Category: music

Australian orchestras will get an additional $25 million in funding, says the government. “The extra funding for symphony and pit orchestras announced yesterday is to be spread over four years. It is designed “to help them become independent organisations with responsibility for their own artistic and financial future”, Arts Minister Rod Kemp said.

“According to Neilsen Soundscan, about 1.2 million vinyl records were sold in 2004 — not overwhelming considering total CD sales approached 767 million last year. But that number is skewed because most vinyl records are sold by small independent stores and labels, and their sales are not reflected in Soundscan data. And those uncounted sales, while still a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, are significant, vinyl aficionados say. Together with the Soundscan numbers, they represent an uptick for serious collectors and audiophile purists.”

Peter Hall is directing at Glyndebourne: “I think this is a much more honest opera house now than Covent Garden. I just went to see Rheingold and paid £175 for my ticket. That’s a disgrace. This is our national subsidised opera. They should have double the subsidy and cheaper prices. Here, it’s a private enterprise and people pay what it needs to charge, but no one’s making money out of it. The artists work here for less than they normally get because the conditions are the best.”

“The musicians of l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal are on the picket line. Management insists, puzzlingly, that the strike “in no way changes the OSM’s reality.” Eighteen months of nearly static negotiations have produced a poisonous atmosphere. Players and management are united only in their belief that the other side doesn’t have a clue about what a symphony orchestra really needs.”

“Here is “Margaret Garner” at its best: the sprawling calamity of slavery telescoped into an intimately scaled portrait of love underscored by Danielpour’s melting lyricism and placed within the spare set designed by Marjorie Bradley Kellogg. The burden of such a broad and bewildering historical canvas as slavery sometimes overwhelms Danielpour and Morrison, but these shortcomings are redeemed by ruminative expressions of a mother’s love and heartfelt song.”

“Margaret Garner is a largely old-fashioned opera that nevertheless works. It works primarily because of the emotional resonances of Toni Morrison’s story. It also works because the opera has been handsomely produced, with a strong cast, directed on stage by Kenny Leon and headed by that splendid mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves in the title role.”

“Margaret Garner turns out to be an honorable achievement, if one that is often reluctant to seize the story’s tragic elements by the neck and render them shocking. Danielpour’s relentlessly lyrical score, though marked by episodes of limpid beauty, lacks dramatic momentum and contrast, with long, lethargic stretches that stop the opera in its tracks. Morrison may be a stranger to the medium, but she is familiar with the story on which she has weaved operatic variations.”

The Akron Symphony Orchestra says goodbye to music director Ya-Hui Wang, who has led the orchestra for five years. “If the conclusion of the concert was subdued, that was appropriate, given Wang’s history. She has been earnest in her efforts, but concerts under her direction have often been below the orchestra’s standard. It was to the credit of everyone on stage that they did so well by Saturday’s challenging program.”

More than 400 leaders of America’s opera companies gather for their annual conference. “Besides usual topics such as education, outreach, programming and how to woo corporate and private donors, the conference’s most pressing issue addressed diversity in opera, which, conference organizers said, is critical if opera is to survive in America.”

“Audiologists believe tens of thousands of young people are causing serious damage to themselves, and are likely to suffer tinnitus and loss of hearing in later life. The experts say MP3 players should be designed to prevent people playing music above 90 decibels, about two-thirds of the maximum volume of a typical device.”