Category: music

The musicians and management of the Chicago Symphony have reportedly reached agreement on a new, multiyear contract. Details to follow…

The Buffalo Philharmonic has re-upped music director JoAnn Falletta through 2013, and announced significant progress on a $30 million endowment drive that the orchestra hopes will give it long-term financial stability. The BPO also balanced its annual budget for the third year in a row.

“Musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra met last night at the Kimmel Center to discuss a contract proposal hammered out after another round of talks with management… The negotiating committee has recommended a “yes” vote, according to sources familiar with details of the talks. The proposal calls for changes in work rules, including allowing for more Sunday concerts and ‘run-out’ concerts – performances in nearby cities that require several hours’ travel… And the new contract calls for what players characterized as ‘decent’ raises.”

It wasn’t too long ago that the Montreal and Toronto symphonies were both in the grip of fiscal and artistic crisis. These days, each orchestra has a popular new music director, a newly invigorated sound, and at least a modicum of financial stability. But John Terauds says that only the Montreal Symphony has really managed to create a citywide buzz around itself, and the Toronto Symphony could learn a lot from its Quebec counterpart about manufacturing public interest.

Would you want to read a 17 million-word diary? What about watching someone write it? “The diary of Arthur Crew Inman, a notorious recluse and one of Boston’s great eccentrics, has already been transformed into a play: Camera Obscura by Lorenzo DeStefano. Tonight the chamber opera company Intermezzo premieres The Inman Diaries, an opera by Thomas Oboe Lee based on the play and on Inman’s colossal diary.”

“Music conservatories scramble for donations like every other nonprofit organization. The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia has found an unusual source: Aaron Rosand’s violin, the famous “Kochanski” Guarneri del Gesù. Mr. Rosand, a longtime teacher at Curtis and a soloist, has promised that when he retires and sells his violin, the school will receive $1.5 million.”

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra may market itself with an 80-foot mural beside the Harbor Freeway downtown, but the Houston Symphony has decided to look through the other end of the telescope. It’s offering the public free ‘official trading cards,’ featuring 33 of its musicians, just like the ones of baseball players that kids have long coveted.

“The apparent lack of cashing-in can be attributed in part to the immediacy of digital retail. Ten years ago, a record label would have rush-released a compilation in order to capture the public mood. Not any more, because with the music available through internet stores there is no need to repackage. So without any overt promotion, Pavarotti – The Ultimate Collection has risen to No 11 on the Amazon album chart, while The Three Tenors’ rendition of Nessun Dorma charted at No 24 based on downloads alone.”

“The visceral thrill of live music comes in part from the relish of a player or a singer or an orchestra for performance, and also from the challenge to an audience to consider what it has heard. Did they pull it off? If there is a threat to the place of serious music in the future it comes not from the possibility of composers ceasing to compose – they won’t, for better or worse – but from a dilution of that excitement. If orchestras don’t adapt, if concert halls and opera houses don’t find ever more ingenious ways of competing against other attractions, they will wither on the vine.”

A tentative deal has been reached for a new musicians’ contract at the Utah Symphony & Opera, with both sides agreeing to recommend ratification. Previously, the musicians had soundly rejected a proposal that management had called its “last, best, and final offer” to avert a work stoppage. The main sticking point had been wages – the US&O is one of the lowest-paid full-time orchestras in the US.