Category: music

The Cleveland Orchestra posted a $5.9 million deficit for the 2004-05 season. “The deficit represents the difference between expenses of $39.9 million and revenue of $34 million. To help the bottom line, the association drew $7.5 million from the orchestra’s endowment, which stood at $119 million as of June 30.”

New Orleans is still laid flat, but musicians are returning. “New Orleans has a uniqueness that no other city has, and that’s part of all us. We need to get back, and when we do, in terms of its musical atmosphere, New Orleans will start to return to what it was. But it’ll take a while, because the poor were such a big part of that city. They were the ones who made so much of that great music. You had your white collars and your blue collars – but you also had your dirty collars. And that’s where soul and groove and all that came from.”

“Stanford University research has found for the first time that musical training improves how the brain processes the spoken word, a finding that researchers say could lead to improving the reading ability of children who have dyslexia and other reading problems. The study, made public Wednesday, is the first to show that musical experience can help the brain improve its ability to distinguish between rapidly changing sounds that are key to understanding and using language.”

For the last decade and more, the Winnipeg Symphony’s annual new music festival has served as a shining example of how orchestras can present contemporary works without driving audiences out of the concert hall. But this year, the WSO has announced a stripped-down version of the festival in response to declining ticket sales and waning public interest. Gone will be the well-regarded composers’ competition, and there will be no high-profile composer-in-residence, as there has been in past years.

“Opera has long had a prominent role in Russian cultural life, and the Bolshoi and Mariinsky have dominated the scene since the outset.” The two companies have survived political turmoil, societal upheaval, and other threats for well over two centuries. But in post-Soviet Russia, adaptability is an absolute necessity for arts organizations, and the Bolshoi and Mariinsky have been struggling to maintain their international profiles at a time when budgets are tight and classical music faces an uncertain future. Still, both companies are pushing ahead with ambitious plans for the future.

The most popular music at UK funerals? Frank Sinatra sing “My Way.” “When not organising the final sendoff of 80,000 Britons each year, Co-operative Funeralcare likes to compile charts of favourite numbers heard at funerals. Its research reveals that popular songs now account for 40% of all music chosen for funerals. Hymns account for 55% and classical works a mere 5%.”

It seems that “MP3s have spawned a listening culture that has less respect for listening to a composition from start to finish. Of course, this already started with the fast forward button on CD players, which is probably still why am so attracted to LPs since lifting and dropping needles is harder to do than just letting the music play out. Nowadays, unless something is 100% compelling—and ultimately what is?—it’s just too easy to tune it out and move onto the next thing, ultimately never truly listening to anything.”

“Mistaken as a democratic instrument for its ease of playing, the piano has established a mode of experiencing sound that has led to the downfall of western music. Fast fingers, such as Liberace’s with added diamonds for emphasis, delight the eyes and ears. Children and adults plunk keys to receive instant aural gratification. Something so beguiling and easy must have a price.”

“Both the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera inaugurated projects over the weekend designed to cajole patrons or patrons-to-be into the groups’ respective halls, and to better appreciate what they saw and heard once they got there. The target audiences could not have been more different, but the underlying impulse was not dissimilar.”

Australian conductor Simone Young became the first woman ever to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic last weekend. “Although the mixed-metaphor reviewers were underwhelmed, we have it on good authority that they were generally courteous and even deferential — a signal perhaps that while Vienna’s musical life is stuck in the 19th century, it has some grace, intelligence and dignity.”