Category: music

Canada’s Hamilton Philharmonic chooses a new music dirctor. He’s James Sommerville, a Canadian-born musician who currently holds the principal French-horn chair with the Boston Symphony.

The Grammys kicked off with a retro feel on Sunday as the recently reunited Police opened the show with their classic “Roxanne,” Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder beat out huge new songs like “Promiscuous” and “Crazy” with a remake and the veteran Red Hot Chili Peppers nabbed three trophies to emerge the early leader.

“With recent ratings shrinking, the event advertised as ‘Music’s Biggest Night’ has become progressively smaller. The 49th annual Grammy Awards, airing live tonight, face myriad struggles: infinite audience fragmentation, competition from a glut of televised celebrity spectacles and the over-saturation of a pop culture whose disposability rivals Kleenex.”

Rick Rubin is a superstar record producer. He coaxes a project into being rather than merely signing it up. “Whatever the project or musical style, Rubin enters it with the same goal: Create an easy, reassuring atmosphere that encourages collaboration and experimentation. He thinks of himself as a coach, but you could just as easily call him a counselor or therapist.”

“The Grammys have long suffered a classical credibility gap. The days of know-nothing voters and the Atlanta Symphony block-voting itself honor after honor are long gone. But this year’s classical Grammys are seriously irrelevant. The recording business is no longer just changing. It has changed. Yet the Grammys stoically carry on as before.”

The recording giant is considering removing digital copy protection from its recordings. “If it does, it would be the first of the four major music companies to distribute its catalog without software designed to limit copying. Because various online retailers use different forms of security software, known as digital-rights management, their services are not always compatible with all music-playing devices on the market.”

“For all his brilliance at the helm, Mariss Jansons can’t take the credit for turning the Concertgebouw into a world-class band: since its formation in 1888, the orchestra has been recognised as one of the world’s best. Jansons is, however, only the sixth man in charge of the ensemble, taking over from Italian Riccardo Chailly in 2004.”

“In the age of the download people are reconnecting with gigs as something they can feel. The web is also contributing to the boom: social networking sites such as MySpace and music websites such as drownedinsound.com provide instant promotional networks for gigging bands, and they also champion independent music, an often homespun, quicksilver scene that thrives on the buzz and audience generated by live events. It’s no small irony, then, that London is experiencing a serious erosion of its rock music venues.”

“Some loosening of restrictions is inevitable as the music industry grows more comfortable distributing songs over the Internet, the critics said. But they argued that setting music free would roil an industry that is finally pulling out of a five-year slump — one that coincided with the rise of Napster and other online services that allowed widespread piracy.”

The recording industry isn’t responding positively to Apple CEO Steve Jobs call to end music copy protection. “All these music services wouldn’t work without DRM. (Music labels) are very nervous about distributing content that is unprotected. They think that everybody will share music, and there’s evidence that a lot of people will.”