Category: music

Major icons of the jazz era are being auctioned. “Jazz artifacts have been auctioned before, through Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but there has been no single auction of this size entirely dedicated to jazz. And though there have been jazz collectors of one kind or another since the 1930’s, it seems to have taken many of the families of jazz’s royalty this long to dislodge the once mundane items, long buried in closets, that now have great value not only to jazz aficionados but also to the larger community of collectors.”

Legal downloads of music topped 200 million tracks last year, up from 20 million the year before. “The digital music industry is now worth £177m in Europe, a figure expected to double this year. Some record companies estimate that the digital market could be worth 25% of total sales by 2009, compared with the present 1.5%.”

“The Canadian recording industry, written off as obsolete after music downloading surged in popularity, has finally rebounded from a six-year slide. Record labels chalked up an increase in 2004 sales to everything from anti-piracy campaigns and consumers’ frustrations with the glitches of file sharing to lower CD price tags and a popular crop of new releases.”

Music sales may have dipped slightly in 2004, but sales of legally downloadable music went through the roof, according to a new report from the UK recording industry. “Legal downloads from the 230 online music stores that now exist generated $330m (£175m) for the music industry in 2004.”

“American conductor William Eddins, well known in the classical-music world for his charismatic and outspoken style, is the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra’s new music director.” Eddins has formerly served as a staff conductor for the Chicago Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra, and is the principal guest conductor of Ireland’s National Symphony. He was reportedly the only candidate for the job to win the approval of ESO members.

The San Diego Opera has signed an agreement to use the San Diego Symphony as its pit orchestra for all future productions. Previously, the company had hired its own orchestra from the ranks of area performers, many of whom were also SDS players. The deal means more revenue for the orchestra, more weeks of paid work for the musicians, and guarantees continuity without a lot of extra cost for the opera company.

The Scottish government’s plan to “save” Scottish Opera has looked a lot more like an attempt to destroy it, as many in the music world have noted. But politicians don’t tear down public institutions simply for fun, so the question is begged: what exactly turned the Executive against the opera? Andrew Clarke thinks he has the answer: “In a small, newly devolved country, there is no political capital to be made from supporting the most capital-intensive art form. Rightly or wrongly, opera is perceived by many Scots as a class-ridden activity without local roots.”

Elvis Presley hits the UK singles charts at No. 1 – again. “The king’s latest triumph – if that is the word for a CD that managed to top the chart with just 30,000 sales – is also the 1,000th No 1 since the UK chart began in 1952. Low sales or not, the music industry is rolling out a series of promotions to tie in with the milestone.”

Italian opera director Giancarlo del Monaco is mounting a new production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s beloved opera Hansel & Gretel in Berlin, and the local punditocracy is up in arms over del Monaco’s decision to rework the traditional fairy tale into a brutal commentary on pedophilia, child abuse, and urban violence. “The children’s mother is a whore and their father an alcoholic. The ‘sand-man’ is a cocaine-snorting pimp, who pursues Hansel and Gretel with a video camera and hands them over to the wicked witch – the modern ‘stranger’ who could be the man down the road, the local pervert, the Catholic priest.”

Music sales were down again slightly in 2004, but there’s hope for the industry. “Hit by piracy, Internet song swappers and saturated markets, music sales fell in 2004 by one percent to $32.1 billion. But 2005 will make up for the damage with a one percent increase, said research group Informa. Over the next six years, the music publishing industry will return to the $39 billion sales levels last seen between the years 1997 and 2000, before the invention of cheap CD burners and file swapping services such as Napster.”