Category: music

What is the heart of opera all about anyway? Big overly-familiar productions of Boheme and Tosca and Carmen that everyone knows? Or is it small experimental productions that are attempting to keep the art form revitalizing?

“From the real-time animated guitar fretboard of workshoplive.com to the truefiretv.com on-demand guitar lessons to the animated courses of Berkleemusic.com, students are increasingly able to forgo formal lessons in favor of à la carte online instruction with as little or as much human interaction as they want.”

Attendance at the Masterworks programs has increased roughly 50 percent during the past five years, with approximately 60,000 people attending the orchestra’s core classical concerts at Copley Symphony Hall last year.

The San Diego Symphony has managed to balance its books even as the organization grows. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that a major benefactor pledged $100 million a few years ago…

It’s been three years since the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra dumped the idea of a music director, and abandoned the traditional American symphonic business model in favor of a more democratic approach that allowed musicians a role in artistic leadership, and placed board members and managers in the middle of the musical side of the organization. So how’s it working out? That depends entirely on whom you ask.

The Canadian Opera Company has been getting plenty of good press since opening its new home in Toronto this summer. So you would think it would be the perfect time to showcase some homegrown Canadian operas, right? Wrong. “The company has had a lot of time to think about bringing some Canadian rep to its new stage, and so far that thinking has yielded no result.”

Los Angeles Opera turns 20 this year. Unless it actually turns 58. It all depends on what your definition of an opera company is. More importantly, LA Opera has one of the more entertaining and colorful histories you’ll read, full of all the backstage wrangling and boardroom controversy that you’d expect.

The St. Louis Symphony has been on the rise ever since David Robertson took over as music director last year, but the amount of turnover among the orchestra’s musicians has hit a near-record high. 17% of the SLSO started work within the last two years, a very high number for an American ensemble. But there probably isn’t anything to be alarmed about: a combination of natural attrition and the sudden filling of several long-standing vacancies accounts for the influx of new blood.

The New Jersey Symphony has a new two-year contract with its musicians that provides nominal raises but maintains several cuts implemented last year, including a four-week reduction in the length of the NJSO season, and a 12% cut in the number of full-time players in the orchestra. Ratification of the deal will allow the NJSO’s season to start on time later this week.

Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony has pulled in $320,000 of donations in the two days since announcing that it was in imminent danger of bankruptcy. That leaves the ensemble with just over $2 million to raise by the end of the month.