Category: music

Sony says it will temporarily stop making antipiracy CDs that can leave computers vulnerable to hackers. “The antipiracy technology, which works only on Windows computers, prevents customers from making more than a few copies of the CD and prevents them from loading the CD’s songs onto Apple Computer’s popular iPod portable music players. Some other music players, which recognize Microsoft’s proprietary music format, would work. Sony’s announcement came one day after leading security companies disclosed that hackers were distributing malicious programs over the Internet that exploited the antipiracy technology’s ability to avoid detection.”

The Toronto Symphony closed its financial year with a $2.1 million defifcit. That “boosted the orchestra’s accumulated deficit to $9.47 million. The deficit stood at just over $7 million when the TSO teetered close to bankruptcy in 2001. Loan guarantees from the city of Toronto and the TSO Foundation helped stave off another near-death episode. The foundation also handed over $1.5 million in emergency financing, $1 million of which is repayable within five years.”

Italian opera singers have gone on a hunger strike over proposed government cuts in arts funding. “Culture minister Rocco Buttiglione has threatened to resign over the matter, while opera singers and others in Italy’s theatrical world came up with the idea of hunger strikes. Some people have gone on rotational one-day strikes, while others such as Vignudelli starved themselves for two weeks. She is also angry that Berlusconi claims La Scala employs too many people. Barbara Vignudelli has lost 13lb. ‘I am a person who is healthy and takes care of herself, so to do this is difficult,’ she said. ‘But it shows how strongly I feel’.”

“In many ways, the writers at Pitchfork and the Village Voice bloggers are picking up where the late rock critic Lester Bangs – who wrote for Rolling Stone and, later, a pre-blog Village Voice – left off, adding a dose of irony lifted from satirical magazine the Onion to his self-referential, often impenetrable reams of excited babble. Thanks to the bloggers’ often highly subjective rants, bands become much talked about on the internet long before they enter the charts. It’s all about being in the know, or at least pretending you’re in the know.”

“The piano-manufacturing business these days has gone the same way as many industries: the brand name is kept, but the instrument is made more cheaply in China, Korea, Japan, or Eastern Europe. Global competition means less variety. The Pearl River piano factory in China has 4,000 employees and is increasing production to 100,000 pianos a year, which they fabricate for more than twenty different companies around the world. How many people, when going to buy a piano, realize that their Bechstein could have been made in Germany or in Korea by Samick, depending on the model number (and price); or that the Boston piano designed and sold by Steinway is made by Kawai?”

Where are the women composers? “For centuries men have dominated the history, theory and politics of music. In addition to history books that glossed over women’s contributions, early music theory distinguished between harmonically weaker ‘feminine’ cadences and strong, resolute ‘masculine’ ones. It’s easy to see why a woman might find this offensive. Music itself is neither masculine nor feminine, Joan Towers argues. It’s either good or it’s bad. ‘Everything in music goes counter to what we think of as feminine or masculine. It just doesn’t apply’.”

Julian Lloyd-Webber is tired of hearing people dump on orchestras. “What, exactly, is so ‘irrelevant’ about classical music? Its basic precepts of harmony and tonality permeate all the music we hear, whether in films, TV ads, shopping malls or churches. Even some of the most popular mobile ring tones are taken from the classics. Moreover, new collaborations abound…”

“The internet has been touted as the future of the music business ever since file-sharing became big news: bands, it was mooted, would cut record companies out of the equation by posting their music on their websites and building up a virtual fanbase. But nothing of the sort happened. Selling music via a website became the province not of hip new bands, but old stagers considered defunct by their labels. They were making a living, but the whole business still carried a slight taint, the modern equivalent of flogging your records from a car boot. Then, three weeks ago, Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys entered the charts at number one with their second single, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.”

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is one of America’s oldest musical institutions. “Its syndicated radio program, ‘Music and the Spoken Word,’ found on 1,500 stations across the world, started in July 1929; it is the longest-running broadcast in the medium’s history. The choir has sung for every United States president since William Howard Taft, and in addition to its Grammy and Emmy wins, it has CD sales in the millions with two platinum records and five gold records.”

Detroit’s Michgan Opera Theatre ran a very modest deficit for the past season. Michigan’s weak economy continued to take a toll on corporate and individual giving to the company, which remained flat. Ticket income dipped slightly, but the bigger story is that subscription income fell short of goals by $140,000. Subscription sales have now declined for five straight seasons, which officials attribute to aging audiences and lifestyle changes that find younger patrons less willing to commit. Still, single-ticket sales exceeded goals in 2005 because of a surge for the world premiere of Margaret Garner.”