Category: music

“Not long ago, the typical maestro would ride into town, bark Central European-accented commands at the orchestra, conduct some concerts attend a banquet, and move on. These days, music directors have an expanded job description: they must not only convey the repertory to an extant audience of music lovers but also try to explain it to the great silent majority who rarely go to concerts. A singular thing about David Robertson, who was born in Santa Monica, California, and has led th Ensemble Intercontemporain, in Paris, and the National Orchestra o Lyon, is that he actively enjoys his evangelical duties.”

Two months ago, the Columbus (Ohio) Symphony confirmed rumors that it intended to invite conductor Junichi Hirokami, 46, to be its seventh music director. One problem: the orchestra hadn’t even begun negotiations on a contract to hire Hirokami. Now some are wondering – does the conductor really want the job?

“From Philadelphia to Sioux Falls, orchestras are embracing a growing breed of contemporary composer that emphasizes the classical tradition of writing to entertain, rather than to explore academic, less accessible theories. While the point is partly to please crowds, these new works are taken seriously. The popularity of this new classical music — variously called “contemporary classical,” “alt-classical” or “music of our time” — represents the latest stage in a reaction to the 1950s and ’60s, when the dominant composers were academics who invented tonal structures that broke with European musical traditions.”

A new study “suggests European consumers who download music from illegal file-sharing websites outnumber those using legal services. It says illegal networks are used three times as much as legal ones. It also warns that file-sharers, particularly young people, have little concept of music as a paid commodity.”

“Those raising ethical questions about the gift to the Yale School of Music should first put the dollar amount in perspective. Private and corporate donors in America have to compensate for the government’s negligible support of the fine arts. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts gave out grants totaling just over $100 million. In France, in recent years, the state subsidy for the Paris Opera alone has averaged roughly the same amount. That the Yale School of Music must contend at all with the charge of elitism is doubly discouraging, since it has long been committed to fostering music as part of an education in the humanities.”

“Whether operating the computer themselves or engaging technicians to help them program it, today’s most visionary jazz artists have embraced laptops, Apple PowerBooks and other computer technologies, thereby redefining the sound of jazz in the 21st Century.”

“Big firms including Sony and EMI want to use new powers designed to track terrorists on the internet to crack down on music and film pirates – including the parents of children who download music – who are estimated to cost the industry £650m a year. Internet companies will have to log all the pages visited by surfers for at least a year so the security services can track terrorists using the web for fund-raising, training or swapping information. But the move has been greeted with alarm by human rights campaigners who say that the step is an example of the ‘mission creep’ of draconian new anti-terror powers.”

“About 600 professional orchestras now operate in the United States, according to a new study done at the University of Cincinnati. That would seem to be an astounding figure for an art form many industry experts predicted would be extinct by now. A higher percentage of smaller orchestras are operating with balanced budgets than the larger orchestras. The bigger orchestra’s cost structure is more rigid; the small orchestras are much more flexible. They can adjust to financial difficulties much more quickly.”

Orange County California’s Pacific Opera and Pacific Symphony have a problem. “Now in its 20th season, Opera Pacific, which produces opera locally, is suffering from something of an identity crisis, and the financial woes that result. Seems that a relatively high percentage of people don’t know that we have our own opera company here behind that Orange Curtain. The Pacific Symphony has discovered the same thing. In a survey taken several years ago, the orchestra found that only 10 percent could name the group as resident here, and only 5 percent knew the name of its music director, Carl St.Clair.”

“Record labels in recent years have made a point of introducing new, little-known acts as protégés of established stars. In some cases the two musicians might have grown up on the same block. Or perhaps they had shared the struggle of performing in the same unknown group. Either way, it’s a rich backstory that can be woven into any future marketing effort. But what if the new singer doesn’t have any long-lost pals who’ve gone platinum? For an increasingly desperate industry, that is but a minor obstacle. These days, label executives routinely shop their new prospects around from one star to another, trying to convince them to act as a mentor.”