Category: music

Musicians of the combined Utah Symphony and Opera have voted 63-1 to endorse a consultant’s report on how to turn around the financially ailing organization. The report is critical of executive director Anne Ewers, who has overseen the controversial merger of the opera and symhony. “There is no question that we had deficits far larger than I ever would have hoped,” Ewers said. “I take full responsibility for the fact that we struggled to put a staff in place and restructure. There is no question that it took away from the fund-raising effort.”

La Scala has been wracked with dissent – strikes, resignations, a firing. “Last week staff at La Scala staged strikes and demonstrations in protest over the theatre’s management. A banner suspended from the top of the building read ‘Tradesmen out of the Temple of Opera’ – a protest at the perceived market-driven running of the theatre.”

A judge has ruled that a challenge to the ownership and sale of a Rachmaninoff manuscript can go ahead. “The Russian composer’s score for his Second Symphony was expected to fetch around £500,000 at the Sotheby’s sale. But the 300-page work was withdrawn after members of Rachmaninov’s family claimed to be the true owners. Sotheby’s sought to have the case dismissed but a judge ruled both sides could win so the case must proceed.”

A group of prominent musicians is urging the US Supreme Court not to crack down on file-sharing services. “Musicians are not universally united in opposition to peer-to-peer file sharing as the major records companies claim. To the contrary, many musicians find peer-to-peer technology . . . allows them easily to reach a worldwide online audience. And to many musicians, the benefits of this . . . strongly outweigh the risks of copyright infringement.”

A sculptor who created an entire orchestra of instruments from ice canceled his show in Sweden at the last minute because he didn’t like the sound of the musicians warming up…

Cell phone ringtones “cost about two dollars and are typically no more than twenty-five seconds long. Nevertheless, according to Consect, a marketing and consulting firm in Manhattan, ringtones generated four billion dollars in sales around the world in 2004. The United States accounted for only three hundred million of these dollars, although Consect predicts that the figure will double this year.”

The backer of a British tour of Jerry Springer The Opera says he may pull out. The backer, who was to have provided 40% of the funding for the tour, was targeted by Christian Voice, an evangelical group that has condemned the musical — based on the American television show — as “filthy and blasphemous”.

Canada is in love with Carmina Burana. “Right now we’re in the midst of a rush hour of Canadian performances of the whole cantata, with or without dancers and fireworks. Recent critical discussion has tried to determine whether, in effect, the Nazis were right. Was Carmina Burana “the original Springtime for Hitler,” as musicologist Richard Taruskin has suggested, and is it somehow dispensing a toxic mist of Nazi mythology over all who hear it?”

Thirty top conductors have signed a letter demanding that improving acoustics at London’s South Bank should be the top priority in a renovation. “The roll of names includes such sworn enemies as Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann; Riccardo Muti and most other Italian maestri; Simon Rattle and several of his less guarded professional critics. What unites them is a concern for London’s premier concert venue and a fear that it may suffer as a result of declining political regard for classical music and the general decay in British arts policy.”

France has arrested a German conductor at a concert. “Fifteen members of the Cologne New Philharmonic were taken into custody, followed allegations that the 49-year-old conductor had been illegally employing musicians from eastern Europe without work permits. Instead of paying the standard rate, it is alleged, the conductor was giving his musicians just €30 (£21) a day and bussing them between hotels to different European venues.”