Category: music

“Nostalgia for the not-so-long-ago sounds of early rap is kicking in hard for longtime fans who find themselves left cold by the genre’s latest hits. The booming, market er-friendly audience members in their 20s and 30s are starting to find more mature alternatives to the ever-young party and gangster rap that populates the pop charts.”

JVC Jazz-New York is in a down cycle, clearly playing second place to its Newport cousin. “Concert promoters always know better than critics what will break even. But the concerts in the New York festival, for the most part, do not reflect the current excitements of jazz. Filling those theaters is taking the priority over smart programming. Something’s got to change, at least to keep appearances up.”

Maybe music downloading isn’t the reason music sales have fallen in recent years, suggests a new report. “The report said it is difficult to establish a causal connection between the rise of file sharing and a drop in music sales. While the music industry’s revenues fell 20 percent from 1999 to 2003, other factors, such as illegal CD copying, might have played a role in the decline, the OECD said.”

European recording companies are pushing to have EU copyright term extended to 100 years. “Currently in the EU, there are separate copyright terms for composers and performers. Composers are awarded copyright for the life of the author plus 70 years. Performers hold a copyright for 50 years from the first recording. It’s the 50-year term the IFPI wants to extend.”

“The Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, one of Japan’s top-tier orchestras, has its own financial challenges, and in its recent negotiations it suggested a radical fix: performance-based contracts, under which musicians’ raises and promotions – or, perhaps, their departures – would be based on “objective” evaluations by management. The criteria for judging the musicians are still being discussed, but in addition to straightforward musical performance, they’re likely to include attendance, onstage manners, teamwork and helping to publicize the orchestra. Current members can elect to remain in the traditional lifetime-employment system, but about 70 percent have chosen the new contracts. That’s no surprise: while poor evaluations could lead to a musician’s contract’s not being renewed, the top salary under the new system is about $72,000 a year versus $62,600 under the old.”

Finland has become a hotbed of classical music. “The Finns’ recent emergence as a power in classical music is another case in which they have mastered a lingua franca. Defying a trend in many Western countries, where audiences are dwindling and the tradition itself seems in retreat, Finland has in the last 15 years developed first-class classical musicians out of all proportion to its size. Steady investment in music education by the government has created generations of avid listeners and, according to official figures, more orchestras per capita than anywhere on the globe.”

Last winter’s strike by the musicians of the St. Louis Symphony left a lot of hard feelings. Months later, relations between the orchestra and its musicians are still a bit raw. But there’s also perhaps “an even more significant split between the orchestra’s negotiating committee and the officers of the local musicians union.”

The Baghdad Symphony is performing, even though life is tough. “The orchestra knows all about survival. The first in the Arab world, it struggled through two wars and economic sanctions under Saddam Hussein. The best talent fled Iraq. Musicians who stayed earned $1 a month and instruments fell into disrepair. Still, the group, somehow, played on. And after Saddam’s fall, life — and salaries — improved. There were also gifts of new instruments and a trip to America — all funded by the former U.S. authority in Iraq — highlighted by a concert in Washington, D.C., attended by President Bush.”

The musicians union has signed a new contract agreement with New York City’s freelance orchestras – New York Pops, American Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Long Island Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Riverside Symphony, and Bronx Arts Ensemble. Terms include “an increase in pay from $200 to $225 per concert over the course of the contract and a one-percent increase in pension payments in its final year. All of the orchestras also agreed to ban the use of the controversial Sinfonia system—termed a virtual orchestra machine.”

“The sound of reggaeton is just about everywhere these days. Think of it as the Spanish version of mainstream hip-hop, but with the bouncy beat of Jamaican reggae. Born out of a spontaneous musical dialogue between Panama and Puerto Rico, this fusion of Spanish reggae, Latin hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall has been embraced wholeheartedly by a young Hispanic demographic in the U.S. Reggaeton albums routinely dominate the Latin Billboard charts, and a recent Reggaeton Invasion tour featuring several heavyweights of the genre enjoyed resounding success on the West Coast.”