Category: music

“Japanese researchers have come up with a novel alternative to the car radio, with the invention of a musical road surface… This quirky musical invention came about after a bulldozer driver accidentally scraped notches into a road, drove over them, and heard a series of notes.”

Conductor/violinist Pinchas Zukerman is feeling gloomy about classical music’s future. “We’re really not doing anything cohesive… If it’s not synonymous with our existence, or at least 5 to 6 percent of the population, then society will become a jungle.”

Finnish National Opera will reduce its staff by 54 through attrition and layoffs in order to fulfill a board mandate that it trim annual expenses by €2.8m. Despite good attendance numbers, the company has been struggling financially in recent seasons.

“The ongoing labor tensions are casting a shadow over the 2007-08 premiere of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” scheduled for Dec. 7. The premiere, the social and cultural event of the year in Milan society, has never been canceled by a strike, as far as officials can remember.”

“For a start, there’s no orchestra. The singers are accompanied only by marimbas.” The company, “recruited from all over South Africa, they are distinguished by two things: musical talent and poverty.”

What does Gustavo Dudamel’s suddenly famous Venezuelan youth orchestra mean for the future of the American orchestral scene? Well, it could signal “the dawn of the monster orchestra – made possible by nonunion youths who play at an extremely high level…”

The Australia Opera & Ballet Orchestra is struggling through a long string of epic performances, and the workload is taking a toll on the health of the musicians. “So far this year 14 musicians have reported performance injuries, such as strained muscles and damaged hearing.”

“It stands as one of the first times an American operatic production has used a company logo as a prop and been remunerated for it (in-kind services rather than money). Bridgewater-based Bruster’s agreed to send e-mails with a special $20 ticket promotion… and provide free ice cream to patrons at Sunday’s matinee… Programs also carried coupons for Bruster’s ice cream.”

Warner Music now says iTunes is great, after months of decrying Apple’s iTunes business model. Why the switch? Maybe the music industry finally realizes that “resisting customer demand for digital content has ultimately backfired for labels, and instead has only led to more ‘illegal’ downloads which have in turn helped undermine CD and DVD sales.”

“There is a perennial sense of battle in British music culture, the new pitched against the old, as if anyone who makes music a lifelong pursuit somehow occupies space better ceded to the young and thrusting. The underlying implication is the only musical values deemed important are freshness, innovation and adventure.”