Category: music

Lisette Oropesa “is one of the few opera singers who have been featured in both Opera News and Runner’s World.” – The New York Times

Cohen, a 28-year-old jazz piano player, was a finalist the last time the prize focused on jazz – the prize alternates classical and jazz – but won this one after a 14-month process. – The New York Times

As K-Pop and Spanish rappers start to climb the charts, the utter stranglehold of English over pop is starting to relax a little. “The idea that the [English-speaking] public would listen only if they understood the lyrics? Wrong, it turned out.” – The Guardian (UK)

The Chinese media company is way more than “The Spotify of China” – it’s “a mash-up of music streaming and social networking, enabling users to listen to music, sing with friends, and buy digital merchandise.” Oh, and there’s a digital karaoke app too. – The Motley Fool

Brexit’s greatest impact on music looks likely to be on the live sector, both on British musicians going abroad, and on foreign artists and fans travelling to the UK.  – The Guardian

William Kentridge’s stagings of The Nose and Lulu were, and next season’s Wozzeck will be, packed tight with video imagery. (Yet they’re surprisingly easy for the stage technicians.) The whale boats in Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick couldn’t have existed without 21st-century technology. The animation in Barrie Kosky’s widely-traveled production of The Magic Flute is so intricate that some singers have to be strapped into place. David Patrick Stearns looks into the modern-day wizardry on the opera stage. – WQXR (New York City)

In fact, a set of scholars now believe, the Greeks based their music on scales and instruments like the lyre that had been developed more than 1,000 years earlier in Babylonia, from which come the oldest evidence of a heptatonic scale and the oldest pieces of music we have. Olivia Giovetti does a deep dive (with particular reference to opera). – Van

On conducting with his whole body: “My model in this is really Leonard Bernstein because he also [conveyed] how every bone of the body should express music while on the podium. Why just limit it to the arms, which is what usually people see? It’s the eyes, the eyebrows, the shoulders, the feet.” (audio) – NPR

“The building’s most prominent feature will be a helical roof that connects to the ground via a spectacular open-air spiral staircase. Snøhetta has designed this to resemble an unfolding fan, evoking ‘the dynamism of dance and the human body’. The building is reminiscent of the Oslo Opera House completed by the firm in 2008, which also featured a publicly accessible roof that slopes down to meet the waterfront.” – Dezeen