Category: music

Word is that Amazon is getting into the online music business. “Customers who buy a CD will receive a digital copy of the album or song, which they can transfer to a portable digital music player.”

Toni Morrison found working on the opera Margaret Garner frustrating experience. Would she do another opera? No. “Although Morrison has collaborated previously with composers Danielpour and André Previn on some well-received song cycles, novelists aren’t used to generating just one of many elements – and not the dominant one – of a creative production.”

The Louisville Orchestra’s current crisis will put the organization in bankruptcy, says the orchestra’s board. But that isn’t stopping Louisville from looking for a new music director. “Though a Chapter 7 filing would put the orchestra out of business for an indefinite period, orchestra manager Scott Provancher said it’s still worth pursuing the music-director search in the meantime. The orchestra is seeking a successor to Uriel Segal; his contract was not renewed at the end of the 2003-04 season, with the board saying it wanted a music director with more of a community presence.”

In frustration with her orchestra’s current labor impass, Louisville Orchestra musician Tamara Meinecke writes to the Courier-Journal: “I find it somewhat embarrassing and certainly distressing to have to defend the orchestra from its own board chairman…”

“The distinction between renting the hall and being invited by Carnegie’s programmers may not strike many concertgoers, who see the same black concert dress onstage and hear the same canon of orchestral works. But the difference is sharp, both in prestige and in fees.”

Article after article has appeared about Mozart in this 250th anniversary year. So how much have you been paying attention? Take another one of the Guardian’s famous quizes of your Mozart knowledge…

The Grammys are based on the idea of rewarding the best music. But is it really possible? “Once upon a time, when there were only a handful of record labels and a few thousand albums a year to track, it seemed possible to sort out the albums that mattered, or should matter. Now, it is estimated that more than 35,000 CDs are released annually on hundreds of record labels, in addition to thousands more that surface through Internet and underground channels.”

Pianists are recording Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata in droves. “Why the ‘Appassionata’? And why now? Have Beethoven’s notes perhaps released a deadly sonic Kool-Aid for use by record companies wanting to commit mass suicide? Might the companies be deluded by the youth angle? As a showpiece full of turbulence, Beethoven’s sonata obviously appeals to young musicians, and most of the new releases are by emerging artists using the ‘Appassionata’ as an aural calling card.”

Traditional CD stores are going out of business. “These are brutal days for many traditional music retailers. Technology creates winners and losers. This has been a radical shift in distribution, consumption, discovery, all those things. Another irony: While sales are down, more music is being produced and heard than ever before in history.”

Washington DC classical music fans are fuming about a frequency switch for WGMS, the area’s only classical music station. “Many WGMS listeners see their station’s move to a frequency that can be heard only sporadically as a step toward eliminating classics from the radio altogether. Oddly, that sense of being squeezed out by the radio gods comes in a market where classical music has done better in the ratings than almost anywhere else in the country. WGMS regularly lands in the Top 10 among Washington area stations for total audience, and it’s one of the most highly rated stations among listeners 54 and older.”