Category: music

A major benefit for the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan was held at New York’s Carnegie Hall this week, bringing together high-profile classical musicians from around the country with students from Juilliard and orchestral players from at least two continents. Organizers pronounced the event a success, but “unfortunately, the hall seemed to be about half full.”

15-year-old composing prodigy Jay Greenberg has been getting plenty of attention lately, and no less an orchestra than the London Symphony has just released a recording of his 5th (yes, 5th!) symphony. But Philip Hensher says that there’s little chance of Greenberg or any other child prodigy truly rocking the music world, simply because of what composing has become…

“While the U.S. recording industry continues to slide under pressure from illegal downloaders and file-sharers, the other side of the music world — businesses catering to those who create the music — has nearly doubled over the last decade to become a $7.5-billion industry.”

“The iTunes Music Store has a secret hiding in plain sight: Log out of your home account in the page’s upper-right corner, switch the country setting at the bottom of the page to Japan, and you’re dropped down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of great Japanese bands that you’ve never even heard of. And they’re nowhere to be found on iTunes U.S.”

Orchestras have to completely rethink how to engage with the community, Fogel told delegates, and that means tackling the white bias: “Don’t sit in your office with your mostly all-white staff and think up programs and go into the community and say ‘Boy, have we got a good program for you, here it is.’ Go into the community and actually ask the question: ‘If you had a relationship with the orchestra, what might it be like, what might you want?’ ”

“As even digital music revenue growth falters because of rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are moving closer to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to take. Executives of several technology companies … said over the weekend that at least one of the four major record companies could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months.”

Why did the talented Kent Nagano spend so long running the small Berkely Symphony? It goes against all the rules. “If nothing else, the joint history of Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony has demonstrated that not all of the laws by which the musical world does its business are carved in stone, that under the right circumstances, a collaboration that flies in the face of all the accepted wisdom can flourish and grow and last far beyond what anyone would have thought possible.”

Jazz is undergoing a profound change in its business model. “It may not be as huge as the shift from silent movies to talkies, but it’s a major turning point. What you’re seeing is the result of a shift in the way music is produced and consumed, and in the way people pay for it. With more major record labels cutting back, consolidating or eliminating their jazz divisions, the necessity of thinking small is greater than ever.”

“Independent labels around the world have set up an agency, Merlin, to cut deals with download sites and mobile services on their behalf. The downloads will be sold in the MP3 format, meaning they can be played on any portable music player.”

“In China, classical music is booming as mightily as the 1812 Overture. It’s fortissimo in Shanghai, home to China’s oldest orchestra, forte in Beijing and other lively cities, and on a crescendo in farther-flung areas. Commanding Y100-200 ($12.50-$25) per hour, private music teachers in Shanghai can readily earn more than five times the average per capita monthly income.”