Now that Apple is moving beyond iTunes, it’s worth remembering how revolutionary iTunes was. Before the iTunes Music Store, your best bet to find music online was through a file-sharing site like Napster. Your only legal options were either niche storefronts, or label-specific ones, none of them user-friendly. iTunes brought purchasing music online into the mainstream. – Wired
Category: music
Music From The Brain’s Perspective
The first sound that results in the primary auditory cortex is a standard pitch. Other regions of the auditory cortex add more complex elements like timbre and specific sound quality. To add to the complexity, prior research has revealed that multiple areas of the brain become activated by listening to music — many of them not specific to music processing, such as emotional processing. Rhythmic processing on its own involves multiple overlapping structures of the brain. – Ludwig Van
The Opera That Won The Venice Biennale Is Running Out Of Money, With Number Of Performances Slashed
The creators of Sun and Sea (Marina) at the Lithuanian pavilion say they had never really expected more than 15 visitors at a time and certainly never expected to win the Golden Lion or draw crowds. So the funding plans they had weren’t adequate to what actually happened. They’ve cut down from daily performances (when the press and judges were in town) to once on Saturdays; they say that “[adding] a Wednesday performance is our maximum ambition.” – The New York Times
The Future Of Opera Is Small
As in small companies. More and more small companies are appearing not as smaller echoes of larger companies, but as viable alternatives that allow artists more creative possibilities. – Washington Post
The Baltimore Symphony’s Finances Are A Mess. Who’s Fumbled What?
Lawmakers thought they were buying the orchestra enough time to re-examine its costs, raise more money for its endowment and develop a sustainable fiscal structure that would not entail sacrifices on this scale for the musicians. If that wasn’t the case, the BSO management should have said so before Thursday. – Baltimore Sun
Musicians Aren’t Making Money Selling Music, So Why Not Sell Pot?
The streaming wars, in which artists haven’t made much off of their actual music, take a weird turn: “‘Many artists sell clothes or shoes, some sell wine and beer, others advertise for fast-food companies,’ explains Third Man-signed country singer Margo Price, who has a strain named after her last album All American Made. ‘Me, I’m into selling a plant that God grows.'” Classical musicians, are you listening? – The Guardian (UK)
Music, Like All Art, Can Change History
Or at least what we know about our history, and how we look at it. Check out two recent concerts that work as art, of course, and “as historical corrective, guided by a commitment to scrambling, reordering, and recontextualizing the history of bodies ‘in motion.'” – The Atlantic
When Management Canceled Summer Concerts And Told Baltimore Musicians They Wouldn’t Be Paid, They Played On
The chair of the players’ committee strode to the front of the stage and said, “We are stunned and grieve for our beloved B.S.O. … We will be making music with even more passion and purpose tonight and for as long as our management keeps the lights on and the doors unlocked.” Then they played, unscheduled, Edward Elgar’s “Nimrod.” – The New York Times
It was the first all-African American opera. And now, ‘Treemonisha’ is getting new life
“Despite not being staged while [composer Scott] Joplin was still alive, Treemonisha has had a lasting legacy. It was first performed in its entirety in the 1970s, and in 1977 Joplin posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for music. It’s been staged again since then, but now, it’s being rewritten and expanded with an entirely new team at the helm. [The Toronto company] Volcano and … a multitude of [creators and] performers are reviving the opera for its premiere in 2020. The entire creative team — and the orchestra, once the opera goes public — is composed of Black women.” – CBC
Ojai: The Tiny Music Festival That Reflects The World
Mark Swed: “It is still the quirkiest major music festival in America, and possibly anywhere. If anything, Ojai has become even more a habitat for compulsive experimentation as well as a magnet for many of the world’s most accomplished musicians. Charm and informality continue. But thanks in large part to Tom Morris, the Ojai festival is now a Destination.” – Los Angeles Times