Category: music

“We’ve tended to lay the blame for the fall-off in classical music attendances on bad programming, lack of excitement, not enough targeting the young and that woeful branding, favoured by the politicians, of elitism.” But could the real problem be something as simple as the fact that major concert halls tend to seat over 2,000 people, whether they are located in a metropolis of ten million or a city of 500,000? After all, the effects of a half-empty hall on audience behavior are well-established, and recent developments in Scotland’s classical music scene suggest that less may, in fact, be more.

Japan’s Yomiuri Nippon Orchestra has named the Polish-born composer/conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski as its new principal conductor, beginning in spring 2007. What makes the appointment unusual is that Skrowaczewski, a former music director of the Minnesota Orchestra and of Manchester’s Halle Orchestra, will be 84 years old when his tenure in Japan begins.

Two and a half years ago, news stories about the Minnesota Orchestra told a distressing tale of internal power struggles, musician dissatisfaction, board dysfunction, and seemingly endless red ink. Today, the deficits are in rapid decline, the organization seems to be healing, the orchestra is garnering rave reviews, and much of the credit for the turnaround is being given to Ronald Lund, who just stepped aside as the orchestra’s board chair. Lund’s success in a post which is frequently a magnet for criticism from all sides may be due in part to his emphasis on improving communication within the organization before trying to heal its external problems.

The surviving Beatles (and the heirs of the non-surviving ones) are suing the EMI recording company in an effort to recover what they claim are $53 million in unpaid royalties.

The Metropolitan Opera starts its 75th season of radio broadcasts. “Toll Brothers home builders has joined long-term supporters the Annenberg Foundation and the Vincent A. Stabile Foundation to finance the series, which this year includes 20 live broadcasts and a celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday.”

“An outfit calling themselves Dean Gray (ho, ho) had taken Green Day’s American Idiot and fused each one of its tracks with other pieces of music, ranging from Bryan Adams to Queen. Then they changed the album’s name to American Edit and set it loose on the Internet. This is a mashup, the on-line stepchild of the remix and the latest way to anger a music company. It’s true that the concept sounds improbable; when pairing two different songs, the line between mashup and train wreck can be thin indeed. But the Zen of good mashing isn’t about pairing random songs; it’s about picking up on the similarities between two tracks, and tweaking the songs to have them create more than the sum of their parts.”

The Metropolitan Opera has a trove of recordings of its week-by-week performances across seven decades. “The house is pressing forward with a project to preserve, and in many cases locate, nearly 1,400 recordings of its Saturday broadcasts. Met officials said they have completed 403 preservations, with 868 still to go, spending about $1.4 million in an open-ended project that is predicted to cost more than $4 million.”

Ten promient arts leaders have called for a change of leadership of the English National Opera. “Mr Smith’s style of chairmanship, we believe, has been most damaging to this important institution and has brought about a crisis point,” it reads. The letter demands an “urgent change of leadership to ensure a better future”.

Chairman of the English National opera board, “Smith has been the focus of criticism since the last time he sacked an artistic director of ENO, in 2002, when he was accused of having “shafted” former general director Nicholas Payne. While he has support from some upper management at ENO, he is passionately loathed by many staff and artists.

“Even as opera remains the butt of jokes, opera-styled pop — big, booming voices delivering mellifluous melodies over lush, orchestral arrangements — keeps popping up at the top of the charts. The field isn’t especially large, but it encompasses a fairly wide array of stars, from the male quartet Il Divo to teen soprano Charlotte Church, and from former Andrew Lloyd Webber star (and spouse) Sarah Brightman to occasional Luciano Pavarotti duet partner Andrea Bocelli.”