Category: music

The musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have overwhelmingly ratified a new three-year contract which will raise their base salary to $114,000 by 2007, keeping them among the ranks of the highest paid orchestras in the world. The deal also provides retirement incentives for older members of the ensemble, and allows the CSO to reduce the full complement of musicians from 111 to 106 through such attrition. There will be no reduction in the number of musicians on stage for any given concert. The musicians also agreed to pay a higher share of health insurance costs. The agreement comes a week after the musicians had cleaned out their lockers in anticipation of a possible strike.

The musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra have agreed on what Mayor John Street is calling a “framework” for a new collective bargaining agreement, following a week of intensive negotiations mediated by the mayor himself. The details have yet to be filled in, but Street says he expects a deal to be done within the next 7 to 10 days.

Back in 1996, the Houston Grand Opera decided that it was high time for it to acknowledge the demographic shift underway in the U.S., and premiered a new opera, Florencia, written in Spanish and focused on Latin American sensibilities. “Drenched in the seductive atmosphere of Magic Realism, it became a surprise hit which has not only been revived in Houston but staged as well in Los Angeles, Seattle, Mexico City and even Manaos,” the Brazilian opera house where Florencia was set. Now, the company has commissioned a second opera from the same composer, leading to talk of a new place for Hispanic culture in the operatic literature.

The Indianapolis Symphony ended the 2003-04 season with a balanced budget after two consecutive years of red ink. The orchestra eked out a $5,466 surplus on a budget of $24 million, following a year in which the ensemble’s musicians agreed to contract concessions and the annual fund increased by $400,000.

A band called Postal Service (so named because the members lived in different cities and mailed each other snippets of music as part of their songwriting process) recently received a cease-and-desist letter from, you guessed it, the U.S. Postal Service. It could have been just one more story of overaggressive copyright enforcement in a situation in which no one was losing money or getting hurt, but instead, the band and the mail carriers worked out a deal. As a result, the band gets to keep its name and its stock of albums, and the U.S. Postal Service has a brand new way to promote itself.

The furor over anti-gay lyrics in reggae music is continuing to mount in the UK, where the Urban Music Awards have dropped two nominated artists from contention after vociferous protests from the gay community.

Australia is about to see its first-ever fully-staged production of Wagner’s “Ring.” “After the weightiest of preparations in the history of Australian opera, the singers, orchestra and conductor are in place, the costumes finessed, and the audience readying itself to descend on Adelaide, mostly from interstate, America and Europe.”

What is it about pop concerts and encores? “There isn’t a soul on earth with even a passing connection to the popular culture who isn’t familiar with the faux art of the encore. Jackson’s divalicious milking of the audience was an especially unsavory example, but the fact is that, by and large, most encores are simply the final two or three songs of a show preceded by a built-in adulation break. They’re not only prescribed, they’re scripted. Typed on the set list. Preprogrammed by the lighting technician. Complete with pyro, videos, and confetti-strewn finales. We live in the auto-encore age, and we jump through the hoops like trained animals.”

“Yes, encores are as predictable as a Nor’easter in January. Yes, crowd members not only can predict that there will usually be an encore, they can sometimes name at least one song that will be performed — for Prince, it’s ”Purple Rain”; for Patti LaBelle, it’s ”Over the Rainbow.” Still, encores are part of the unwritten covenant between artist and audience. It’s dessert, the last bit of sweetness to polish off a stunning meal. The main show finishes, the fans stomp and scream, fire up their lighters if they’re feeling kitschy, and when the artist feels he has been duly adored, he returns like a conquering hero.”

The Cleveland Orchestra and its management have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract to replace the five-year contract that expired at midnight Sunday, according to spokespersons for the musicians and the Musical Arts Association, which runs the ensemble.