Category: music

The Cincinnati Symphony has extended the contract of its music director, Paavo Järvi, through the 2010-11 season, and added an unusual “evergreen” clause under which the contract will renew automatically in subsequent seasons by mutual agreement.

Completion of a planned new concert hall in the Finnish capital of Helsinki will be delayed for at least six months after construction bids came in considerably higher than expected. “Currently, the estimated costs of the music complex are EUR 106 million. The quotation of Peab Seicon appears to imply that using a lump-sum contract, the house would cost up to one and a half times as much as estimated.”

Canadian string quartets are doing well in a major international string quartet competition. Why? “Look at some of the presenting organizations in Canada. And where are the real successes? Chamber music festivals. The Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, for example. That’s an international story of success — the largest chamber music festival in the world.”

Yahoo! recently posted the lyrics to thousands of songs. “In the past, lyric seekers have had to endure innumerable junky sites offering dubious transcriptions based on someone gluing their ear to a speaker. Now, there will finally be a legitimate one created in co-operation with the big music publishers and providing accurate words to all your favourite tunes for free. Or so the claim goes.”

Inspired by AJ Blogger Drew McManus’s “Take A Friend to the Orchestra” month, the staff critic at DCist decided to throw himself deeply into the spirit of the thing, inviting a sportswriter to accompany him to an Australian Chamber Orchestra concert. To make things even more challenging, the sportswriter was in a bad mood the night of the show, and in no mood for high culture. And then, the music started…

No one ever accused the Edmonton Symphony’s music director of being a low-key conductor, but the orchestra and many of its fans were taken aback when a letter appeared in the local paper calling a Bill Eddins performance “not classy” and “rude.” (The letter’s author apparently objected to a few booty shakes during a jazzy piece.) In the weeks since the letter ran, music fans in Edmonton have been lining up to defend Eddins and slam the prudish objector.

Using Internet 2, the Philadelphia Orchestra beams a real-time performance to remote locations. “Unlike sound-only recordings, multicasts won’t be just prestigious calling cards that cost more money than they bring in: ‘We’re going to aggressively pursue this as a business opportunity’. Worldwide exposure, particularly with Western classical music emerging in Asia, could be insurance for the orchestra’s continued future amid the uncertainties of the 21st century.”

“A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years. A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel’s arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them.”

“The Seattle Symphony reports that nearly $11 million in concert tickets for the current season have been sold between September and March, surpassing the total ticket revenues for each of the last two seasons. Still, the Symphony projects that those strong sales won’t do enough to balance this year’s books. The Sympony will add to a deficit that has been with the organization since the 2001-02 season.”