Category: music

“From a certain angle, the Canadian Music Centre’s efforts to turn Canadian composers loose on public spaces looks like a revolt organized by the same group that has spent decades lobbying to get contemporary music into concert halls, not out of them.”

It’s taken Alex Ross a few months to write about the passing of mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; he couldn’t find the words. “She was the most remarkable singer I ever heard. She was incapable of giving a routine performance—I saw her twelve times, and each appearance had something explosively distinctive about it—and her career took the form of a continuous ascent.”

“Napster has put itself up for sale and hired bankers to explore interest in the once notorious and now struggling music download service. Analysts have highlighted the service’s dwindling subscriber base and failure to turn a profit.”

At the end of 15 hours of “Ring” performances at the Canadian Opera Company last week, Robert Everett-Green surprised himself – hed’ do a repeat this week. “It helped that the COC’s production turned out to be good — better, in some ways, than the ones in those more famous opera houses I mentioned. There was a lot to admire and very little to cringe at, and the cringe factor is a large issue when you’re dealing with a work that offers so many insanely difficult problems in performance and staging.”

“The Seattle Symphony’s 2005-06 season ended $2.15 million in the red, contributing to an accumulated deficit of $3.2 million. That’s a tough deficit on an annual budget of $21.3 million, though it could have been worse.”

The Sydney Opera House is going to start simulcasting some performances out to a giant screen in the plaza. “[Architect Joern] Utzon has created one of the great public spaces in the world and I’d really like to use it a lot more. I’m talking about great performances and great national events as well. It could be sporting events. The place has to be seen as a great community place.”

“The successful conclusion of negotiations that led to a new, two-year contract for musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ends months of speculation and worry, and should help clear the way to a positive era. The result confirms two things above all else. One, the BSO musicians couldn’t be more dedicated; time and again, they have been willing to forgo an awful lot for themselves in an effort to keep the big picture burning brightly. And, two, W. Gar Richlin, the personable and straight-talking businessman on the orchestra’s board who agreed to step in as interim president and CEO last winter, was exactly the right person at the right time.”

The Seattle Symphony’s deficit of more than $2 million this past season is not the worst shape the orchestra has been in, writes RM Campbell. The orchestra has had a horrible summer, dealing with dissension with musicians over a decision to extend music director Gerard Schwarz’s contract. And the orchestra lost Paul Meecham, its executive director.

On the departure of John Mauceri, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s musical director, Mark Swed examines his legacy. “Mauceri reinvented not only the pops format but to some extent himself. He made it his business to explore and elevate the music of Hollywood, both as history and as a living tradition. But he left plenty of room for the orchestra to survey Broadway. Pops performers, good ones and ghastly ones, got to share the stage indiscriminately. Mauceri premiered a significant body of new and rediscovered music, mostly American. The range was from drivel to, of all things, Schoenberg’s astounding ‘Fanfare for the Hollywood Bowl’ (who knew?).”

Here’s a way to prove it (or not): The Guardian has another of its famously tough quizzes. (We won’t reveal our own score.)