Category: music

“As recording companies bemoan a crumbling market, Prince is demonstrating that charisma and the willingness to go out and perform are still bankable. He doesn’t have to go multiplatinum — he’s multiplatform.”

Some of the biggest-selling music stars are being locked out of Top 40 radio. They’re current or former stars of the Disney Channel, and are “routinely mining gold, platinum and multi-platinum CD sales while being virtually locked out at Top 40.” Why? “That’s because mainstream radio, which targets a coveted 18-to-34 year-old demo, doesn’t want to risk alienating its older listeners.”

In one of the worst kept secrets in the music world, Italian conductor Daniele Gatti, 45, finally has been named successor to Kurt Masur as music director of the Orchestre National de France.

Canadian hair salons have been sent notices that they must pay license fees for playing music in their shops. “Hairdressers happen to utilise music quite frequently and so currently, we are targeting hairdressing salons to educate them on the fact that they do require a licence if they are using music. The licensing fee varies according to the size of the salon, with a minimum cost of $94 per year.”

Lyric Opera of Chicago will remain a national on-air presence after raising enough money to keep its new radio series on the air through the 2011-12 season. “After a four-year hiatus, Lyric returned to the air Oct. 21 as a result of a new contract with its principal unions and a $2 million grant [which] required an equal amount be raised from others. The Lyric now says that it has completed the match.”

New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommassini has been beating the Alan Gilbert drum for quite some time now, and he freely admits that he expected to be disappointed in the end, and is thrilled to have been proven wrong. “Mr. Gilbert is an unpretentious musician with no whiff of the formidable maestro about him. And that is just what makes him such a refreshing choice for the Philharmonic… Mr. Gilbert presents himself simply as a solid, utterly professional conductor who will try to instill a collegial atmosphere within the ranks of the players rather than be their teacher.”

The announcement of native New Yorker (and son of two NY Phil musicians) Alan Gilbert as the next music director of the New York Philharmonic was made first to the orchestra’s musicians as they prepared for an outdoor concert in Central Park. Reaction within the ensemble appeared to be immediate and positive, and Gilbert himself put in a surprise appearance to watch the concert.

“A senior lecturer in The School of Computer Science at The University of Manchester, is seeking to combine his academic expertise in communications, networks and digital signal processing with his love of choral singing. He is looking for funding to drive forward a project that will bring together amateur and semi-professional singers across Europe for seamless and polished live performances” over the internet.

“The prima donna is not the figure she once was,- perhaps partly because the overall position of women in society has advanced to such an extent that her achievement no longer seems remarkable or heroic. Fifty years ago, it was different: a girl had to fight to make a career in opera, and, in a business dominated by flattering yet patronising men, even the biggest stars had to assert themselves aggressively – hence the prevalence of the sexist myth of the difficult diva.”

Maybe Not. “Nearly 20 million people worldwide bought Purple Rain in 1984, when Prince’s intoxicating, eccentric mix of rock and funk sounded like the future of music. By 2001 the fan base willing to shell out for Rainbow Children was a hardcore 300,000. UK sales of last year’s heavily promoted 3121 were just 80,000.”