Category: music

“After the last one fell off the back of a lorry with a crash heard around the world of classical music, a very grand piano heading for a remote corner of Devon will be handled as delicately as a newborn babe. An £85,000 hand-built Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand is being presented by the firm to the eclectic Two Moors festival, a feast of classical music” whose previous Bosendorfer won fame with its unfortunate unloading calamity.

This week, Marin Alsop became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. “But smashing through gender barriers is only one of the ways Maestro Alsop is trying to rethink and rejuvenate the symphony orchestra in the 21st century. Her other plans are more radical. She aspires to make symphony halls welcoming places, not austere temples of culture where only the cognoscenti dare enter.”

Toronto’s Tapestry New Opera Works is putting on a unique set of performances this weekend: “its seventh batch of ‘Opera Briefs,’ successful composer-writer fertilizations that have given birth to five-minute baby operas. This year, there are 12 bouncing comedies, dramas, tragedies, romances – and one labelled as ‘suspense.'”

“The Philadelphia Orchestra, facing declining audiences for its main subscription series and an attendant downturn in ticket revenue, is proceeding with aggressive plans to deliver offerings via Internet2.” Finding money shouldn’t be a problem – the orchestra also announced its third consecutive balanced budget this week, on an annual budget of nearly $47m.

“The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is holding a clearance sale of tickets – with discounts of up to 60 percent – because of poor sales in its centenary year… Unpopular concert programs and a lack of star soloists may have cost the orchestra up to $1 million at the box office, [as] single ticket sales were down by 25 percent.”

“The New York Philharmonic and the union representing its 106 musicians agreed today to a new five- year contract that will boost salaries and pension payments. Players’ minimum pay for the current season will rise 4.6 percent to $118,560 from $113,360, the orchestra said today in a statement. By the 2011-12 season, minimum annual salaries will increase to $140,400.”

“The union at the Lyric Opera of Chicago representing the chorus, other non-instrumentalist artists and production personnel has overwhelmingly authorized a strike, threatening a season that is to open Saturday night. The Lyric and the American Guild of Musical Artists, or AGMA, have been struggling to find common ground since their four-year contract expired May 1.”

Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center is negotiating with the city’s transit commission for the purchase of a 6-acre plot of land which could become the new home of the Atlanta Symphony. The transit commission wants $40m for the parcel, but “whether parts of the original plan for the concert hall could be accommodated by the new site are part of the master planning that both sides are conducting.”

The Edmonton Symphony has extended the contract of popular music director William Eddins through the 2009-10 season. Eddins took the helm of the ESO in 2005, and has won critical raves for his programming choices and athletic podium style.

The Metropolitan Opera opens its season, simulcast to giant screens in Times Square. “That the show was simulcast to thousands more on screens in Lincoln Center Plaza and in Times Square just enhanced the sense of event, not to mention the pressure on the performers.”