Category: music

An Australian acoustics firm has beat out worldwide competition to score a dream gig consulting on the design of Paris’s major new concert hall. “The team designed a double chamber space where the seats are set closer in and wrapped around the orchestra stage, so the audience sits within the sound, minimising any absorption.”

The dispute between musicians and management of the Omaha Symphony is ratcheting up, with the musicians claiming that the salary of the orchestra’s CEO rose an average of 20% over the past three years, as the musicians were held to a 2-3% bump over the same period. The orchestra management acknowledges that its CEO’s pay is nearly twice that of some comparable ensembles, but says that much of the raise came through incentive pay.

It’s a question that has occurred to almost anyone who’s ever attended an opera – as talented as these singers are, how is it that they manage to be heard clearly over the roar of a full-sized symphony orchestra? The answer is a lot more complicated than simple volume, and it explains why sopranos are easier to hear than any other voice part.

Pops programs are a vital moneymaker for the orchestras that play them, and while they might be considered less “serious” than the usual classical fare, the amount of work that goes into a seemingly simple show in which the orchestra plays backup band to a rock group or pop singer is staggering. For instance, most rock/pop acts don’t just have orchestral arrangements of their songs sitting around. Someone’s gotta write those…

A $75 million renovation of Denver’s Boettcher Concert Hall appears to be on track as part of a $631 million bonding bill which would be put before the city’s voters this November. The measure still needs approval from city leaders, but a task force examining the city’s infrastructure needs has recommended it for passage.

Lorin Maazel has never been a conductor afraid to say what he thinks, and in a new interview, he takes dead aim at music critics, particularly those in America. “American critics are incompetent… If journalists wrote of sports as they do of music, they would be fired a thousand times. But classical music is a niche field, and newspaper editors understand nothing about it.”

“The first woman director of one of the leading Welsh male voice choirs has resigned, claiming that she was hounded out because of her gender… She turned in her baton after three years, claiming that a ‘minority of members’ had a problem with a woman running the choir.”

In case anyone needed more evidence of the tension between high culture and pop entertainment, consider the Sydney Symphony, which this week offered up an entire concert of video game music ranging from the classic (Super Mario Bros.) to the cutting edge (World of Warcraft). The local paper wisely sent both its classical music and video game critics to review the show: the former found the music predictably stereotypical and noted that the orchestra appeared “suitably embarrassed,” while the latter described “an epic experience that will stay with any mildly fanatical gamer for a long time.”

“American tenor Neil Shicoff, who was overlooked for the position of director of Vienna’s State Opera, has pulled out of Austria’s renowned Salzburg Festival.” Shicoff had been tirelessly promoted for the Vienna job by Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, but the heavy-handedness worked against Shicoff, and Dominique Meyer got the gig instead. In a letter to Salzburg’s festival director, Shicoff expressed a desire to distance himself from “intrigues and disappointments.”

San Antonio, Texas, is a huge city by American standards, and yet, its orchestra is the very definition of small time, with stagnant wages, an undersized complement of musicians, and a board that seems either uninterested or incapable of raising even the bare minimum that the organization needs to avoid crisis every few years. “The board’s timidity indicates economic leadership that doesn’t have the will, energy or ambition to lead — that likes to claim the title of a major city but doesn’t want to work very hard to make it so.”