have the option of separating them, although you may think you do. Definition of intellectual curiosity: the investigation of phenomena that are beyond your immediate familiar experience. Without such curiosity about the power of music of the past, there is an impoverishment of aesthetic perceptions, and a malnourishment of the ear and the brain, that precludes the creation of great music.”