Category: music

When a Minnesota woman was convicted this week of illegally downloading and distributing music, it marked a major victory for the recording industry in its battle to control copyright. But what songs, exactly, was Jammie Thomas stealing? “Her playlist — the copyright-infringed songs she’s now paying for, at the cost of $9,250 each — tells another story. And it’s a sad one about the impoverished state of the corporate music machine.”

Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want download experiment may or may not be a significant moment in the evolution of music distribution. But Greg Kot says that what is already clear is the stark contrast between the band’s trusting embrace of consumers, and the larger recording industry’s insistence on treating all its customers like potential criminals.

Denver voters will decide in a few weeks whether or not to approve bond measures that would, among other projects, contribute $60m to the renovation of Boettcher Concert Hall. The Colorado Symphony, which makes its home at Boettcher, has a significant stake in the passage of the bill – if the measure fails, the orchestra will have to return $30m in private donations earmarked for the renovation.

Built in 1978, Denver’s Boettcher Concert Hall was hailed at its opening as a triumph of architecture and acoustics. “Now, not quite 30 years later, the interior of the 2,700-seat, city-owned facility will become the target of a wrecking ball if voters approve November ballot questions… So what changed? How did a place that had captured the imagination of a city and a nation become a candidate for the scrap heap?”

Hamilton-based Opera Ontario has canceled its season of performances in nearby Kitchener, Ontario, citing financial difficulties. The company, “which has been performing at the Centre in Kitchener for 12 years, announced last month that it needed to raise $1 million within 60 days or the opera company was in jeopardy.” Performances in Hamilton are also in jeopardy.

Richard Wagner’s Bayreuth home is a musem, albeit a faded one. “Sadly, the interesting display of dioramas showing old productions has been closed for years due to a leak. The entire museum has a faded, melancholy air.

Independent music companies are complaining that the European commission’s decision to approve the merger of giant recording companies Sony Music and BMG has stifled competition.

“As a rule, film score classical music is used as a shorthand: Handel indicates that the snobs have arrived, Mahler that someone is about to die, but not before pouting about it, and Wagner is a sure sign that big trouble’s a-brewing. This cultural semaphore system was established in the silent-film era, when no monster worth his salt would dream of making his entrance without the accompaniment of Bach’s Toccatta and Fugue in D or something equally theatrical by Liszt.”

“In the 1960s pop pushed classical music to the margins; composers seemed to accept their marginal role and wrote largely impenetrable pieces, forgetting their duty to communicate. Now pop itself is old, the Beatles are part of the canon, and composers of serious/classical/non-pop music (delete according to taste) are trying to engage again. Musical history is a continuum, and the concert hall must not be allowed to become a museum.”

Never slow to blow its own trumpet, Birmingham now claims that it has both the best concert hall in the world (Symphony Hall) and the oldest (Birmingham Town Hall).