Category: music

A recent study “compared record sales and music radio listening in some 100 American cities from 1998 to 2003. It found that, very roughly, an hour’s worth of radio listening per person per day, over the course of a year, corresponded with a 0.75 drop in the number of albums purchased per capita in a given city.”

This year 185 young pianists applied for the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition. Thirty-five pianists from 16 countries were chosen to compete. “Long before the first-place winner is handed $50,000 — the largest award in the world for a piano competition — and about 40 concert engagements, the 35 pianists must prove themselves in Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th- or 21st-century works of their choice as well as a Chopin etude.”

“Advertisers are harnessing pop’s powerful potential for cross-branded synergy more aggressively and variously than ever. One side effect: Commissions for original music for ads are down, and licensing music from established and emerging artists is through the roof, marketers say. It’s a mixed blessing that can introduce underground artists to a wider fan base. But just as often, ad pop adulterates musical chestnuts and can distort a song’s original intent.” And oh, the fans might object…

Composers are having a harder time than ever getting their work performed. “There have never been enough opportunities, but now more composers are graduating from schools and conservatories than ever. San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet, which is famous for promoting new music, has received more than 1,000 submissions over the last five years for its Under 30 Project, dedicated to commissioning young composers, but it chooses to focus on only one composer a year. So what’s an ambitious composer to do?”

When conductor Kent Nagano took over the Bavarian State Opera, there were predictions he would crash. But “a Californian of Japanese heritage, Nagano is, for Munich, an exotic, which can work both in his favor and against it. He has the advantage of the novelty factor, and the city itself is cosmopolitan and even has liberal pockets these days. He treats people with great respect, and he drives expensive sports cars very fast — two traits that go over well in Bavaria. But out in the less-tolerant countryside, Nagano says, he can be made to feel distinctly unwelcome entering into a provincial guesthouse.”

Conductor Robert Spano was on many critics’ “next big thing” list. But buzz about the 46-year-old Atlanta Symphony music director has died down. “More revealing is the recent fact that where Spano’s name was once prominent on any wish-list of music directors at top orchestras, he’s now perhaps the most conspicuous absentee.”

Atlanta Opera commissioned a study. Among the findings: “Famous opera stars from New York’s Metropolitan Opera — singers of the stature of soprano Deborah Voigt — draw almost no recognition. Nor do singers who performed recently with the Atlanta Opera trigger any memories. As the Gallup summary advised: ‘Do not secure specific ‘big name’ performers for the average respondent’s sake: respondents appear to not know them anyway’.”

“The aptly named Chicago Jazz Partnership has funneled approximately $1.5 million in cash (and nearly as much in in-kind contributions, such as production costs and musician airfares) into a music that’s internationally identified with this city. Granted, that may not seem like a lot of money when compared with the funding of institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But it’s huge in jazz, a music that somehow has flourished for most of a century on nightclub cover charges and bar tabs, but with scant institutional support.”

“It didn’t take long for Beethoven’s last symphony, with its famous choral finale extolling universal brotherhood, to take on iconic stature. It represented for many people a spiritual, as well as musical, high. That the piece carried the number 9 just added to the significance, for, as any numerologist (or long-lived cat) will tell you, nine can be awfully potent. Some ancient cultures considered it a sacred number. Those who value things in threes view nine as the ultimate – three times three. So, if mighty Beethoven stopped at nine, lesser mortals would surely have to do the same.”

The American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival is “one of the most ambitious such programs in the world. David Zinman also believes it is the best. During its short history, it has produced more than 120 alumni, including Daniel Meyer, resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony; Mei- Ann Chen, assistant conductor of the Oregon Symphony; and Jonathan Schiffman, music director of the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon- Provence in France.”