Category: music

South Florida’s recent history with classical music is an unhappy one, bordering on the tragic – the (some would say unnecessary) shutdown of the Florida Philharmonic removed the anchor of the local scene, and several smaller groups that sprang up in the Phil’s wake have fared no better. So with the situation so precarious, why are some South Florida music organizations still charging $50 a ticket for a standard performance?

As the Cincinnati Symphony prepares to announce its 2006-07 season, music director Paavo Järvi is turning up the heat on one of the orchestra’s most pressing issues – its concert hall. “With 3,516 seats, it’s the largest concert hall in the U.S., and despite having an audience any orchestra in the country would be proud to own (the CSO has more long-term subscribers than any U.S. orchestra), the cavernous hall swallows them up… There has been considerable speculation about ‘downsizing’ Music Hall, which was never intended as a concert hall in the first place, the CSO having left its home in Emery Theatre in 1936 to give Music Hall an anchor tenant.”

For the first time, three places in the UK Top Ten music charts are taken up by tenors. “Newcomer Vittorio Grigolo and BBC One’s Just the Two of Us winner Russell Watson are set for new entries in the top 10, according to mid-week figures. Andrea Bocelli’s album Amore, out last week, could stay in the chart.”

The list of prominent conductors on the sick list is getting longer. Latest to join is Robert Spano, who’s canceled out of a performance with the Pittsburgh Symphony because of bronchitis. Spano joins a who’s who of big-name conductors who have canceled for various reasons this month: James Levine, Kurt Masur and Christoph von Dohnanyi.

They’re worth thinking about as America’s star conductors go down for the count. Let’s see, there was Lully who jammed a stick down on his foot and died a few weeks later from gangrene…

Juilliard’s library is getting ready for an unfamiliar role after landing a major trove of important music manuscripts. “Many of the manuscripts await the scrutiny of salivating scholars, who are ready to mine them in service to musicology. Juilliard has promised to make them available. ‘Julliard, to my knowledge, has never been in the position of having to share such a treasure trove with the public, which will be beating a path to their door’.”

As a fundraiseer, the American Composers Orchestra is auctioning mobile-phone ringtones created by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and other composers as part of its spring fundraiser.

Orange County’s Pacific Symphony is heading to Europe for its first tour. The orchestra has been talking about going on a tour for about a decade. But until recently it wasn’t thought that the orchestra was ready for one, financially or artistically.

Cal State University at Fullerton throws a women’s music festival and few people show up. “Is it the women themselves who are scary? Their music? Ironically, this annual festival, created five years ago by Pamela Madsen, a composer on Fullerton’s faculty, strives for inclusion. The attitude, and one rehashed in the panel, is that no one can really say what women’s music is. Some women address gender issues, some don’t.”

Over-eager fans of a band tried to promote the group by buying multiple downloads of the group’s new recording to boost them in the charts. But the buying was discovered and disqualified. “Due to over-enthusiastic members of the band’s fans and family, an unacceptable number of records were ordered per person online. Sadly, rather than these sales ending up supporting the band, this has resulted in The Modern’s chart position of number 13 being deemed invalid according to The Official Charts Company’s strict rules and regulations.”