Category: music

Orchestra management says someone is targeting musicians who support embattled music director Gerard Schwarz. One player says the retaliation includes “someone anonymously denting my horn, scratching my car, stealing from my orchestra mailbox, desecrating my photo with pinholes to the eyes and forehead, and phoning my home and threatening my family. I have never before encountered orchestral terrorism until now.”

“The labels that survive will do so by spreading sales across a wider range of talent, rather than concentrating on a handful of megasellers to ensure profitable quarterly statements to satisfy anxious shareholders. The new marketplace isn’t being built for the 10-million selling act. It’ll be about building a foundation for artists that sell less than 100,000 albums.”

Total sales of recordings in the first half of 2006 fell to $13.7 billion. “Digital sales rose by 106% to $945m, representing 11% of the worldwide recorded music market.” The increase wasn’t enough to offset the sale of physical formats such as CDs, which fell by 10% under pressure from cheap illegal copies.

David Cerone is stepping down as president of the Cleveland Institiute of Music after 22 years. “As the longest-tenured president in CIM history, Cerone has overseen enormous growth in enrollment and programs and helped balance the budget for 11 consecutive years.”

“The disappearance of Tower’s familiar red-and-yellow logo will leave a gaping hole in the landscape of American music retailing. Los Angeles-based Virgin Megastores, which operates 20 Virgin Megastores, now will become the most prominent deep-catalog retailer. One veteran industry observer noted that Tower might have accounted for 40%-50% of some niche-genre labels’ business.”

Pittsburgh Opera has named Australian conductor Antony Walker as its next music director, beginning later this season. “Walker has worked closely with [Sir Charles] Mackerras on many opera productions in Australia and Europe, and benefited from his personal relationship with, and advocacy by, the world-renowned maestro.”

It was August when executives at the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony learned that their ensemble was in serious danger of not being able to complete the 2006-07 season unless a major financial turnaround was achieved. The KWSO had ended the ’05-’06 season $600,000 in the red, even after a $750,000 behind-the-scenes fundraising campaign. “The symphony, after studying solutions struggling orchestras in Vancouver and Calgary have used, realized it would have to go public with its problems.”

“Gianandrea Noseda, 42-year-old principal conductor of the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic for four years, has extended his contract by two years and will now be known as chief conductor… Noseda has endeared himself to Manchester audiences and has won wide critical praise. He throws himself into a score (Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet for example) with passion, sometime crouching so low you fear he will end up on his knees or leaping so high that those in the front row of Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall prepare for his imminent arrival in their laps.”

San Francisco Opera is slashing some ticket prices in an effort to grow its audience. Under the plan, members of the $60-per-year Bravo Club will be able to purchase tickets for $50 that normally sell for between $87 and $155. The company’s announcement comes on the heels of the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to make $20 seats available for most weekday performances.

Now that Orange County, California has its beautiful and acoustically impressive new concert hall, it’s time to start asking whether the principal tenant lives up to its new digs. “The Segerstrom, with 2,000 seats, is a place a lot of major orchestras in big American cities would kill for. The Pacific Symphony, on the other hand, is more than a pickup orchestra but also less than a year-round, full-contract ensemble… The citizens of Orange County have dropped a splendid gift on this young, perhaps embryonic orchestra and will now wait to see what they get in return.”