Category: music

The hot new trend in jazz these days? Nothing, really. “Trends pass; record sales tail off, media attention wanders and the artificiality of it all is forgotten as quickly as its revealed. What’s real — the sort of jazz that goes where the musicians, not the industry, take it — is what endures.”

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has made a move on the big time. “With ticket sales up and deficits down, the nation’s only full-time professional chamber orchestra is clearly moving beyond its former image as a smaller version of the older and bigger-budgeted Minnesota Orchestra. The SPCO now conceives itself as its own artistic entity — ‘America’s chamber orchestra,’ as its ads proclaim.”

Denver’s spectacular new opera house will host its first actual opera this coming week, and Opera Colorado, the venue’s principal tenant, is pulling out all the stops with a major production of Bizet’s Carmen starring none other than mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. “In a daring departure from its usual practice, Opera Colorado is presenting eight performances of Carmen – twice as many as normal. And it already appears the gamble has paid off. A little more than a week before Thursday’s opening, the company had already sold 70 percent of its available tickets, and Rex Fuller, director of marketing, expects at least some of the performances will sell out.”

As the New York Philharmonic opened their stage and their hearts to the displaced musicians of the Louisiana Philharmonic this weekend, Alice Tully Hall became a study in contrasts, with musicians who seemingly have it made in this business sitting side by side with musicians who have seen their world turned upside down. To call the benefit concert, which raised more than $300,000 for the New Orleans ensemble, a triumph would seem to understate the magnitude of the LPO’s plight. But still, for one night in Manhattan, the LPO players could close their eyes and revel in the moment. “It’s bittersweet,” said one LPO violinist. “I’ve lost everything, but I get to play in the New York Philharmonic tonight.”

As the St. Louis Symphony attempts to dig out of the financial hole it fell into a few years back, one of the key measuring sticks is the salary earned by its musicians, and how it stacks up to other major American ensembles. In summer 2004, the SLSO began a special endowment drive designed specifically to make salary increases feasible within the existing budget – the goal for the drive is $20 million. This week, the orchestra announced that $17 million has been raised for the project, and the overall orchestra endowment now stands at $112 million.

Last week, a Detroit philanthropist said she’d invest $10 million in continuing the troubled Detroit Jazz Festival. But only if the Music Hall, current operators of the festival, severed their ties. By late in the week Music Hall leaders expressed optimism “that the festival could be restructured without completely severing ties with Music Hall, which has produced the event since 1994, often struggling in recent years to make ends meet.”

Naxos has made its catalog of 75,000 tracks available for downloading. “From the Music Library, subscribing institutions can stream any Naxos title, and the company hopes to make this service available to individual subscribers in the future. Naxos Web Radio streams 72 channels of music programmed by genre for an annual fee.”

“The New York Philharmonic entwines itself with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in a joint concert to support the New Orleans-based musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina.”

“Classical music should be a fundamental part of the school curriculum, for it is as relevant today as ever. A now notorious 2002 survey undertaken by Classic FM established that 65 per cent of six- to 14-year-olds were unable to name a single classical composer and could not differentiate between instruments. This highlighted the neglect of music in many of our schools and was enough of a shock to provoke a response. That response was the Government’s much-touted 2004 music manifesto, which was full of good intentions but short on how they would be delivered.”

An 18th century Cremonese violin once owned by Nicolo Paganini will go on sale at Sotheby’s next week with an asking price of £500,000 ($894,600). “Not only is it the first time one of Paganini‘s cherished instruments has come up for auction, it is one of only 50 surviving violins by master craftsman Carlo Bergonzi of Cremona.”