Category: music

“Sevdah – the word is Turkish and suggests desire, yearning, thwarted love – has existed for hundreds of years in this region, often composed of just a voice and a saz (a Turkish lute). Yet it took Bosnia’s suffering to focus the world’s attention on this small nation’s music. Sevdah bears comparison to Portuguese fado and Spanish flamenco; all three are vocal arts rooted in Arabic courtly love songs from a millennium ago.”

The UK’s freelance musicians say that the country’s heavily monitored licensing practices are making it difficult for them to earn a living. “Under the act, the maximum penalty for the unlicensed provision of even one musician is a £20,000 fine and a six month prison sentence. Critics claim fringe musicians such as jazz and folk artists, who were the main beneficiaries under the rule, are losing gigs because small venues are abandoning informal live music events to avoid the trouble and expense of getting a licence.”

A court hearing has been scheduled to determine whether either or both of the men involved in the now infamous Boston Pops brawl should be charged with a crime. At the time of the fight, both men were ejected from Symphony Hall, but not arrested. “A few days later the police department reversed its decision not to pursue charges and assigned a detective to investigate.”

The Cleveland Orchestra has been without a permanent principal trombonist for more than two years now, and at this point, “just about every interested, top-notch trombone player in America — and some from overseas — reportedly has come through Severance Hall with hopes for a future in Cleveland.” So what’s the holdup?

Klaus Heymann started the Naxos label almost by accident in 1987, distributing performances by obscure orchestras that failed entirely to impress either the critics or the competition. But 20 years on, Heymann’s scrappy label that could is a behemoth in the music world, and in an age when classical is getting short shrift from nearly every major label, Naxos releases 20 new CDs every month. “In the breadth, depth, ambition and prestige of its repertoire, Naxos has no serious rival anywhere in the world today, even among specialist labels.”

It’s been nearly 15 years since the acrimonious split between Spoleto Festival USA, based in Charleston, South Caroline, and its parent festival in Spoleto, Italy. But now, there are signs that the two organizations could be ready to partner once again.

“If we taught music better in schools, we would understand Elgar more, for a case can be made that he and his music are central to that most crucial of understandings: of ourselves, and where we come from. … When you hear Elgar at his greatest – in the Second Symphony, in the Violin Concerto, above all in Falstaff – you hear an English spirit released from the confinement of social and critical disdain. He is proving his detractors – present and future – wrong in the extreme.”

“Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins and composer Steve Reich received the prestigious Polar Music Prize from the hands of Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony on Monday at the Stockholm Concert Hall. The Polar Music Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of music, is Sweden’s biggest music award and it comes with a 1 million kronor ($147,000) prize for each winner.”

No one has yet found a way to keep the thoughtless, mindless and noisy peoples of the world out of its concert halls and theaters, and incidents of audience misbehavior have been mounting of late. Perhaps what’s needed is a strategy from completely outside the musical marketplace: Starbucks, say. “Starbucks, it seems, faces the challenge of encouraging its customers to linger a while, but not to fall asleep, and certainly not to change their socks. People should feel comfortable, but not too comfortable, because that… is when they can start to behave in unwelcome ways.”

The Louisville Orchestra, which has been in severe fiscal trouble several times in recent years, seems finally to have turned things around. This week, the orchestra announced that it expects to finish the year with a healthy surplus, and will use some of the money to pay its long-suffering musicians a bonus. The organization also recently finished paying off more than $1m in bank loans, and the board president celebrated by setting fire to the loan documents at an official ceremony.