Category: music

The Rolling Stones finally make it to China, but play to an audience of only 8000. “The gig has been a long time coming and the fact that it is now possible reflects how the cultural and economic gap has closed between China and the West. When the band started in 1962, millions of Chinese were dying in the famines that followed the Great Leap Forward. In the decade that followed the only pop icon allowed to be worshipped was Mao Zedong. Even at the end of the Cultural Revolution, several attempts to arrange a Chinese concert were thwarted by financial concerns, political worries and, most recently, the outbreak of Sars.”

Why are classical concert audiences eroding? Composer Libby Larsen has been studying the problem, and has some ideas. For one thing, suburbanites (and a majority of the population in most metro areas lives in the suburbs) already make an average of 13 car trips a day, and aren’t terribly keen on battling traffic into the urban core for a concert. For another, technology and its constant advance means that even hardcore music-lovers don’t actually need the concert hall to get their fix. And then, of course, there’s the repertoire problem…

“Classical crossover isn’t a new category, but it’s one that morphs more ceaselessly than any other, and appears to be going further afield from core classical than ever. Originally, the crossover chart was created for artists who fell through the cracks, like harpist-composer Andreas Vollenweider. Now, any disc is fair game if issued on a classical label, if featuring a classical artist (even in nonclassical repertoire), or if featuring a nonclassical artist taking a crack at the classics.”

There may not be a more demanding job in the music world than that of the opera conductor. Among the challenges: the orchestra must be kept together; the singers (who cannot hear the orchestra) must be explicitly cued, and sometimes need the words mouthed to them from the pit; the audience expects a brilliant and original interpretation, while the orchestra doesn’t want to be taken too far outside their comfort zone; egos must be massaged without appearing to suck up; oh, and everyone involved in the production will have already made up their mind about whether the maestro knows what he’s doing within thirty seconds of the start of the rehearsal, so watch those first impressions, hmm?

There was a time, not so very long ago, when showing up late for a concert, an opera, or a play was no very big deal. You just made your dramatic solo entrance and allowed the room to focus on you rather than the stage for a minute (and for many latecomers, this was exactly the point.) But these days, especially in New York, the music is sacrosanct, and latecomers are seated at the discretion of the house. This is more complicated than it might seem. “Policies are surprisingly varied, and considerable thought is given to them. Some halls allow latecomers to stand in the back before proceeding to their places at a convenient break. Some let the artists pick an appropriate moment for late seating. Many halls provide audio and video during the wait, or a bar to pass the time (or ease the pain).”

“Opera Cleveland, the long-anticipated merger between Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland, officially was born Wednesday during the first meeting of the new company’s board. Made up of trustees from the two troupes, the board approved a business plan and signed merger agreements that call for the combining of artistic and financial resources. Opera Cleveland will receive $1.1 million in transition funding and working capital from a consortium of regional foundations.”

The Bavarian State Opera has announced its 2006-07 season. Ordinarily, that’s not the kind of item that would make headlines in America, but a few sharp-eyed journalists have noticed that the company has booked Placido Domingo to sing the lead in Parsifal next spring, on the same dates that the Washington National Opera has engaged him to sing the lead in Die Walküre. No one has yet explained how the mistake occurred, or which company will actually have Domingo on its stage when all is said and done.

Occasional pronouncements of doom from the press aside, young musicians appear to be more enthusiastic than ever about pursuing a career in classical music. “An estimated 2,700 music performance majors graduate from American centers of higher learning every year. The usual number of jobs available: 160 or fewer.” That’s great news for the top U.S. orchestras, of course, which are more or less guaranteed a steady flow of high-quality applicants. But with so few jobs available, should music schools be more up front with their students about the odds against them?

What is it about “smooth jazz” that so infuriates fans and practitioners of more traditional jazz forms? Is it the easy-listening thing? The lack of challenging harmonies and groundbreaking solos? Or could it be that jazzers resent the idea that someone else has figured out a way to make jazz palatable, even popular, with a wider public that has no use for Joshua Redman or Wynton Marsalis?

San Francisco Conservatory is preparing to move into its fancy new digs in the heart of the city’s arts district next fall, and hopes are high that the $80 million facility will finally allow the school to compete with the U.S.’s major conservatories on something closer to an equal footing. “Serving roughly the same number of students and faculty with twice the usable space of [the current building,] it will have at least double the current number of classrooms and practice rooms. The library will be three times [the current] size, and boast a listening room, reading room, and far more computer stations… There will also be an electronic music studio and a recording studio, a café, and a genuine box office for concert ticket sales.”