Category: music

“Last week the BBC announced the end of music on the World Service while, in practically the same breath, assuring Parliament that it has an absolute right to deliver music to all corners of the earth. Bewildered? So are the troops.” The bigger question is – is the BBC missing out on delivering content worldwide in an age of downloading?

If you’re the Montreal Symphony, coming back from a five-month strike, you play “O Canada” for a pro football game. “The 80-piece orchestra under musical director Kent Nagano will play O Canada before the Montreal Alouettes’ regular-season game Saturday afternoon against the Toronto Argonauts. More than 50,000 spectators are expected.”

A sound lab at the University of California, Berkeley, is aiming to make it possible for almost anything to be an instrument – synthetically, of course. “Any object that vibrates and makes sound — like a cymbal or a gong — oscillates for a period of time. These oscillations create complex vibration patterns based on a staggering number of variables, from the flexibility and thickness of the material to the force applied. [The lab’s new] software tackles the problem of predicting sounds by breaking down an object into various imaginary pieces, whose joints represent vibration points.” Then, all the user needs to do is choose which vibration points to “strike,” and voila! An instant instrument is born, regardless of how unlikely it would be in the real world.

“In June last year, the 34 members of the Scottish Opera chorus were unceremoniously sacked before going onstage to perform Puccini’s La Boheme at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre. A few weeks later, they gave their last performance and went on to try to find other work… Scottish Opera was in financial turmoil. Its annual budget of £7.4m had been spent – it needed bailing out, and fast. The opera board wanted an advance on its 2004-2005 budget from the Scottish Arts Council to pay for salaries but the Scottish Executive demanded that, in order to secure the money, Scottish Opera had to restructure – thereby axing 88 jobs. For the chorus, it was a decision that changed their lives.”

A coastal site in the south of Athens has been chosen as the future home of the much-neglected National Opera of Greece. If things go according to plan, a huge performing arts complex will rise on the site, which beat out two other potential locations in the city’s downtown. “The aim of the complex is to provide a cultural hub combining music halls, museums and galleries such as that in the Spanish town of Bilbao, famed for its striking architecture.”

The Chicago Symphony ran up another sizable deficit in the 2004-05 season ($1.3 million, to be exact,) but that figure represents a major improvement over the previous season and is $700,000 less than the deficit the orchestra had projected for the year. Fund-raising was up by 4% overall, and the budget for fiscal 2005 was reduced 2.6% from the previous year. Ticket sales also rebounded from a slow year in 2003-04, and were up by 7% overall, with nearly 85% of subscribers renewing their seats for 2005-06. The CSO’s internal plan calls for achieving a balanced budget by 2006-07.

A new study estimates that the average person spends about £21,000 on music during their lifetime. “The figure includes the amount spent on equipment and concert-going as well as music on CDs and records. Music enthusiasts are likely to spend more than double that, parting with just over £44,000 in a lifetime.”

Montreal’s McGill University has debuted an impressive new building housing its school of music. The project was a long time coming – planning began in 1994 for what was originally supposed to be a library and archive – but the final result is one of the more cutting-edge facilities enjoyed by any conservatory in North America. “Designers did not shy away from the chance to align several different research fields into a single, ambitious studio plan. Film soundtracks, multimedia applications, music recording, studio technology, sound engineering and even neurosciences have a home in the new space.” Oh, and did we mention that the architecture is spectacular.

The Pittsburgh Symphony boosted its measurable assets by $8 million in the 2004-05 season, but the orchestra still wound up with a $1.1 million deficit. That’s a manageable number for a major orchestra, but it could also be seen as a potential red flag for an organization whose musician costs increased significantly this fall. The PSO musicians recently received a whopping 23% raise (the result of a backloaded contract signed by a management team no longer with the orchestra), and even after they offered to rework the deal to provide some short-term relief, salaries for 2005-06 will still be considerably higher than in previous seasons. Still, PSO officials say they are in good financial shape, especially when compared with other major American orchestras.

The Cleveland Orchestra is on tour yet again with music director Franz Welser-Möst, and while some critics may still consider it open season on the young conductor, Bernard Holland doesn’t see what all the controversy is about. “The eyebrows that lifted when Mr. Welser-Möst was given this job must certainly have settled by now. One hears his casual elegance reflected in his players: a fastidiousness that is never prim, breathing naturally. The musicians sounded as if they believed in their conductor; he must be delighted with them. The Cleveland played on Monday with the good intentions of the best European orchestra, but with an ability to carry them out that hardly any European orchestra can match.”