Category: music

Blair Tindall’s now-infamous stories of sexual favors traded for career advancement in New York’s freelance scene are less troubling than her characterization of the music business as a whole, writes Mark Swed. “Classical music doesn’t mean much to the average American’s life, and she condemns the major orchestras, opera companies and performing arts centers for acting as if it does. They can’t sustain their high budgets, and they get by, in part, by taking advantage of the little guy, the musician… There are serious inequities in the system and a lot of jerks who manipulate musicians and the public for their own profit. But there are musicians who engage in the world in a meaningful way — and not just the Rattles, Tilson Thomases and Salonens — who get out and make music that matters, who change lives.”

There aren’t a lot of career options for classically trained musicians – for most, either you win an orchestra job or two, or you don’t, in which case you spend your life freelancing and teaching to make ends meet. But in Los Angeles, a paradigm shift is underway, in the form of “a small but growing and spirited subculture of young, classically trained female L.A. musicians who have skirted the symphony audition path to play ‘alternative’ musical genres and enjoy eclectic entertainment-industry work now that the Hollywood studios are no longer boys’ clubs… The impressive range of styles they play provides them with a level of excitement and performance satisfaction that more traditional musicians cannot claim — and they wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Arizona Opera has balanced its budget for the second straight year, despite a difficult season that required serious cutbacks to keep the company in the black. The group, which performs in both Phoenix and Tucson, had a $5.5 million budget in 2004-05, but was forced to improvise for venues when Phoenix’s Symphony Hall closed for renovations.

Everyone loves the teenage singer. But her latest album of rock songs just plain doesn’t work. “She is obviously prodigiously gifted, but the rigours of classical training have left her unsure how to tackle a rock song. Eventually, she settles for a jarring mid-Atlantic accent. She keeps threatening to walk out of something she refers to as the “dowh”. The reason she is going to walk out the dowh is because she has been hurt befowh. She thus can’t take any mowh, a sentiment with which the listener may quickly concur: the whole thing is becoming a bit of a bowh.”

Australia’s Victoria government has pledged $7.6 million to opera over the next four years. But who’s to get it? The independent Melbourne Opera believes it has a right to the money, but rumors have it going o Opera Australia’s educational and touring efforts…

“Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, will become general music director of Zurich Opera in September, a spokesperson for the orchestra confirmed. The appointment is a promotion for Welser-Möst, who served as music director of the opera company from 1995 through 2002 and has been principal conductor since. He has agreed to an initial term of five years, through 2011. He will retain his position in Cleveland, where his current contract runs through 2012.”

The Honolulu Symphony is poised to announce a major overhaul of its management structure today, in an effort to turn around years of fiscal instability. Former Pittsburgh Symphony executive Gideon Toeplitz will be taking over as interim president, and a new board chair will be appointed as well. The changes were precipitated by a period of uncertainty a the orchestra, which began when a consultant criticized the performance of symphony president Stephen Bloom, who promptly resigned.

The Utah Symphony & Opera, which has faced mounting criticism in recent months from within its musician ranks and from others in the music industry for a perceived failure of management, has announced that it is on track to implement a financial recovery plan. “The organization had achieved 90 percent of its fundraising goals as of June 6 and ticket sales as of May 31 exceeded goals by $128,000, according to the report, which emerged from a task force set up by the US&O board to ensure recovery from operating deficits that followed the 2002 merger of Utah Symphony and Utah Opera.” The success of the plan is critical – the US&O had vowed to consider layoffs if revenue projections were not met.

A Canadian man sets a record for continuous handbell ringing. “While bell-ringing is usually performed by choirs of 11 people, Devries played solo for close to 28 hours, drawing from the roughly 1,300 songs he had prepared. He began at 8 a.m. local time Tuesday and stopped at approximately 11:45 a.m. Wednesday.”