Category: music

The orchestra finishes out its year with “an unexpected surplus of $454,000 on an operating budget of $58.3 million – a far cry from the $1.7 million deficit the organization was projecting just a year ago.”

“With the dollar plummeting against such currencies as the pound, euro and Canadian dollar, U.S.-based bands now have the incentive to tour internationally, particularly in Europe.”

The trip, at the invitation of North Korea, will be the first significant cultural visit by Americans to that country, and it comes as the United States is offering the possibility of warmer ties with a country that President Bush once consigned to the “axis of evil.”

“Radiohead’s pay-what-you-choose gambit didn’t just set off economic debates. It should also establish 2007 as two kinds of tipping point for recorded music. One is as the year of the superstar free agent. The second tipping point is the decisive migration of music to the Internet.”

“After being hidden from the world for 70 years, an unfinished film score by Sergei Prokofiev, the Russian composer, is to be performed as a ballet at Covent Garden in London. The work, which Prokofiev was commissioned to write but did not complete because the film was cancelled, has been finished by Michael Berkeley, a British composer.”

The Phoenix Symphony has seemed to be perpetually on the edge of crisis for as long as anyone can remember, battling deficits and small crowds to stay afloat. But there are signs that things are finally turning around: the endowment has doubled in the last eight years, and music director Michael Christie has been introducing new ways of connecting the orchestra with its audience.

“Britain has, in the past 30 years, transformed its relationship to visual culture, with art, architecture and design hugely popular, leaving aural culture trailing in its wake… Now a large-scale project organised by the Royal Philharmonic Society and Classic FM hopes to get the British to learn to retune their ears – and listen to classical music.”

The days when classical musicians were deadly serious devotees of their craft with little interest in the broader culture around them, if such days ever really existed, are gone. A look at the younger generation currently rising in symphonies around the US shows a broad range of musical and cultural interests, and a level of pop sophistication that might surprise many audience members.

Insiders at Florida Grand Opera are whispering that major changes may be in store for the company. Music director Stewart Robinson’s job is reportedly in danger, due to concerns over the low quality of the FGO’s resident orchestra.

It’s the first black ink the Minneapolis-based ensemble has seen in nearly a decade. Attendance, earned income, and contributions were also up, and the organization cut back on the amount it draws annually from its endowment.