Category: music

Birmingham’s Young, Popular, Fiery Conductor Says British Orchestras Don’t Have An Easy Life

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla became the music director for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2016. She says, “British orchestras, the CBSO included, don’t have an easy life. They work very hard, very fast. They don’t have the government support you get in, say, Germany or Austria or elsewhere. Or the rehearsal time.” – The Observer (UK)

The Essential Brilliance Of Studio Musicians

In the 1950s and ’60s, especially, session musicians could make or break a hit. And session musicians were in high demand, as producers like Phil Spector became obsessed with production techniques such as the Wall of Sound, forcing as many musicians as possible into a studio and having each of them contribute a small part to a larger, bombastic sound. As a result, session musicians became highly valued: Each had to play their role well, but they also had to find a way to click with every other session musician in the room. – Pacific Standard

Google Doodle For Bach’s Birthday Uses AI To (Try To) Compose Bach-Like Chorales

The little Bach-bot “promises to take any two-bar melody you type in and turn it into a Bach, or Bachlike, chorale in four parts, played by charming little music-box figures of bewigged 18th-century musicians.” Yet, writes Anne Midgette, “it may only add to the doodle’s charm that what it actually proves is the opposite of what it sets out to do.” – The Washington Post

Conductor Thomas Wilkins Works To Get Composers Of Color Into Boston Symphony’s Repertoire (And Into The Canon)

Wilkins, the BSO’s conductor for young people’s and family concerts, makes his subscription-season debut this weekend with a program of music by Florence Price, Adolphus Hailstork, Roberto Sierra, and Duke Ellington. Wilkins is aware of the charge of tokenism: “The easy observation would be to say that this is just a night of box-checking so that we can move on. In reality, it is not. It is, in fact, a launch. … And you know what? You gotta start somewhere.” – The Boston Globe

Fistfight At The Opera: Lawyer Punches Designer In Dispute Over Seats At Covent Garden

“Matthew Feargrieve, 42, was accused at Westminster Magistrates Court of repeatedly punching Ulrich Engler on the shoulder in the performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the world-famous [Royal Opera House]. It is understood the dispute began because Mr Engler allegedly grabbed a coat belonging to Mr Feargrieve’s wife from an empty seat and threw it on her lap.” – The Telegraph (UK)

When Gustav Mahler Rode The New York Subways

Oh yes, he traveled by subway during his years (1908-11) as director of the New York Philharmonic. (He’d have taken one of the BMT lines to conduct at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the now-gone Ninth Avenue El to get home on the Upper West Side.) “Yet claiming Mahler as a New Yorker … is complicated,” writes David Patrick Stearns. “Connect the dots one way, New York was Mahler’s nightmare and possibly his undoing. Connect the dots another way, and Mahler himself was a nightmare no matter where he was.” – WQXR (New York City)