Category: music

“Online music firms scored three victories last week at the expense of record labels, songwriters and/or performers. In the long run, however, those victories could end up helping everyone in the music business.”

The Las Vegas Philharmonic’s founding director Hal Weller is stepping down. He started the orchestra nine years ago and built it from nothing to a million-dllar ensemble “that feeds Las Vegas audiences a steady diet of classics – Mahler, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Wagner, Prokofiev. And he created dependable seasons that put the orchestra on firm financial footing.”

Minneapolis’ iconic 1970s-era orchestra hall is getting a major facelift. “The board of the Minnesota Orchestra on Monday approved a $90 million expansion and renovation of the concert hall.”

Australian conductor Simone Young has extended her contract with the Hamburg State Opera for five years, meaning she will remain music director and general manager at until 2015. “The endorsement is more gratifying for the conductor given her sacking from Opera Australia in 2002 after it was decided the company had insufficient funds to realise her artistic vision.”

“Sidney Rothstein, former conductor and music director of the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, claims he suffered disability-related discrimination, breach of contract and intentional infliction of emotional distress. At the root of the dispute is whether Rothstein’s stroke, and subsequent problems with strength and dexterity in his right arm, made it difficult for musicians to follow his direction.”

“Ten encores. Some swore they heard 11 at Evgeny Kissin’s Kimmel Center recital on Wednesday. Audiences could have left after the substantial printed program of Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin and not have felt shortchanged. But Kissin obligingly returned to the stage again and again, playing for another hour. Were that many encores healthy?”

“High-profile authors including Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin and William Boyd have been signed up by Scottish Opera to create new work for the company’s 2007/8 season. The writers will team up with composers including Craig Armstrong, Patrick Doyle and Ben Twist to make five specially commissioned, 15-minute operas.”

“We can start celebrating the imminent demise of the CD. Right now, that might sound silly. However many downloads Arctic Monkeys end up selling, 85,000 CDs flew out of the shops on Monday. Globally, downloads still account for only 10 per cent of the market. But for aesthetic reasons if nothing else, the day that the last CD gets melted into an ashtray will be a day to savour.”

Opera is reaching “beyond its traditional image and audience. An infusion of directing talent from stage and screen continues, and opera is also venturing into new media with a sense of urgency — and a success — unthinkable just a few years ago. It all points toward an abruptly expanding view of the mission of the opera house. ‘We are in the first year of really creative, energetic experimentation, and I am curious to measure the outcome. We need to be viewing all of it in a measured way to see what works, using traditional and new technologies’.”

“I believe devoutly in the beauty and significance of jazz, and I love Ornette Coleman’s bold, innovative music. But by giving the Pulitzer Prize to a good-but-not-great album that doesn’t even pretend to meet its eligibility requirements, the board has debased the value of the music prize still further. As for the special award, why single out Coltrane now, great as he was? Why not Charlie Parker–or Louis Armstrong, for that matter? It’s hard not to wonder whether the board is trying to atone for past blunders by playing an arbitrary game of catch-up.”