Category: music

Technological innovations such as MySpace and podcasting have allowed many as-yet-undiscovered musicians to promote their careers and present their product for public consumption without the assistance of the ever-more-aloof recording industry. But for established musical acts, the online music world is still an uncertain place. Everyone wants to embrace new media, but no one has quite figured out how to do it without abandoning all control over the product and its distribution.

As its home city prepares for its moment in the spotlight at Cultural Capital of Europe, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has reached agreement on a 21% pay raise for its musicians. The RLPO’s base wage lags far behind the UK’s top orchestras – even at the end of the new contract, musicians will earn just £25,000 per year – but the deal is being seen as an indication that the orchestra has stabilized fiscally after several years of restructuring.

The Indianapolis Symphony has reported a budget surplus for the third year in a row, and increased overall ticket sales by nearly 10% over last season. “The ISO musicians and management also recently ratified a new three-year contract that went into effect retroactively to September 4. The new agreement calls for ISO musicians’ salaries to increase between 3% and 5% annually, for a total of 12.6% over three years.”

Conductor “Daniele Gatti’s resignation from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna leaves two of Italy’s top opera houses musically depleted, amid growing confusion about the role and responsibilities of modern music direcors.”

“Once upon a time, songs referred exclusively to single-movement musical compositions involving a singer or singers.” No more. Now most music is referred to as “songs”, and Frank Oteri has had enough. “Everything is a song in popular parlance, whether it has words or not and no matter how long it is. As a result, the song paradigm—which still assumes a normative status of vocal, short, and in one movement—determines how all music is listened to. When’s the last time an ‘instrumental’ got on the Billboard charts?”

Washington National Opera is simulcasting some performances to giant screens on the National Mall. But unlike last year, the crowds didn’t appear for this weekend’s offering. “In fact, a quick tally suggested that between 200 and 300 people had chosen to spend the afternoon watching ‘Butterfly’ in the rain. They wore raincoats and huddled around heating lamps. Some sat on grimy patio furniture lugged from home; others shared wet blankets and shivers.”

Songs recorded at gigs and sold legally to fans as they head home have become eligible for the UK music charts.

The pianist’s “once-moody temperament and unconventional dress gave him rock-star appeal during the peak of his popularity in the 1980s, but he has since devolved into a kind of keyboard oddity and largely disappeared from the scene.”

New recordings are expensive. And better technology make it easier and easier to bring old historic recordings back to life, making them sound, in some cases, like new. “It really is amazing, after all, to put on a recording by Enrico Caruso that was made in 1920 and have it sound as though the tenor, dead 85 years now, is in the next room.”

“A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts blasts public radio, saying it fails to fulfill its obligation to provide music that commercial stations won’t touch. The NEA says public radio — once dominated by classical, jazz and other minority forms of music — is retreating ever further from that mission, choosing to focus on news and talk.”