Category: music

This year’s Festival of Two Worlds was an artistic and box-office calamity. “Prior to a performance, musician- and stagehand-representatives read a prepared statement to the audience, explaining that they had not been paid for the festival’s entire six-week duration, and blaming all parties involved in funding the festival, including the Fondazione, the Associazione and the City. The following day, the stagehands refused to dismantle the on-site structures as scheduled, essentially calling a strike and preventing the next event in the ‘Spoleto Estate’ [Spoleto Summer] series, the Russian Army Ballet, from setting up.”

EMI has been sold to a private investment group Terra Firma, for $6.4 billion. Warner Music and EMI had been in an elaborate dance for more than a year about a potential merger. But last month WMG said it would not make a bid ahead of a deadline, leaving Terra Firma as the only player.

The over-30 set. “That’s right: rock is dead, or it definitely might be. One or other must be true, because Glastonbury wasn’t very good. The main problem, to hear some people talk, was the preponderance of those responsible for our Great Rock Crisis: people over 30, who are apparently buying most of the tickets for great musical events, taking the kids and a hamper, and thereby ruining their essential ambience.”

Why is classical music always taking the rap when that dread word “elitism” rears its peculiarly ugly head? Julian Lloyd Webber writes that the racial makeup of audiences for classical music is no different than those for football or many of the big pop music festivals…

Music stimulates the brain, according to a new study, but it’s the silences between the phrases that really make us think. “A one- to two-second break between movements triggers a flurry of mental activity, researchers found. When the music resumes, the action shifts to a different part of the brain, then subsides… Stanford’s snapshots of this pause may have implications beyond concert halls, nightclubs and honky-tonks.”

In Tacoma Washington, police were alarmed by hooligans who were hangingout at the public transit center. So they’ve begun piping in classical music to get them to leave. “By playing classical music, Pierce Transit and the TPD hope to create an unpleasant environment for criminals and gangster-wannabes.”

“A lawsuit claiming infringement of copyright has been filed on behalf of the singer by his music publishing company Eight Mile Style. Apple pays Eminem’s record label for each download – but Eight Mile Style argues it has not approved the deal.”

Norman Lebrecht: “What got him the job was youth – 40 in podium terms is post-pubescent – and insiders suggest that he would not have stood much chance before the Dudamel breakthrough. Whether Gilbert can turn a brilliant orchestra into an interesting one remains to be seen. What is certain, though, is that from now on orchestral conductors are, like policemen, going to be looking a whole lot younger.”

It’s a delicate process, and the opera house has been closed for a year. “The team has brought in physicists, engineers, architects and other experts to preserve the delicacy of the horseshoe-shaped auditorium’s sound, preventing even slight modifications to seat structure during storage. Artists will test the sound quality when the theater reopens for its 100th anniversary in May next year, which will be celebrated with a performance of Verdi’s ‘Aida,’ the same opera that opened the venue in 1908.”

An online music seller plans to offer downloadable tracks to cellphones. “Nearly all of the 2.7 million tracks eMusic has the rights to sell will be available through the service, which will work on several handsets by Samsung and Nokia.”