Category: music

“One thing’s for sure: Most pop critics today would just as soon be accused of pedophilia as rockism. This was certainly the case among the journalists, academics, and geeks who gathered at the 2006 Experience Music Project Pop Conference last month. At EMP, rockism talk was so prevalent that it became a kind of running gag.”

For decades, South Africa was the powerhouse of the African music world, cranking out hit after hit and producing popular new artists at a speed no other country on the continent could match. But today, the base of musical power has shifted: Mali and Senegal are top of the pops, and South Africa is nowhere to be found.

Several European newspapers are reporting that opera insiders expect conductor Daniel Barenboim to shortly be named music director at Italy’s famed La Scala opera house, succeeding Riccardo Muti. Barenboim will wrap up his tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony next month. “Ironically, Muti, 64, who resigned from La Scala in April 2005 after acrimonious relations with orchestra members, is considered one of the leading candidates for Barenboim’s Chicago post.”

The UK’s Royal Philharmonic Society has handed out its annual classical music awards, and conductor Marin Alsop took home the prize as BBC Radio listeners’ favorite person in the business. “American soprano Joyce DiDonato was named best singer for her performance of Rosina in the Barber of Seville,” and a Welsh National Opera production of Wozzeck took top honors for musical and dramatic excellence.

Contrary to the belief of some, there are plenty of top-notch composers hard at work around the world. But you probably haven’t heard of most of them, because there’s a lot more to becoming famous than just being good at what you do. The funny thing is, though, that composers who achieve fame in America are frequently unknown in the UK, or continental Europe, and vice versa. How can that happen, with the music world being as small as it is? Well, it’s complicated…

Most conductors are musicians first, of course, but it is fairly rare for a great conductor to begin his career as a great orchestral musician. (This may have something to do with orchestral musicians’ well-known hatred of most conductors.) But when the Chamber Orchestra of Europe celebrates its 25th anniversary next week, the man on the podium will be Scotsman Douglas Boyd, who rose to prominence as the COE’s star oboist, and who has since crafted an unlikely second career as a highly regarded stick-waver.

Getting music played on commercial radio is getting harder and harder, particularly if your work is in the hip-hop genre. Tiny playlists and PR-driven conglomerates make it almost impossible for emerging artists to get their music in the ears of consumers. So where should the snubbed masses of musicians turn? How about strip clubs? “The music industry increasingly has embraced the strip club out of necessity and convenience… Strip clubs are one of the fastest-rising segments among entertainment venues,” and DJs there can play complete tracks uninterrupted, and aren’t afraid to try out new material. Moreover, strip clubs have become an important place for hip-hop stars to be seen…

Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts will finally be complete this week, when the center unveils a massive $6.4 million, 32-ton, 6,938-pipe organ in its main concert hall, and inaugurates it with a 10-day festival featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra. “The specs alone make you want to hear what will be the largest functioning concert-hall organ in the United States. The Kimmel instrument – in contrast to the sensible but disappointing portable organ once used in the Academy of Music – is the magnum opus, eight years in the making, of the busy Dobson Pipe Organ Builders Ltd., of Lake City, Iowa.”

A controversial proposal to merge four orchestras in Osaka, Japan, has the country’s musicians buzzing. The merger idea was suggested by the head of the region’s economic authority as a way to overcome dwindling government subsidies and rising musician costs. But some say that the proposal is misguided, and even suggest that Osaka could actually support more orchestras than it already has, given proper management and artistic leadership.

The Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle is still frequently referred to as the world’s greatest orchestra, and few other ensembles could even think of challenging the assertion. But what is often underplayed is not how good the Berlin is, but how young its musicians have become. “Nearly half the 122 members are under 40, including 13 20-somethings. Seventy-seven were born after Jan. 1, 1960, and the average age is 45. That is about five years younger than during the Karajan period.”