“The Sarasota Orchestra, which has kept its supporters guessing for years about the possible location of a new concert hall, made a pitch to Sarasota city commissioners Tuesday night to build a new performance, administrative and education facility in the city-owned Payne Park. The orchestra … began discussing a move from its longtime home near the Sarasota Bayfront more than 20 years ago.” – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Category: music
Why Isn’t The Wexford Opera Festival Getting, Or Even Being Told About, Its State Funding?
The Arts Council of Ireland released details of its 2019 grants two weeks ago, and Wexford was missing from the list with no explanation or target date for a decision. “When this kind of issue is out there and nobody wants to say anything meaningful about it you can reasonably suspect that there’s something to hide. And when the Arts Council delays decisions it usually spells trouble.” Michael Dervan looks into what’s going on. – The Irish Times
Seattle Symphony Opens New High Tech Space To Explore Future Of Music
The Constellation system relies on 62 overhead loudspeakers; 10 compact subwoofers; four floor box speakers; two PA speakers; 28 miniature overhead microphones; four handheld microphones; and four headset microphones. “While taking and creating a space that is very much trying to leverage this technology to open new possibilities, the room needed to feel like it could hold its own architectural character, in a way that wasn’t about just coming in and seeing all the gadgets on the ceiling,” – GeekWire
Research: Listening To Music Doesn’t Boost Creativity (In Fact It Hurts It)
Newly published research debunks the notion that listening to music can increase creativity. Its three studies suggest precisely the opposite, indicating that background music, with or without lyrics, “consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problems.” – Pacific Standard
Pit Violist’s Hearing-Loss Case Against Royal Opera House Has Industry Worried
Most complaints from orchestral musicians about hearing loss deal with gradual damage; this one involves “acoustic shock,” sudden damage caused, in this case, by a blast from the trumpets right behind the plaintiff during a rehearsal of Wagner’s Ring. A court found the ROH liable, though management is appealing; if the verdict is upheld, no one is quite sure how the industry can address the problem. Tim Bano looks into the issues. – The Stage
Russian Choir In Cathedral Sings About Nuking America To Dust; Viral Video Causes Consternation
In a performance at the city’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral on Feb. 23, “Defend the Fatherland Day,” the St. Petersburg Concert Choir sang a cheerful little ditty about a submarine headed toward D.C. with “a dozen hundred-megaton payloads.” (A few days earlier, state TV had shown a map of the U.S. marking possible nuclear targets.) Said ditty was written in 1980 by a Soviet dissident and was intended (then) as a parody of militaristic propaganda; its reappearance now has causes a minor uproar. – Global Voices
Does Voice Dictate Gender In Music?
Elspeth Franks is just one of an increasingly visible number of trans singers in the classical world who are challenging long-accepted notions about the intersection of gender and music. Operatic and choral singers, long segregated into rigid categories by vocal range, tonal qualities, body type and even simply gender, have begun to push back. – San Francisco Chronicle
The Leviathan Of Piano Concertos
“At over seventy minutes, [Busoni’s Piano Concerto of 1904] may be the longest concerto ever written for any instrument. It may also be the most challenging. It demands nearly superhuman stamina and virtuosity of its soloist, who plays almost continuously throughout and whose part is fiendishly difficult.” – New York Review of Books
A First Report On The Acoustics Of Philadelphia’s Newest Concert Hall
Peter Dobrin on the 270-seat hall in the Rhoden Arts Center at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: “New halls take a while to settle in, and this one, which employs an extensive sound system of speakers both on stage and overhead, seems more complicated than most. On first hearing, though, it sounded awfully dry.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Real Pianist Behind The Movie ‘Green Book’
The filmmakers didn’t line up Don Shirley’s original music with Mahershala Ali’s fingers; instead, they got a Julliard-trained pianist to play it. Kris Bowers “had never heard of Don Shirley. Bowers immersed himself in Shirley’s recordings. That made him nervous. ‘I was pretty scared actually once I listened to it because of how intricate it was, how difficult it was,’ Bowers says.” But he transcribed all of the music and then listened to it repeatedly, practicing for up to nine hours a day for the part. – NPR