Category: music

Daniel Barenboim’s latest peace initiative in the Middle East is setting up a music kindergarten for Palestinian refugee children. “Classical music is not something one associates with Arabs. But if we can enrich their young lives, and give them pleasure from creativity … then we can build a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.”

There’s a big problem trying to turn something as sprawlingly theatrical as “Angels in America” into an opera. “It isn’t enough simply to reflect what is already there, or to enhance the mood like a film score,” writes Rupert Christiansen. “Music must be the driving force, the medium of revelation. This is the hurdle at which the composer Peter Eötvös and his librettist wife Mari Mezei fall flat on their faces. Their adaptation of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s apocalyptic epic of Aids and the spiritual turmoil of the Reagan era, condenses rather than expands the theatrical original, squeezing a gallon of drama into a pint-pot of opera.”

Kansas City’s new $300 million performing arts center will be home to three of the city’s biggest arts groups when it opens in 2008. The Kansas City Symphony, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and Kansas City Ballet have all signed letters of intent, promising to take up residence in the PAC for at least 20 years, and have agreed to rental terms with the center’s management. “The commitments let the Missouri Development Finance Board add $12.5 million each year over 2005-2006 to the annual allowable tax credits. The board currently has a $10 million annual cap.” The PAC suffered a funding setback this November, when voters rejected a bistate tax which would have created a significant new source of arts funding.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s glittering new home may be glittering just a bit too much for its neighbors. “The world-famous Walt Disney Concert Hall — crown jewel of downtown Los Angeles’ revival — must lose some of the luster from its polished stainless-steel exterior before somebody goes blind, according to a new report. The brilliant rays blind drivers, pedestrians and nearby residents, and create sauna-like conditions in condominiums and businesses. Temperatures on the sidewalks surrounding the hall have been measured at up to 138 degrees.” Los Angeles County officials are considering a plan to sandblast the shimmering stainless steel walls of Disney Hall to dull the glare.

Classical music aficionados are a notoriously conservative bunch, particularly in Philadelphia, where attempts to modernize the concertgoing experience have nearly always been met with overt hostility. Video screens, in particular, have always been most unwelcome guests in the concert hall, even when the music demands their presence. “The issue is crucial among many who care about the future of classical music: The rationale is that visualizing this centuries-old art form could compensate for dwindling music-education programs in public schools, and could help cultivate a new, under-40 audience… Success often rests on two factors: Suitable visual content and the technical coordination with the music.”

Mention Naxos, the low-budget, high-volume classical label that has been one of the only success stories in an otherwise-blighted corner of the record industry over the last decade, and you won’t find a lot of love from many musicians and other guardians of high recording fees and big-name promotions. But Naxos is quietly expanding its reach in the music world, and a major new project has the company commissioning, recording, and promoting a series of ten new string quartets from the British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. “The conventional wisdom at most major labels is that it’s hard enough to sell new music. Going out and helping it come into being is virtually unprecedented.”

Brighton city council members want to prohibit the sale of anti-gay music in the city. “They passed a motion this week urging Virgin Megastore, HMV and MVC in Brighton not to stock music by certain reggae artists who have been accused of glorifying the killing of gay people.”

Sales of music singles are down again. But legal downloads are soaring. “Around 1.75 million download tracks were purchased during the quarter, compared with 7.3 million singles. And download sales, currently running at around 250,000 a week, are expected to accelerate around Christmas time as thousands of digital players are received as gifts. Had digital sales been added to the overall total, the market would have shown a 9% increase on the previous quarter rather than a 12% decline.”

New York’s City Opera has elevated its development director to the post of executive director. Jane Gullong’s ascension displaces Sherwin Goldman, who will remain with the company and dedicate himself full-time to the daunting task of finding the company a new home. City Opera had hoped to be the anchoring arts tenant of the new Freedom Tower at Ground Zero, but its application was turned down. The company is denying rumors that Goldman was forced out of the top job by the board.

Enrique Fernandez is the new classical music critic of the Miami Herald. This is a tricky job, since South Florida lost its symphony orchestra a year ago, its classical radio station this year, and shows very little interest in the form at all. And after all, when serious music is rejected by the community, isn’t that reason enough to just let it die a quiet death? Not a chance, says the critic: “What [we love] best in [our] native traditions is, indeed, classical. Classical in its strict rules, like the rumba of the Afro-Cubans from the province of Matanzas, polyrhythms of a Bachian or Mozartian complexity. Or classical because it was infused with European classicism, like the woodwinds and strings of the danzón — a genre that would lead to the mambo and the cha-cha-chá.”