Category: music

Now that Giancarlo Menotti is gone, what’s to happen to his Festival of the Two Worlds” in Spoleto? There have been confusing reports from the mayor of Spoleto about reuniting with the Charleston Spoleto Festival. And then there’s the matter of trying to rebuild the festival to its former glories…

Tom Chiu had his violin stolen on a New York subway train. Six days later he got a call from transit workers at at station in Coney Island to say they had his instrument. The violin had changed trains…

Paul Potts, the opera-singing tenor who won the “Britain’s Got Talent” last month, is releasing an album in 15 countries. “The former mobile phone salesman won fans across the world after 10 million people viewed his winning performance on video-sharing site YouTube. The 36-year-old Welshman signed a £1m recording deal with show judge Simon Cowell after his win last month. The album will include Nessun Dorma, which he performed on the programme.”

“Eighteen months after the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater announced an innovative commissioning project, few notes have been written. The composers have yet to sign contracts, officials said, and some have not even settled on their subject matter. But with the busy Met season over, the effort is gathering steam.”

“Chicago Symphony Orchestra President Deborah R. Card earned a salary of $423,300 for 2004-05. But she was far from being the highest-paid symphony orchestra executive director that season, according to figures reported to the IRS and posted last week by Drew McManus on his Adaptistration blog (artsjournal.com/adaptistration). … The symphony orchestra CEO who received the fattest compensation package by far was Card’s colleague Deborah Borda, executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who drew a whopping $1,325,542.”

Two years ago the recording industry sued Tanya Andersen for downloading music illegally on her computer. She proved that she didn’t. Now she’s suing the recording industry, claiming sustained harrasment. Music fans are cheering.

Getty Images has made a big success of licensing images over the internet. “It plans to apply that same model to music licensing for ads, TV shows and movies. The first step was its $42 million acquisition of Pump Audio in late June. Pump Audio operates an online music licensing business similar to Getty’s photo service.”

“What has changed is not how much the tradition means to its devotees, but how little it means to everyone else. From being the center of cultural aspiration, art music has become almost quaintly marginal; from being the hallmark of bourgeois accomplishment (‘Someday you’ll thank me’), music lessons have become optional attempts at self-expression; from appearing on newsmagazine covers, maestros now barely rate boldface in gossip columns.”

CD sales continue to decline, and record stores are going out of business. Is there any hope for recordings sales? “A revival in vinyl sales suggests that there may be a future for music sold as a physical arte-fact. Six times more 7-inch singles were sold in 2006 than in 2001, and with their current single, Icky Thump, the White Stripes have achieved higher weekly sales of 7-inches than any band for 20 years.

Fopp, “the chain of film and music shops, which began life as a market stall in a Glasgow shopping arcade 25 years ago, has closed its doors and appointed administrators. It said today that the chain of 81 stores staffed by some 800 people was profitable but still too short of cash to go on.”