Category: music

“The American pop music scene has frequently depended on cities at the edges of the cultural map to provide a much-needed shot of originality. Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Tex., and Athens, Ga., have all served as temporary pivot points, churning out bands and defining the sound of the moment. Even Omaha had its 15 minutes not so long ago. The momentary consensus seems to come out of nowhere – as if someone blows a whistle only those in the know can hear, and suddenly record executives and journalists are crawling all over what had previously been an obscure locale. So which American city is the next stop on this fickle, itinerant history? It’s a trick question for the time being, because the answer seems to be Montreal.”

The St. Louis Symphony strike is proving to be a power struggle between two competing philosophies, with no victor in sight. The musicians of the orchestra are courting public opinion with free concerts and media-savvy public events, in the hope that public pressure will force the SLSO management to back off their demands for pay cuts. But orchestra president Randy Adams is taking a decidedly corporate approach to the stoppage, “[putting] aside the gentlemanly conventions of most orchestra disputes. That has left the musicians in a state of shock, scrambling to come up with strategies… that will help them in this new game.”

With the new Music Center at Strathmore open for business in suburban Washington, D.C., featuring regular appearances by the Baltimore Symphony, a unique head-to-head orchestral competition is shaping up in the nation’s capital. “Indeed, with the Baltimore Symphony’s incursion into the back yard of the National Symphony Orchestra, the capital area becomes the first metropolis in the country in almost 80 years to present listeners with a choice of programs by two full-size, full-time, regularly scheduled orchestras every week of the season.”

“It was all smiles and handshakes in October when state politicians, town officials and Hartford Symphony Orchestra administrators attended a groundbreaking for a $1.5 million outdoor band shell… But the good cheer has given way to some behind-the-scenes negotiating, as the town’s first selectman is suggesting charging the symphony a fee [for the use of the shell]… Both sides say they are trying to reach an agreement and look forward to working together. But critics question whether the town should charge a cash-strapped nonprofit that brings culture, professional-level music and thousands of visitors to its downtown.”

Conductor Edo de Waart has lost no time in diving into the middle of political controversy in Hong Kong, where he is the new chief conductor of the city’s Philharmonic. Protesting the government’s devotion to a HK$40 billion “arts hub” project which doesn’t include money for arts education or a new concert hall for the Phil, de Waart says that the plan severely miscalculates the city’s scale. “For a city with no opera company of its own to build a 2,000-seat theater, it most probably would have to rely on flying in unknown numbers of performance groups because no home group will be able to regularly fill it. It’s promoting glitz – a culture of events, not a culture of continuity. It’s the completely wrong way to do things.”

Ask just about anyone involved in classical music about the cause of the genre’s decline in popularity, and you will likely get a speech about the lack of music education in U.S. schools. So the existence (and popularity) of a 28-year-old statewide classical music listening competition in Minnesota has to be considered a positive sign. But the competition is in financial trouble, having lost much of its corporate support this year when Minnesota Public Radio slashed its contribution.

On the same day that a published report appeared naming Christine Hunter as the frontrunner to succeed Beverly Sills as chair of the Metropolitan Opera, the Met announced Hunter’s official nomination to the post. “She already serves as chairwoman of the executive committee and has been on the board for 22 years. During that time her loyalty was divided between the Met and the Washington National Opera, where she had top jobs from 1974 to last year, including president and chairwoman.”

“Within the last several years, there have been a number of very popular bands – including P.O.D., Evanescence, Switchfoot, Sixpence None the Richer and Mercy Me – that got their start by signing with Christian record labels or by playing at Christian music festivals. These bands have succeeded in large part because, unlike Petra and the other successful Christian rock bands of the 80’s and early 90’s, they have avoided being too preachy and yet found a way to keep God between the lines.”

One of the most frequent modern criticisms of classical music and the people who play it is the aloofness of the form; the grand, formal presentation of performers who don’t speak, don’t interact with the audience, and acknowledge accolades with only a stiff bow. Offering the counterpoint to that perception is cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who seems to delight in passing on his passion for music to the next generation of young performers, and thinks nothing of offering a starry-eyed 17-year-old a chance to play alongside him.

It’s looking very much as if the Metropolitan Opera’s interim chairwoman, Christine Hunter, is in line to become the permanent replacement for Beverly Sills when the Met’s board meets later this spring. Hunter was previously a well-known trustee at the Washington National Opera, and served as that company’s president for the better part of two decades.