Category: music

Minnesota Opera has announced that it will finish the season with a balanced budget for the fourth year in a row. It was a banner year for the small company, as it garnered national attention for its world premiere of the new operatic version of The Grapes of Wrath, and recorded a live version of the production for release later this year.

Much has been made of the Metropolitan Opera’s highly successful forays into electronic distribution this past year, with the debut of live high-definition simulcasts being made possible by a new agreement with the musicians’ union which scrapped the hefty upfront payments which would otherwise have been due. But Ivan Katz points out that all the new activity generated $3 million for the Met, and the company “has bet the farm on the continued cooperation of the unions, and on their reasonableness going forward… Continued union cooperation is by no means a safe bet.”

The Baltimore Symphony has signed a deal with XM satellite radio to carry eight of the orchestra’s concerts in 2007-08. The first broadcast will be a live simulcast of Marin Alsop’s first concert as the BSO’s new music director.

“A court has ordered heirs of composer Richard Strauss to share royalties with the heirs of librettist and poet Hugo von Hoffmansthal for nine collaborations, including the popular operas Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra… Payments to the heirs of von Hoffmansthal, who died in 1929, stopped in 1999 after the expiration of a 70-year protection period.”

The Oregon Symphony will finish its 2006-07 season with yet another multi-million dollar deficit, according to sources within the organization. The OSO has hired a consultant to cut costs in hopes that the budget can be balanced by the 2008-09 season, but so far, there don’t seem to be any easy answers.

The Buffalo Philharmonic has reached a settlement with a former oboist who had been claiming that anti-gay discrimination was involved in his dismissal from the orchestra. A hearing of the dispute, scheduled for next week before the New York State Division of Human Rights, has been canceled.

Major orchestras are a fine thing for a community to have in its midst, but David Patrick Stearns says that, sometimes, it’s the smaller, scrappier bands that turn out crackling performances, largely because they still feel as though they have something to prove. But do audiences in such cities really appreciate what they have?

Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra is planning a slate of events to celebrate the 75th birthday of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. Besides the premiere of a new orchestral work from Schafer, the celebrations “will include choral music workshops, a two-day teachers’ symposium and talks by the composer about music education, in addition to four free concerts of Schafer’s music.”

U.S. Congress criminalizing boot-leg recordings of music performers is constitutional and does not conflict with copyright laws, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday

The Houston Symphony has a new contract with its musicians. The base pay rises to $81,900 a year. “The three-year orchestra agreement, which takes effect in October, is a small, measured step toward sustaining the organization’s fragile financial stability, newly found after decades of problems.”