Category: music

It’s getting more and more difficult for musicians to travel with their instruments as airline security gets tougher…

July saw the premiere of several new American operas. “Are any of these new operas towering masterworks that will alter the course of music history while winning the hearts of millions? People have been asking that loaded question of American opera for a hundred years, and the way they phrase it almost demands a negative answer.”

Lyric Opera San Diego has bought its own home. “Of the country’s approximately 125 professional opera companies, only 13 (including Lyric) own their own venues. In California, the Lyric is one of just two companies in that category, the other being the Jarvis Conservatory, a Napa-based organization whose performances include opera and zarzuela (a popular Spanish form of operetta).”

A debate about Fanfare magazine’s pay-for-review policy has broken out, but Kyle Gann believes the debate is overblown. “Given the largely labor-of-love basis on which Fanfare was run, the paid ads seemed to do little beyond ensuring that the magazine would continue to appear. Nobody was getting rich off it, or even anywhere near well-recompensed. With so much massive corporate evil besetting the music business and everyone else from all sides, I have to regard poor little Fanfare as a rather uncharitably chosen target.”

Wolfgang Wagner has been the driving force of the annual Bayreuth Festival for 40 years. But he’s 87 and suddenly frail. “Given his sudden physical decline, Bayreuth-watchers have begun to ask who is really running the show and what moves are afoot for an orderly hand-over. ‘Wolfgang doesn’t seem to have any clout any more. But the management doesn’t want to talk about the succession’.”

The Villa Lobos International Piano Competition begins this week. But the event has been tarnished by accusations of cheating and manipulation of which pianists were allowed into the finals…

Charles Barr, 31, was the ultimate orchestral success story: he graduated from Curtis in 1997, became principal bassist of the Charleston Symphony shortly thereafter, and in 2002, landed a dream job in the bass section of the Cleveland Orchestra. He was an active outdoorsman and avid mountain biker. And all of that came to an abrupt and tragic end last week when Barr lost control of his bike and swerved into the path of a pickup truck.

It’s coming up on three years since the Chicago Symphony announced that Daniel Barenboim would step down as music director in 2006, and the ensemble has made no discernible progress in the search for a successor. “The appointment of the dream team of Bernard Haitink as principal conductor and Pierre Boulez as conductor in interim leadership roles, beginning this coming season, has bought the CSO time to conduct the search process as thoroughly as possible… In any case, the search is being carried out under such tight security that the Bush administration would do well to study its methods of forestalling information leaks. That official silence has fanned the flames of outside speculation.”

The strict no-hand luggage measures imposed on UK air travelers following the arrest of 24 individuals suspected of a plot to blow up transatlantic flights is wreaking havoc with touring orchestras accustomed to carrying their instruments on board. Members of the Bolshoi Theatre’s orchestra, in the waning days of a summer residence in London, will likely have to travel home by rail to avoid risking damage to their instruments, which cannot safely be stowed in a plane’s cargo hold. Meanwhile, at least two American orchestras (Pittsburgh and Minnesota) will be kicking off European tours which include stops in the UK within the next week, and organizers are scrambling to make contingency plans.

Summer seasons have long been a touchy issue with orchestras – they tend to lose money, are hard to sell, and frequently require an investment in a special summer venue that may or may not pan out. A few years back, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest was a textbook example of a failing summer season, playing to half-empty halls and searching for an identity in a city packed full of summer activities. But in the last three years, ticket sales have jumped 30%, a 24-hour marathon kickoff day has become one of the signature events of the year, and this summer, half of the orchestra’s Sommerfest concerts sold 95% of capacity or better.