Category: music

“In common with the wider music industry, Warner has been trying to adjust to a sharp fall in CD sales sparked by rampant piracy and a move to online music buying. It revealed that 400 jobs were set to go under a new strategy to ‘align the company’s workforce with the changing nature of the music industry’ by cutting costs and making more of growing digital music sales.”

The Philadelphia Orchestra has hired seven new players. Nothing unusual about that. But all of the musicians have some sort of pre-existing tie to the orchestra or to the Curtis Institute, the hometown music conservatory. “The new musicians take spots opened up by retirements, resignations, the advancement of players to more senior chairs within the orchestra, and a death.”

“British composer Brian Ferneyhough was awarded the 2007 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize last week in Munich, in a ceremony at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. He receives Eu 200,000 and the satisfaction of joining an elite group of laureates, including Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messiaen, Mstislav Rostropovich, Witold LutosÅ‚awski, Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze, György Ligeti, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini, Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Daniel Barenboim and others.”

“Mortier said he would seek to enlarge the budget, which the company said was $40 million, to $60 million. The extra money would go toward increasing the size of the orchestra to 85 players from nearly 70, adding rehearsal time, paying for costlier new productions and doubling the top fee for singers, to $7,000 per performance from $3,500. Leading singers at the Met can earn $15,000.”

“The German word Fach covers a range of meanings, including ‘specialty’ and ‘compartment’. In opera it denotes a system of accepted ideas, now codified, about what kinds of voices should sing which parts. The German opera system distinguishes among some 25 voice types, from lyric coloratura soprano to basso profundo. This kind of compartmentalization never fully works.”

The Metropolitan Opera’s moviecasts to theatres around the world have been a big success. “More than 500,000 tickets have been sold to the simulcasts, more than 50,000 of them in North America for the April 28 screening of Puccini’s ‘Il Trittico,’ making it the 15th top-grossing movie in the nation last weekend.”

“At Yahoo and elsewhere, lyrics remain a notable omission from digital music files either purchased or acquired through subscription models. Not only do consumers not receive song lyrics with their download, they can’t search for songs by lyrics within Yahoo Music Unlimited or any other digital music service including iTunes.”

As Paul Kellogg prepares to step down from the helm of New York City Opera, observers are assessing his 11-year-tenure, and wondering how the incoming Gerard Mortier will build on Kellogg’s legacy. “If Mr. Kellogg has had his setbacks, he has a record of innovation and achievement to be proud of. Few leaders of performing-arts institutions have been as effective at defining and carrying out a company mission.”

The newly formed Opera Cleveland (product of a merger of two other companies) decided to aim high with its first production, staging Richard Strauss’s challenging “Salome.” But at a time when the public in any city in America can see the Met’s lavish New York-based productions on movie screens, Donald Rosenberg says that smaller-budget companies must display not only musical skill, but creativity of staging, qualities that were lacking in the new company’s debut effort.

Classical music and jazz have long danced around each other’s outer edges, but lately, there seems to be a proliferation of crossover projects between the two. Is it Gunther Schuller’s famous “Third Stream” finally growing into a widespread cultural phenomenon, or a new evolution of both genres of music?