Category: music

“Many culprits contributed to the demise of Tower. It got out-chained by the likes of Wal-Mart and other mass retailers who now promote bestselling CDs, probably under cost. It got hit by the big record labels’ indiscriminate releasing of junk in all genres. The downturn in DVD sales hasn’t helped. And the ever-infuriating iTunes came along. Once Apple marketed its cute players as objects of lust, the CDs became prehistoric media. Downloaded music isn’t inherently bad. But in its quest to rule the world, or at least become another Microsoft-ish monopoly, Apple can be.”

For much of the 20th Century the was a mystique to Russian music. “If there is still ‘Russian music’ in the old sense, what are the criteria of Russianness?”

“Tomorrow, thanks to a Florida record collector and a serendipitous turn of events, that song — believed to be the earliest known recording featuring members of the BSO — will be played on the radio for the first time. After WGBH found out about it earlier this week, the station included “The Kerry Dance” as part of its Sunday broadcast, which takes place exactly 125 years, to the day, after the BSO’s first concert in 1881.”

The Pittsburgh Symphony will finish its year with a $1 million deficit. “Last year’s budget was $1.2 million in the red, so the deficit for the 2005-2006 year was incrementally better.” Some trends? Ticket sales were up this year, and so was the orchestra’s endowment.

Finally – as Steve Reich turns 70, “the classical establishment, which still hasn’t figured out how to award Reich a Pulitzer Prize, has finally embraced a composer, and a movement, that it had relegated to the margins.”

Work on the Atlanta Symphony’s proposed new concert hall in the city’s downtown has come to a grinding halt as the project’s CEO announced yet another reassessment of the location and design of the building. “Fund-raising for the new hall has stalled… Although the symphony has raised a third of the projected cost of the new center, officials have said they need another third to come from city and state government sources. To date, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Gov. Sonny Perdue have yet to budget the ASO’s request.”

The dustup over Seattle Symphony music director Gerard Schwarz has escalated into a full-scale brawl over the last few weeks, with some musicians loyal to Schwarz claiming harassment, and others in the orchestra insisting that the allegations are merely a reaction to a small, bullying cabal which is losing its grip on power at the SSO. But the bottom line hasn’t changed: “Schwarz has lost some of the orchestra (just how large the disgruntled contingent is remains in dispute), but not all of it, and he appears to have the backing of the symphony’s board. It may be uncomfortable for all involved, but as long as concertgoers like what they hear from the stage, internal unhappiness won’t be an issue.”

The company will simulcast “Madame Butterfly” outside on the National Mall. “There’s a central question here — and it is not only a question in Washington but in New York and San Francisco and in all the great opera companies. Will these new technology initiatives raise revenue or is revenue not the primary goal? I believe that if we allow the next generation of young people greater access to the opera now — through simulcasts, radio, special events, lower-priced tickets, free tickets and so on — they are much more likely to support the opera later on.”

Julius Rudel, 85, is back conducting at New York City Opera for the first time in 25 years. “Collective memory is short. So not everyone may remember what Mr. Rudel stood for during his tenure. Under him, City Opera cultivated a couple of generations of American singers: Samuel Ramey, Carol Vaness, and, of course, Beverly Sills, long the company’s reigning diva and ultimately Mr. Rudel’s successor.”

“The Stranger, one of Seattle’s two alternative weekly newspapers, accepted the resignation of two employees late last week after it was discovered that an advertising coordinator had been secretly writing for the paper under a pseudonym — something editors and managers called a conflict of interest.” Those two employees were the advertising staffer, who wrote music reviews and blog entries for the paper, and the music editor who oversaw the arrangement.