Category: music

Scott Cantrell: “Thirty years later, week after week, I still marvel at the acoustics of my favorite modern symphony hall — maybe my favorite of any age. The sound seems a physical, tactile presence in the room; one senses it moving around, expanding and exploring and inhabiting spaces both seen and unseen.” – Dallas News

“Some 20,000 unionized musicians across the country will soon see ‘painful’ reductions in their pension benefits in order to keep the American Federation of Musicians’ $1.8 billion multi-employer pension fund from running out of money within the next 20 years. The reductions are required by federal law because the Fund has now entered ‘critical and declining’ status.” – Deadline

“Louisville, Kentucky has gotten used to the fact that the maestro rides his bike to concerts. No limo, no tux for him. At 32, Teddy Abrams is the youngest conductor of a major orchestra in the United States, and in Louisville (if it’s possible for a classical musician) he’s a rock star.” (video and text) – CBS

Sofar Sounds  puts on concerts in people’s living rooms where fans pay $15 to $30 to sit silently on the floor and truly listen. Nearly 1 million guests have attended Sofar’s more than 20,000 gigs. In some cases, Sofar pays just $100 per band for a 25 minute set, which can work out to just $8 per musician per hour or less. Hosts get nothing, and Sofar keeps the rest, which can range from $1,100 to $1,600 or more per gig. – TechCrunch

Michigan Opera Theatre has issued a Request For Proposals to developers for a tower up to 480 feet high that “may include mixed use, corporate, residential, restaurants, retail, etc.” – Crain’s Detroit Business

When the Swiss conductor, now 61, steps down, he’ll have been at the orchestra’s helm for 13 years. The end of his contract term coincides with that of the musicians’ labor agreement. – The Salt Lake Tribune

Hundreds of citizens attended the City Commission meeting Monday, and more than 70 of them spoke during public comment, which extended the meeting four hours beyond its estimated end. By the end of the meeting, the majority of the commissioners did not feel comfortable approving further research on the orchestra’s vision, which they still had so many questions about. – The Herald-Tribune

“It’s amazing that this landmark symphony could have been so easily forgotten. As with the other seminal New Englanders—George Whitefield Chadwick, Horatio Parker, and Edward MacDowell, among them—modernism killed off Paine’s music. And with the ascendancy of American vernacular forms, reflected in the music of Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, and others, any music arising from the German Romantic tradition could be ridiculed and ignored.”  – The American Scholar