Category: music

“Sure, we’re no longer living in the era of Haydn, Beethoven, and the gang where everything was either Piano Sonata No. 28 or Symphony No. 6, but this strangest of naming games has yet to completely disappear from our collective reflexes. For the record, I don’t intend to criticize folks who write piano sonatas or symphonies—I’ve even penned a couple of piano sonatas myself, though I’ve yet to attempt a symphony—but why must they be named as if they were volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?”

The Oxford String Quartet is 60 years old. But its future is in doubt as Miami University of Ohio has declined to replace a departing violinist. “A group of distraught fans in Oxford, Cincinnati and as far away as Cologne, Germany, are campaigning to ‘save the quartet.’ They say the school’s prestige is at stake. But the dean of MU’s School of Fine Arts, Jose Antonio Bowen, thinks it’s a non-issue, and that eventually the school will want to emphasize other areas, such as world music.”

A group of musicians in Pittsburgh try to provoke birds into singing with them. “Some of the birds were more than just stimulated by the improvisatory serenade. A few chose to interact with the performers, who used extended techniques on their instrument to mimic bird song.”

Director Peter Sellars is planning a “radical modern production” of Mozart’s unfinished work Zaide. “Mozart was writing about Europeans in the Muslim world directly in his lifetime. The piece is not a historical vignette. Even then, Europe was obsessed with the ‘menace’ of the Muslim world. It’s about how Europeans engage Muslims in a way that is positive, and the concept of mercy coming from both sides.”

Online music distribution is changing the economics of the music recording business. “In most music stores, CD’s of, say, Chinese or Kenyan pop music would be consigned to the world-music bin as a good will gesture. But the economics of online stores is changing the financial calculations of the music business, making it profitable to sell a relatively small number of copies of a song, as long as a compact disc is not manufactured and distributed.”

Americans have a tendency to narrow the focus of everything: chardonnay is the only wine, Friends is the only sitcom, and opera singers with “creamy, smooth,” pop-influenced voices are the only stars. “It’s a world where the serviceably ‘pretty’ has become the definition of the beautiful, threatening to crowd out all the other categories of beauty, for instance, the exotic, the interesting, the gothic.” But there are still a few singers out there willing to break the mold American audiences are locked into, if only we’re willing to give them a chance.

No opera could ever be as chaotic and melodramatic as the scandal currently enveloping the English National Opera. But as dark as things seem at the moment, the Australian financial whiz recently appointed to replace Sean Doran at the ENO’s helm believes that she has a plan that will turn everything around. Loretta Tomasi is hardly a classic arts administrator, and comes from the world of finance and for-profit companies, a quality which immediately makes her suspect to many in the arts. But despite all the recent dust-ups in the press, the ENO is on the verge of retiring its accumulated debt and returning to normal operations after three years of emergency funding from the government. Of course, that doesn’t alleviate the company’s artistic problems…

Mozart’s 250th birthday is being celebrated worldwide, but predictably, no city is going quite as far as Mozart’s adopted hometown of Vienna. Born in Salzburg, the composer spent the bulk of his adult life in Austria’s capital city, and beginning later this month, there will be literally thousands of events dedicated to celebrating his legacy. Vienna has appointed an artistic director to coordinate events across the city, and some 80 new works have been commissioned in tribute to the master. More than 600 public concerts will be held in an effort to popularize the celebration, and the famous Albertina museum will unveil an exhaustive Mozart exhibit in March.

Mozart’s operas are among the most celebrated in the repertoire. But as spectacular as the music they contain may be, half the secret to the success of works like The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni may be the engaging characters and artfully woven storylines created by Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. “A poet, priest and womaniser, who ended his days as a grocer, he also wrote the words to some of the greatest operas.”

New York Congressman Charles Rangel and former NYC Mayor David Dinkins have stepped into the middle of the dustup over the future of the Harlem Boys Choir, telling founder Walter Turnbull that it is time for him to step aside and turn the organization over to someone with better management skills. “Haunted by a sex scandal, the choir is battling eviction from its rent-free space in a city school as well as accusations of shoddy bookkeeping and financial ruin so severe it owes roughly $3 million in unpaid taxes. At least 59 liens and judgments have been filed against the choir by federal, state and local governments since 1988.” Rangel and Dinkins are attempting to raise $500,000 to forestall the eviction, but are making it clear that Turnbull’s ouster will be a condition of their continued assistance.