Category: music

Washington DC’s National Symphony has a new four-year contract with its musicians. “The base weekly pay will remain at $1,844 for the first six months of the new agreement (retroactive to September), rising to $2,077 by the last year. (This is a minimum, with many musicians making considerably more; the orchestra’s concertmaster, Nurit Bar-Josef, earns more than $300,000 a year.) NSO musicians agreed to assume greater responsibility for health insurance costs.”

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s new contract with musicians is an interesting document. “The three-year labor contract negotiated by Mayor Street and approved last night by orchestra musicians not only stipulates the usual salaries and health-care benefits but it also provides a blueprint for enormous change, laying out more clearly than ever who the orchestra sees as its constituents.”

Retirement from a symphony orchestra is a tough thing. How do you know when it’s time to go? asks Peter Dobrin. But there are musicians in the Philadelphia Orchestra who are there and need to understand that. “Once again, the orchestra finds itself in need of family therapy. In this nasty contract fight, management and players once again hardened their positions as adversaries. Resistance to retirement has emerged as an act of protest, at least so far. But musicians should remember that their most solemn responsibility is to the art form, and sometimes that means knowing just the right moment to sound the swan song.”

Music education is down by one third in four years in San Diego, says a new study. “Music’s mortality rate is even greater statewide. Enrollment in music classes is down 50 percent from 1999-2000 to last school year. There are two major causes. One is money. Some local school boards have eliminated music teachers as part of millions of dollars in budget cuts. The second is pressure to raise test scores, which has prompted educators to add extra reading and math classes that crowd electives out of school schedules.”

Every week teens from all over the Bay Area head to opera class after school. “The Bay Area’s only teen opera training program to put on full-scale productions during the school year attracts dozens of 13- to 19-year-old participants from San Jose to San Leandro. These budding baritones and sopranos aren’t your stereotypical glee club or drama class devotees. One-fourth of the cast dashes between school sporting events and stage rehearsals.”

Why does some music sound specifically English or French or German? Researchers have discovered that “the music differs in just the same way as the languages. It is as if the music carries an imprint of the composer’s language. The researchers say that consciously or not, composers may have used the rhythm and melody of their native language to influence their music, especially around the turn of the 20th century, a time of particular musical nationalism.”

The new La Scala is due to reopen December 7. “The new La Scala will be luxuriously – but much more scantily – clad. The red velvet of the theatre’s seats has been renewed. Its boxes have been relined in crimson silk. But to get back its original acoustics, 11 coats of paint have been removed from the walls, the fitted carpets have been ripped out and the linoleum that covered the floors of the boxes has been stripped away to reveal terracotta tiles.”

The eminent baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire is teaming up with the Cleveland Instutute of Music and Case Western Reserve University to provide leadership for CWRU’s pre-professional baroque orchestra, which is designed to give special training to music students with a particular interest in period performance.

The Boston Symphony has a long tradition of offering the public access to occasional “open rehearsals,” and the events have historically borne less resemblance to an actual rehearsal than to a casual performance. In fact, on the occasion that a conductor or soloist has actually attempted to use these scheduled services to work on a piece of music at some level of detail, the BSO has been guaranteed to receive multiple letters of complaint from those patrons in attendance. Still, new music director James Levine is making it clear that a rehearsal is a rehearsal, and he has no interest in plowing through repertoire for its own sake.

The musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have delayed yesterday’s scheduled vote on their new contract agreement, with some musicians saying they felt “rushed” by the process. Another musicians-only meeting is scheduled for today, and the committee that negotiated the deal is still confident that they can resolve and outstanding questions surrounding the contract.