Category: music

The insurance crisis that recently hit British orchestras is threatening to have a profound impact on the players, too. But they’re used to that by now. “These orchestras offer their members no pension schemes, no health insurance beyond in-house benevolent funds and, in some cases, no fixed retirement age. Players in salaried positions with the Hallé and BBC orchestras, for example, have increased stability, but less flexibility and less ready cash. Money was more plentiful in the 1980s; now there are fewer recording sessions, less sponsorship and more competition for work such as film scores and advertising. With house prices high and instrument prices soaring, players are increasingly turning to alternative sources of income: teaching, property development, massage and more.”

With music education in many American schools having long since been whittled down to nothing, students with an interest in the subject have had to look elsewhere for the experience of performing in an ensemble. Youth orchestras have tried to take up the slack in most urban areas, and some ensembles have even begun to allow any child with an interest to join, instead of the traditional method of conducting auditions. Rather than learning about music during the school day, kids with an interest in music now have to give up a chunk of their weekend. Not that they mind…

“The last bars of Ravel’s Bolero had just died away to applause, but when conductor Volker Hartung tried to return to the stage for an encore, dozens of police officers blocked his way. To the shock of spectators, Hartung was led from the concert hall in handcuffs. The German maestro spent the next two nights in jail as investigators questioned him for allegedly violating French labor law in a case that suggests the European dream of free movement of goods and services remains a long way off… Ever since that February 2005 night at Strasbourg’s Palais de la Musique, Hartung and his orchestra have been embroiled in a costly and time-consuming legal mess… French and German unions say Hartung is exploiting young musicians from Eastern Europe and Russia, and the German union went so far as to call work in Hartung’s orchestra ‘a kind of modern slavery.'”

In what must surely be one of the oddest pairings in awards history, Sweden’s prestigious Polar Music Prize will be shared this year by conductor Valery Gergiev and rock band Led Zeppelin. The winners, who will be honored by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustav in May, share a love of dramatic performance techniques, a worldwide following, and not a whole heck of a lot else.

13,000 people packed the Mall in Washington, D.C. last weekend to watch a simulcast of Washington National Opera’s production of Porgy & Bess on a huge, 18-by-32 foot video screen. “When Angela Simpson sang Serena’s lament ‘My Man’s Gone Now,’ the applause was thunderous. And the cheers were repeated for almost every song from Indira Mahajan as Bess and Gordon Hawkins as Porgy. And for once, the cheers and the notes weren’t trapped by the chandeliers of the Opera House but floated off into the blue sky over the Mall.”

As record companies and retailers struggle to adapt to the new, tech-heavy world of music consumption, a phenomenon has emerged that is gaining popularity in the industry, even as it is decried by consumers. A number of pop music’s most sought-after acts have recently partnered with specific corporations for “exclusive” sales deals, wherein consumers can only purchase the new CD at a specific store, at least temporarily. Others have offered retailer-specific versions of a new CD with bonus material unavailable elsewhere. The idea is to drag music consumers away from their computers and back into the stores, and it seems to be working.

The $100 million gift that is allowing the Yale School of Music to go tuition-free is making waves across the classical music industry, and has the potential eventually to elevate Yale to the ranks of America’s elite conservatories. Officials at schools like Juilliard and Curtis have long known the value (and necessity) of making music education as cheap as possible – most professional musicians will never make a great deal of money, and many are driven out of the profession altogether by the need for a steady paycheck. “Half the former art and music students surveyed by college lender Nellie Mae in 1998 had debts bigger than their salaries.”

Helsinki’s major daily newspaper has recently taken an interest in how much money Finland’s artists and musicians manage to pull down in a year. What it discovered is that the country’s wealthiest artist has been dead since 1957. Jean Sibelius, the composer whose music defined Finland throughout the 20th century, is still earning royalties on performances of his music, most of it coming from abroad. Last year alone, Sibelius’s heirs received €1.5 million in royalty payments, making the deceased composer Finland’s most financially successful musician by far. The continuing windfall is ironic, since Sibelius had a terrible time managing money while he was alive, and frequently struggled to earn enough to take care of his family.

Interest in jazz is soaring in Scotland. “What Scotland is doing is developing a very strong scene which has its own identity. A lot of people are fusing or mixing jazz with a Scottish idiom. Colin Steele is taking folk music and overlaying it with a Chet Baker feel but the result is a distinctive sound coming from, influenced and coloured by Scotland. There is very definitely a recognisable Scottish jazz influence now.”

It’s been eight years since the Vienna Philharmonic let its first woman musician into the ranks. So has the orchestra’s integration proceeded? Not quite…