Category: music

“In an emergency meeting Monday, Utah Symphony and Opera musicians voted 64-8 to reject what had been termed the ‘last, best and final’ contract offer from management, just four days before the orchestra’s first season concert on Friday.”

“Such adjectives are bandied about so often in the classical music world that they have lost their true meaning, but miraculous is the only possible word to describe performances that reached the highest professional standards, given by teenagers from a country which – before El Sistema – had no meaningful tradition of classical music. One man’s dream has ensured that Venezuela is not only the first South American country to play classical music better than football but that its youth orchestra is the finest advertisement any country could wish for.”

The Monterey Jazz Festival is going into the recording business. “It has plenty to choose from in the archives: “There are over 1,600 tapes, more than 2,000 hours of music. There’s Duke Ellington in there, Count Basie and Woody Herman. There’s blues: Jimmy Witherspoon, Etta James. We have Tito Puente, Brubeck, Mingus. We have Sonny Rollins from ’58…”

After some hard negotiating the orchestra and its musicians have agreed on a three-year contract. “The DSO’s first concert of the season is scheduled Thursday, and rehearsals should begin Tuesday.”

“Luciano Pavarotti has made a posthumous comeback to the UK singles chart, nearly 15 years after his last hit. Download sales of Nessun Dorma saw the track rise to number 24, following the tenor’s death on Thursday. The track made number two in 1990 after being used as the BBC’s theme to its coverage of the World Cup in Italy.”

“This year’s BBC Proms season has attracted a record number of people to its concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall and Cadogan Hall. Organisers said more than 272,000 people had booked tickets, beating the previous high of 265,000 in 2001. There was also a 5% increase in ticket sales compared to last year.”

“Opera was born as a radical new form incorporating music and drama, but the partnership between the elements has been an uneasy and unequal one, with musical values having taken firm precedence through much of the art form’s history. For impresarios and generally for audiences too, superlative singing has always been considered to be of paramount importance.” But as standards evolve, acting skills are taking a more prominent role.

“Tenor high C’s are scattered throughout the opera literature. Sometimes tenors transpose the aria down slightly or drop an octave, other times they fake it and edge into falsetto voice, where it is easier to sing. Just as often, they hit it, and hold it…. It is moments like those when opera, in addition to the aesthetic joys and emotional satisfactions, can seem like a spectator sport or a circus high-wire act.”

Some concertgoers in Boston may have their doubts about some of the programming decisions that Boston Symphony music director James Levine has made in his first two seasons in the Hub, but in Europe, where the BSO is currently touring, Levine and the Bostonians are making an impressive splash with some gems of the standard 20th century repertoire.

“Representatives of musicians and management of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
say they are close to finalizing a three-year contract that will avoid the first DSO strike in 20 years and ensure the season opens next week without a hitch.” The musicians are expected to agree to cuts in the first two years of the deal, but the third year should include a raise that will keep the ensemble in the top ten of American orchestra salaries.