Category: music

“In the internet virtual world Second Life, you can buy property, gamble and go to lectures. You can attend film festivals, go to gigs and buy art. And next month, a British orchestra will stage the first full-scale symphonic concert on the site. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has created a virtual, 3-D version of its concert hall and on September 14 users of the website will be able to attend a concert led by the orchestra’s chief conductor, Vasily Petrenko.”

“The New York Philharmonic is considering an official invitation from the North Korean government to perform in Pyongyang, the United States’ oldest symphony orchestra said on Monday.”

“The outcome that German authorities have refused to contemplate is a Bayreuth without Wagners, a festival in the hands of an outsider who would cleanse it of notoriety and nepotism, and revitalize its content. But that would amount to a radical revolution and Wagner, in Germany today, represents all that is reactionary in art.”

In total, 23 of the 100 top-selling albums in Germany last year were by UK artists. In France, more than one in ten albums sold are currently by UK acts, industry anaylsis suggests.

“Under programmes run by the Foundation for the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela (Fesnojiv), Venezuela’s pioneering music education network commonly known as “El Sistema”, all children in Guarenas have access to a free education in classical music. Demand for the scheme from the local people seems insatiable; there are currently 700 students, and another 600 are on the waiting list.”

“An ensemble of musicians separated by oceans and thousands of miles will perform together later this month for the first time, having composed music layer-by-layer with sound files exchanged over the Internet. Their goal: Show how the arts can bridge diverse cultures — even among people who have never met in person before coming together on stage.” The musicians, from Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Morocco and the United States, are slated to perform in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Casablanca.

“The general director of the Santa Fe Opera plans to retire but will not do so until his successor is in place, he said Wednesday. Richard Gaddes, only the second director of the 51-year-old company, estimated the search would take 12 to 18 months. He will ‘most definitely’ remain with the company through the 2008 season, he said.”

“Rock opera has had a spotty history, but by now the barriers between high and low art, between classical and pop music, have been so thoroughly demolished that something was bound to have happened. And, in fact, rockers are welcomed into the opera house and concert hall like never before. Meanwhile, classical composers appropriate from the pop world like crazy. … The only problem with all this is that very little rock opera is opera, and very, very little of it is any good.”

“Joseph Joachim, who died 100 years ago this Wednesday … personified an era that understood Great Music as religion. Yet people liked as well as venerated him,” and this friend of Brahms and the Schumanns was one of the 19th century’s greatest violinists. “White, male European and dead, Joachim might look today like a strong candidate for Most Famous Violinist Nobody Under 60 Has Ever Heard Of. Yet a few vital signs can still be detected by anyone inclined to look and listen for them.”

Contrary to everything we’ve been told about the decline and fall of the brick-and-mortar recording industry, indie music stores are thriving in Chicago. What’s the secret? A return to vinyl. “It’s a quest for tangibility that is, in some ways, driving the vinyl craze. To some music lovers, CDs, at about 16 grams, feel less substantial than a 180-gram audiophile vinyl record… There’s something alternative, even subversive, about vinyl, especially when everybody is carrying around iPods.”