Category: music

“The Opéra de Montréal yesterday gave itself a pat on the back, reporting that its prodigious 2006 accumulated deficit of $2 million had been trimmed to just under $700,000. This reduction was the result of staff layoffs, a season of four rather than five productions and the continued support of corporate and government funding sources. The public also responded, with an attendance rate in Salle Wilfrid Pelletier of 92 per cent and a $760,000 increase in box-office revenue.”

The name of Jean Sibelius is as powerfully marketable as names get in Finland, the composer’s home country. But “the heirs of Sibelius are facing a dilemma: the composer’s copyright protection expires in 2027, 70 years after his death,” after which his name and music could be used by anyone wanting to make a quick buck off the association. So the heirs have trademarked the Sibelius name, but that very act compels them to issue products under the name themselves, or lose the trademark.

“When MTV’s award show kicked off 24 years ago, the network was ushering in a new era where the video was king: a branding tool and an art form rolled into one. Today, the channel broadcasts mostly reality shows while YouTube, iTunes, MTV.com and various other online destinations have become the dominant viewing platform for videos. Directors are gradually adapting to the smaller-sized medium.”

Chicago Lyric Opera has been penciled in for $10m from the will of longtime patron Nancy Knowles. The money probably won’t be coming anytime soon – Knowles is in her 70s and in good health – but when it does, it will be the largest single gift in the company’s history.

“Talks between musicians and management of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra continued past 10 p.m. Wednesday as the two sides tried to hammer out a new musicians contract that would prevent the players from going on strike for the first time since 1987… The parties, joined for the first time by a state mediator, had not spoken since talks broke off a month ago. The previous contract expired Monday.”

38-year-old Giancarlo Guerrero has been named the next music director of the Nashville Symphony. Guerrero, whose star has been rising in recent years, has served as music director in Eugene, Oregon, and was a staff conductor with the Minnesota Orchestra. Nashville has been without a chief conductor since the death of Kenneth Schermerhorn in April 2005.

The Tulsa Symphony is about to start its second season. But there’s a sudden change of leadership. “The orchestra’s founder, retired neurosurgeon Frank Letcher, resigned his positions as the orchestra’s executive director and chairman Thursday.”

The traditional last night of the Proms is an orgy of British nationalism. This even though the ethnic makeup of London has changed dramatically in recent decades. “Is our inability to change the Last Night, in the face of the massive cultural developments in the UK in the past 50 years and an ethnically changing population, nostalgia or isolationism?”

“It seems clear today that when Georg Solti and his fellow podium titans Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein departed the scene, something in the classical music culture vanished along with them.” Ten years ater he died, Solti’s presence is still missed at te Chicago Symphony. “Solti was not only the last superstar conductor. He added his own Dionysian intensity to the Apollonian foundation set down by his predecessors Fritz Reiner and Jean Martinon. The result, mellowed and refined by Daniel Barenboim in the years subsequent to Solti, is the superbly flexible ensemble of virtuoso musicians we know today.”

“A rock survivor in Europe, more than 25 years after achieving fame, has a death rate slightly higher than a contemporary with a more conventional career, the research indicated. But American musicians continue to die in greater numbers. Over the first 25 years, the risk of dying is 1.7 times higher. A disproportionate number of deaths are caused by drink or drugs.”