Category: music

All members of the now-homeless Louisiana Philharmonic survived the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but many have lost everything they had, and the future of the orchestra itself hangs in the balance. Adding to the uncertainty surrounding the LPO’s future is the fact that the ensemble is run by its musicians, who will have to seek employment in other cities while New Orleans is being rebuilt. Those who land jobs elsewhere may not be available to return to the LPO even if it does survive. One of the orchestra’s violists tells Violinist.com that “I would love to go back to a properly rebuilt city and the orchestra the way it was, but I just can’t see how that will happen.”

Auditioning for the Boston Symphony can be the most grueling five minutes of a musician’s career, not to mention the most expensive (orchestras don’t pay for your plane ticket or hotel room.) One slip-up, one mental lapse, and all your preparation can be for nought as you’re dismissed from behind a screen with a cursory “Thank you.” Not only that, the BSO’s music director, who ought to be the final authority on all hiring decisions, has taken to not showing up for auditions, which has many of the orchestra’s musicians upset, and candidates wondering whom they’re supposed to be trying to impress.

Who will be the Dallas Symphony’s next music director? “For all the argument that American orchestras should hire American music directors, virtually all the DSO’s likely candidates at this point are foreigners. After the DSO’s dozen years under an American, the change could be healthy. And the old European method of cultivating conductors in provincial opera houses still has advantages over the assembly-line degree programs at American conservatories.”

New Orleans musicians play together in a way that anticipates what the music is going to do. “This whole tradition is based on informal music-making, much of it in the open air, and in recent times that has depended on the tourist trade. Musical skills have been passed down by a kind of casual, on-the-job apprenticeship, which means having jobs, which means having audiences. Will it survive? Touch and go, I’d say. But the physical remains – the run-down corner shop which was once a famous saloon, the few rickety sheds which are all that survive of Storyville, the red-light district where the boy Armstrong used to deliver coal – they’ve gone for good.”

The well-appointed music fan doesn’t venture out to a concert with the modern cell phone. “At times, the atmosphere was more like a high-Catholic service than a pop concert. In the velvety dark, 10,000 points of polychrome light glimmered as cellphone screens were lit and turned, reverently, towards the stage. A sizeable part of the audience was photo- and sound-recording the event, and another sizeable part of the audience was transmitting Coldplay’s performance to absent friends via mobile phones.”

“Just as rock and pop have a long history of independent labels, classical music has its own well-established independent sector, where labels such as Harmonia Mundi, Hyperion, Chandos, Opera Rara and the low-cost phenomenon Naxos have been releasing high-quality recordings for years. Suddenly, triggered by the flight of the major companies towards movie soundtracks and crossover artists, the independent concept has taken off in the classical business, with any number of artists, orchestras and venues starting their own imprints.”

Offers of help are pouring in to members of the Louisiana Philharmonic. “Other orchestras, mostly regional ensembles where the pool of available musicians is small, are lending a hand, too. Many have offered temporary jobs or the prospect of auditions to the Philharmonic’s 66 players, who have scattered around the country. All but one of the musicians had safely left the city or were already elsewhere for summer engagements, members of the orchestra said yesterday.”

New Orleans Opera has canceled its fall productions. “The warehouse where the company stores its sets is likely under water. The condition of the Mahalia Jackson Theatre of the Performing Arts, where it performs, is unknown.” There may be more far-reaching effects: “New Orleans Opera is one of the foremost rents of scenery and costumes in the country. They’re having to warn people all over the country that they may not be able to meet the contract.”

Heavy-duty music downloaders say they’re no longer buying CDs. “Some 150,000 of Napster UK’s 750,000 members say they no longer buys CDs, the company has revealed. And Napster UK manager Leanne Sharman said it was “a matter of time” before downloading overtook high street shops as the most popular way to buy music.”

Anthony Holden compares orchestras he heard at this summer’s Proms and finds the mighty Cleveland Orchestra coming up wanting. “Like a pedigree dog on an over-tight leash, this is a dazzling orchestra with an uptight conductor. Devotees of this mightiest of masses found much to disappoint, from the underwhelming Cleveland chorus to the less than inspirational conducting of Franz Welser-Most (known to our own LPO, with whom he had an unhappy six years in the 1990s, as ‘Frankly, Worse Than Most’). His orchestra is one of the world’s finest, its strings boasting as much sheen as the Berlin’s, its wind players capable of sonic miracles. So why is Welser-Most so “bloodless”?