Category: music

Foreign musicians hoping to perform in the UK are running up against a slew of exorbitant new visa fees. “An act, whether one person or 50, requires a work permit, which is to cost £190 from tomorrow instead of £153. Then every member of a group also requires a work permit visa, the cost of which is rising from £85 to £200. Fees are waived if an organisation secures what is called permit-free festival status from the Home Office but the entertainment industry is fearful whether that will survive the introduction of a points-based system for visa applicants next year.”

The cost and logistical difficulty of presenting opera used to mean that only the largest metropolises could afford to put on anything innovative or impressive. But times are changing… “For all the attention being lavished on the innovations at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the ones expected at its Lincoln Center neighbor, New York City Opera, there is, right now, no center to American opera.”

Much is made of the high cost of the world’s best violins, especially when they’re sold at auction. But violins are, after all, tools of a trade, and no musician would want to buy an instrument he had never played on. As it turns out, the auction houses are sensitive to that, and so, this past week, anyone who wanted a chance to play a million-dollar Stradivarius got a chance to do so (free of charge) at Christie’s in New York.

The New York music club known as Tonic will shut down later this month after a nine year run, and if you don’t live there, you may well wonder why you should care. But Tonic has been one of the mainstays of New York’s avant garde music scene, which reverberates around the world, and its loss will have a profound impact on musicians across multiple genres.

A scant five years ago, the Toronto Symphony was on the verge of collapse, running up massive deficits and laboring to play quality concerts in a substandard hall. But thanks to an acoustical revamp, a dynamic new music director, a cut-price ticket program for young adults, and a tireless board chair with a passion for fundraising, the TSO is back on track and thriving in Canada’s largest city.

Indie labels are beating traditional recording companies. “The commercial explosion is no accident. Indie labels may have finally found a way to harness the Internet’s sizable community of tastemakers. These music labels are bringing bloggers who have a reputation for posting legal and illegal MP3 tracks into the fold by purposefully leaking albums ahead of the release. Much as iTunes created a palatable model of digital downloading, these labels increasingly rely on carefully controlled – and sometimes uncontrolled – leaks of MP3 files to publicize upcoming records.”

“YouTube’s vast user base has turned it into an encyclopedic electronic library of music videos, ranging from glossy MTV fare to grainy live clips shot with a cellphone camera. And now, the music-blogging site MOG is stepping into the role of YouTube’s librarian.”

When it comes to new music, Berlin may be the global capital of innovation, or at least the city most willing to give the stuff a chance, and to generously fund its programming and promotion. “This isn’t just the mentality of a high-spending social democratic nation that invests in high culture, though it’s partly that. It is also a shrewd realisation that, lacking any industrial base, culture is Berlin’s only real calling card. This is why, despite the city’s dire financial plight, spending on the arts hasn’t suffered as much as everybody feared.”

“Pop music’s big live moments tend to take place in front of massive audiences and are well documented in film. But golden moments in jazz are often improvised and unexpected, as likely to have taken place in someone’s front room or at a private party, as at an organised concert.” That’s where YouTube comes in with a trove of vintage musical footage, particularly for jazz fans.

Just when the ENO’s artistic fortunes seem to be turning, the company hits a low point. “Plans for a ten percent staff cut have been stalled by procedural chaos and a memo, circulating at the Department of Culture, recommends that Tessa Jowell should scrap the company to save money for the Olympics. In a history fraught with survival threats, this may be ENO’s lowest moment – and it’s starting to show.”