Category: music

As the Philadelphia Orchestra ramps up its search for a new music director, Peter Dobrin speculates on who might be a candidate. Osmo Vänskä? Could be. Stephane Deneve? Why not? But almost more important than the candidates is the process, and what the orchestra decides are the important criteria to focus on.

“The Metropolitan Opera has tripled the number of movie theaters presenting high-definition broadcasts of performances during the 2007-08 season after the dramatic success of its debut series of live opera transmissions last season. It also has increased the number of operas to eight from six.”

London’s jazz scene has been going through a rebirth in the last few years, and no one has been more responsible than 27-year-old club manager Will Gresford. From writing grants to drawing younger audiences to adding a healthy dose of promotional savvy to a staid industry, Gresford is changing the way the public views jazz.

“The agreement comes five months after reports emerged that the orchestra had for the first time in years finished its fiscal year, 2006-2007, with an operational surplus of more than $296,000. At the end of the previous year, according to federal tax documents, the CSO was in the red by more than $179,000.”

“It’s music, in a sense, for meta-musicians — players who can turn the tiniest movements of their fingers into waves of sound so gigantic they can fill a cathedral.”

“No Music Day has no legal force. It is simply the idea of one man: the maverick writer, thinker, conceptual artist and former rock star Bill Drummond, whose history as a member of the early-’90s band KLF gives him a certain authority on the subject of artistic self-denial.”

Last week, the Mimai Herald reported about a concert by the Bergen Philharmonic led by Andrew Litton that had serious acoustical problems. Litton responds: “I have never encountered an Artec hall that was a problem until I got to Miami last Monday. From the first downbeat it was clear something was very wrong…”

Dutch conductor Edo de Waart, will remain as Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s Artistic Director and Chief Conductor until the year 2012. The announcement dispelled any speculation that the Maestro would be leaving Hong Kong, following his decision to move his family to the United States earlier this year.

“In what UCLA is calling the largest single gift to music education in the western United States, the Herb Alpert Foundation has given the university a $30-million endowment pledge to establish the cross-disciplinary UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.”

“Technology’s relentless advance has finally invaded the timeless world of the cello, bassoon and other orchestral instruments, with the debut of the largest digital orchestra in the world. Fifty music students at York University staged a hi-tech twist on the traditional symphony last night by sitting on a concert hall floor and playing nothing but laptop computers.”