Category: music

Back in 1991, Apple Computer and Apple (the recording company of the Beatles) carved up the world. Apple-the-computer company promised not to be in the recording business. Now Apple-the-record-label is suing Apple Computer over using the apple logo on iTunes…

Tickets for the Kirov Opera’s production of Wagner’s Ring in Cardiff, Wales, went fast. “Cardiff Fans from across the world have bought seats costing as much as £750 for the performance by Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre – formerly the Kirov Opera. The shows in December will be their only planned UK performance. Tickets have gone to fans as far away as Russia itself, as well as the USA, the Middle East and France.”

One sight that remains exceedingly rare in opera?: a black tenor in a leading role from the standard repertoire. That could be changing, though. Black tenors are becoming more and more visible…

David Handel has been rebuilding the Bolivian national Orchestra. He has “increased the number of performances to 50 a year from 12, recorded the group for the first time, enlarged the symphony to 65 musicians from 40, raised salaries and increased the yearly budget to $1 million from $100,000. He also has lowered ticket prices for students and raised the number of season ticket holders to 1,000 from none. Finally, he found the group its first-ever home in a one-time vaudeville theater and has taken the symphony to locales where it never had performed.” Now if only the bombs would stop going off outside the concert hall…

“Proportionately, classical sells better digitally than on CD. Whereas classical accounts for about 3%-4% of total sales of music in shops, on iTunes it accounts for 12% of sales…”

The new director of France’s Aix-en-Provence opera festival says he’d like the festival to become an international hub for opera. “I would like the Aix festival to be a global opera hub. Festivals have helped the world of opera evolve, and they must reach beyond the place where they are held.”

Orchestras are finally getting into technology in a big way, offering ringtones and MP3s. “What marks out classical downloading from pop-based genres is that classical music has so much more to gain. Digital technology is fast becoming the new vanguard in the fight for audiences.”

The Louisiana Philharmonic has resumed playing in its homeown. “The orchestra has started a 12-week spring season that was planned long before Hurricane Katrina hit and scattered the players everywhere. Members have since played with 61 different orchestras. The musicians [have gone] to great lengths to maintain the programs planned before the hurricane.”

“Digital technology now makes it very easy for one musician to copy and modify some appealing element from another musician’s recording. Now lawyers hover over new records, listening for any legally actionable borrowing. Such cases are usually settled out of court — for undisclosed, but often enormous, sums. More interesting than the legal-sideshow aspect, I think, is the question of how artists deal with the situation. Imitation, allusion, parody, borrowing stray bits of melody or texture — all of this is fundamental to creativity. The line between mimicry and transformation is not absolute.”

Want to download that orchestra concert you heard last week? Soon you may be able to. “Negotiations are under way with orchestras in London, Paris and three German cities. The current intention is for each orchestra to offer, on average, four concerts a season for digital downloading, and one of the four would also be released on CD. The project reflects a seismic shift in the way music is being discovered, distributed and heard.”