Category: music

“BSO players’ salaries will rise from a weekly minimum of $2,170 last season to $2,270 this year, a 4.61 percent increase, and more in later years.” Meanwhile, freelancers for some of the orchestra’s pops concerts will be getting a reduction. “Those freelancers, who earned $434 per concert in 2005-06, will earn $378 for dozens of Pops concerts in the upcoming season.”

The Utrecht Early Music Festival offers 100 concerts in a week. “About 55,000 people will attend. More than half of the concerts are free; most of the rest have ticket prices around 15 euros, or a little under $20. About 25 concerts are broadcast live. Seen from the United States, where classical radio is courting extinction, you wonder whether this is utopia.”

The surviving members of the group are the latest musicians to object to recording company sales accountability. “The lawsuit, filed in December, claims EMI and its affiliate Capitol wrongly classified copies of Beatles recordings as destroyed or damaged “scrap” but then secretly sold them. It also alleges the number of units sold was under-reported, and the firms classified some recordings as ‘promotional’ and as a result non-royalty bearing, but then sold the material. The lawsuit was triggered by an audit of the companies’ books from the period 1994 to 1999, which the band says uncovered allegedly deceitful behaviour.”

“Overall, sales are up over last summer — despite fewer shows. Total reported grosses were $695.9 million for 2,887 shows, compared with $648.5 million for 3,817 during the same time in 2005, according to the Billboard data.” Madonna scores the most – $80 million for 32 shows.

“The basic design of the electric guitar (in essence a plank of wood with a pick-up and some strings) has barely been altered and arguably not at all improved on since the 1960s. Yet, putting sales of such relatively modern instruments as synthesisers, samplers and DJ turntables in the shade, it would appear that, halfway through the first decade of the 21st century and more than 50 years after the birth of rock and roll, this relatively primitive six-stringed instrument remains the pre-eminent tool of pop culture, the ultimate musical object of desire.”

Richard Morrison makes a list, ranking Britain’s major orchestras. At the top? Halle…

No question the subjects for contemporary opera have expanded in recent years. But why an opera about Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi? And why is English National Opera taking it on?

The earliest-known manuscripts to be written by JS Bach have been discovered in a fire-damaged library. “The two manuscripts date from around 1700 and contain copies Bach made of organ music composed by Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken. Researchers found the documents in the archives of the Duchess Anna Amalia library in Weimar, where a previously unknown aria by Bach was discovered last year.”

The world has been awash in Mozart this year. Three years from now it’s a major Haydn birthday. “While just about everyone alive has been exposed to Mozart if only on a ring-tone or a lonely bus station, you could play Haydn seek all day long on Oxford Street without finding a single shopper who can name one of his works or whistle a theme. In the Classic FM Hall of Fame, that rough guide to middlebrow taste, Haydn does not rank at all in the top 100 and even at the BBC Proms he gets just three nods in eight long weeks. How, demand the marketing men, do we sell something so resolutely obscure?”

“Over the past couple of years, significant members of Seattle’s music community have been drifting south, drawn by Portland’s inexpensive cost of living and vibrant creative community. Scott McCaughey, Michael Maker, Chris Walla, Tucker Martine, and Laura Veirs are my neighbors. That you might not have noticed can be partially attributed to our somewhat nomadic lifestyles, but it also speaks volumes about how disconnected the once-cohesive Seattle music scene has felt lately. In a lot of respects, Portland has become Seattle’s hot new neighborhood.”