Category: music

The Louisiana Philharmonic performed in Nashville Tuesday night. “It may have been the Louisiana Philharmonic’s first concert since the hurricane, but will not be its last. The New York Philharmonic will present the ensemble in a joint concert on Oct. 28 at Avery Fisher Hall. And they are weighing a half-dozen other invitations from around the country.”

“Just as most people wouldn’t think of a major symphony orchestra first (or even second) when thinking of Nashville, so too New Orleans brings up images of Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino and the Marsalis brothers–not Rossini, Saint-Saëns and Shostakovich. Still, that’s something of a tourist’s view of the Crescent City, as New Orleans–both past and present–has a rich tradition of European art music too.”

David Stearns: “The opera walks an uncertain line between representation and abstraction, unfolding along traditional linear lines until a fleet of dancers in military uniform, choreographed by Lucinda Childs, suggests “Springtime for Hitler” is on the way. Not until you’re deep into the opera do you realize that complete portrayals of key characters aren’t attempted; they’re presented, nonjudgmentally, in pieces for the audience to assemble. Is it a Faust story? Nothing so cliched. I saw an ironic parable of how saving the world may well destroy it.”

Cleveland’s Severance Hall was almost empty for its first major organ concert this year. “Only about 10 percent of the seats in Severance Hall were occupied Sunday when the hall’s Organ Recital Series began its season with a recital by Paul Jacobs, a wizardly musician who deserves massive audiences.”

Some big recording companies are protecting their CD’s from being copied or locking the format so they can’t be transfered to an iPod. “But these decisions aren’t sitting well with some of the artists whose CDs have been secured. A number of leading acts are using their Web sites to instruct fans on how to work around the technology.”

Washington’s National Symphony has signed on Ivan Fischer as its new principal guest conductor beginning with the 2006-07 season. “The initial contract will be for three years, meaning that Fischer may be the senior artistic figure within the orchestra when the present music director, Leonard Slatkin, steps down at the end of the 2007-08 season.”

Tuesday night, the plucky Louisiana Philharmonic plays a road game in Nashville, its first concert since hurricane Katrina. “The 68-member Louisiana Philharmonic was to open its concert season at the ornate Orpheum Theater on Sept. 15, but the venue, like most of the city, was flooded and may be lost for the season.”

“John Adams and librettist and director Peter Sellars have enjoyed some success in previous collaborations with Sellars directing Adams’ first two operas. Yet even with a talented cast, striking visual design and some extraordinary and often beautiful music by Adams, Doctor Atomic is fatally undermined by Sellars’ convoluted libretto and silly, distracting directorial conceits, which at times provoked unwonted laughter from the opening-night audience.”

“Attorneys representing some of the 14,000 people targeted for illegal music trading say their clients are being bullied into settling as the cheapest way to get out of trouble. Collection agencies posing as ‘settlement centers’ are harassing their clients to pay thousands of dollars for claims about which they know nothing, they say.”

The Chicago chamber orchestra Concertante di Chicago is “suspending operations after 20 seasons because of the increasing difficulty of attracting new audiences and raising its budgets in an uncertain arts economy, officials said. In recent years Concertante has had trouble filling that 400-seat facility. ‘We looked into the future and were concerned about what we saw with audiences. We play to a generally older crowd, and frankly they were falling by the wayside. When we looked to see who was coming up behind them, we were not encouraged’.”