Category: music

“Every concertgoer has wished at one time or another for a little guidance while listening to an unfamiliar piece of music — an experienced voice that could subtly whisper, ‘Here comes the second theme again,’ or, ‘That’s a bass clarinet making that rumble’ at the relevant moment. Now, thanks to wireless technology, that voice is available. Sotto voce, of course.” The hand-held Concert Companion was inspired by art-museum audio guides and operatic supertitles.

After two years of big deficits, the San Francisco Opera has finished its most recent fiscal year in the black with a tiny surplus of $27,000 on an operating budget of $54.6 million. “The result, contained in a recently concluded financial audit, marks a striking step forward after consecutive budget deficits of $7.7 million and $4. 4 million.”

“At Tuesday night’s packed Chicago Symphony Orchestra town meeting, the dominant tone was exceedingly civil — more akin to placid chamber music than a crashing symphony. The gathering at Symphony Center’s Buntrock Hall was called to let the public sound off on the CSO’s search for a new music director to replace Daniel Barenboim after the 2005-06 season. … Many had specific names in mind — Pinchas Zukerman, Erich Kunzel — to fill Barenboim’s podium. One man delivered a prepared paean to National Symphony Orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin.”

Pittsburgh’s non-commercial classical music station, WQED, just wrapped up its winter fund drive, with seriously disappointing results. The station is one of the few remaining in the U.S. to program its own classical music without the use of a satellite-based voice tracking service. Some observers suggest that ‘QED listeners were angry over the recent dismissal of two popular announcers, but station officials have a gloomier perspective, pointing out that almost no one is making any money playing classical music on the radio these days.

The two sides in the 8-week-old St. Louis Symphony work stoppage are still wrangling, but mediated negotiating sessions very nearly produced a deal last week. The SLSO’s president has claimed in the press that new musician demands derailed the deal at the last minute, but the musicians’ chief negotiator has been speaking with ArtsJournal blogger Drew McManus, and he says that it was the management that reneged on an agreed-to framework, leaving the two sides stalemated a mere $4000 apart.

“An industry group dedicated to Canada’s aboriginal music scene was launched at the East Coast Music Conference and Awards over the weekend.” The National Aboriginal Recording Industry Association already has “more than 100 founding members, including ‘movers and shakers within aboriginal music.'”

For the first time in 60 years, the Welsh National Opera has a home of its own. “In its opening weekend at its new home, WNO threw down its gauntlet, offering two trademark shows: Traviata, a company show that foregrounds the talents of its chorus, and a new production of Berg’s Wozzeck from director Richard Jones and conductor Vladimir Jurowski, a partnership that has provided WNO with some of its most visionary stagings in recent years.”

Germany’s recording business is the third largest in the world. But it’s having problems, says a leading exec. “The problem the music industry has got is that they aren’t willing to accept that the classic way of doing business is over and out. So the music industry in its current form over here is pretty much in the state of a zombie.”

“If rock ‘n’ roll, the sounds of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival, was the music of American service members in Vietnam, rap may become the defining pulse for the war in Iraq. It has emerged as a rare realm where soldiers and marines, hardly known for talking about their feelings, are voicing the full range of their emotions and reactions to war. They rap about their resentment of the military hierarchy. But they also rap about their pride, their invincibility, their fallen brothers, their disdain for the enemy and their determination to succeed.”

Andrew Druckenbrod likes the Pittsburgh Symphony’s new season. But he’s dismayed there’s so little contemporary music. “This has became a soap-box issue for me out of concern for the field, not for selfish reasons. I love the classics as much as anyone, but if the industry stagnates, it will fall off the map. Not die, just become less and less important, and ironically, fewer canonical works will be heard. Presenting the canon is good for marketing and subscriptions in the short term, but years of that shortsightedness creates lack of relevance that eventually does show up in the box office, as it has for orchestras and the PSO even before Sept. 11.”