Category: music

Since the Sacramento Bee began to raise serious questions about the business ethics and practices of the new Sacramento Symphony, the arts community has been forced to choose sides in the increasingly divisive debate. A glance at the newspaper’s letters page reveals that, while some in the community just want to listen to music, there is a distinct desire on the part of other orchestral groups in the area to completely disassociate themselves from the beleagured symphony.

Less than a year ago, the endowment of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was barely as large as its annual operating budget, and the lowest among major U.S. orchestras. But this week, the Phil announced that it has raised $75 million for its endowment, and plans to raise $25 million more over the next three years. The largest single gift in the endowment drive is from the Disney Foundation.

The professional members of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are threatening to strike next week’s performances if progress is not made in their ongoing contract negotiations. 30 of the chorus’s 180 members are paid, and those singers are members of the American Guild of Musical Artists. There is no word on whether the unionized musicians of the symphony itself would cross a potential picket line.

As the corporations that control the popular music market continue to tighten their grip and shrink their playlists, bands outside the increasingly narrow “mainstream” are turning to the vaguely defined world of internet buzz to market themselves. With the recent proliferation of web sites designed to be “people hubs” (bringing users together around common interests or relationships), musicians have seen an opportunity to generate interest in their work without having to crack the playlist at MTV or ClearChannel.

St. Paul’s Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, which is the main home to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the secondary concert site of the Minnesota Orchestra, has balanced its books for the second year running, after years of red ink. “The Ordway embarked on an austerity program and stepped up its fund-raising efforts for the 2002-’03 fiscal year, raising $3.6 million. The theater nearly matched that figure this year… as the Ordway seeks to decrease its dependence on box office revenues.”

“It is doubtlessly an intimidating challenge to improve the architecture of Rome, but leading Italian architect Renzo Piano may have done just that with his design of the city’s new Parco della Musica. This new music complex, almost a decade in planning and construction, not only provides Rome with attractive new musical venues, but also acts as a large-scale infill project by returning a previously underused site to the city’s urban fabric.”

Desperately searching for ways to stay afloat financially, Scottish Opera, which will be forced by the Scottish Executive to go dark for a year in summer 2005, is considering mounting a tour outside of Scotland to be paid for by England’s Arts Council. “There is concern that if the opera drops out of sight, the road back will be even tougher. Staging a brand-new opera in Scotland, however, could potentially cost up to £400,000.” So if there is a tour, Scottish audiences may miss out on seeing their own opera company.

The UK’s music industry trade group is preparing to file lawsuits against 28 illegal file-traders, in a mimic of the anti-piracy tactic that has been used effectively by industry groups in Europe and the US. The European group will soon be suing a new group of nearly 500 file-swappers; the US recording companies have sued nearly 6,000.

One illegal downloader offers a counterpoint to the recording industry’s assertion that the practice is destroying their businesses. “I’ve never burnt a CD and sold it on. It isn’t done. You just do it for your own use. I probably spend more on music now since I started downloading.”

There’s never an easy solution when a soloist cancels on an orchestra, and for the Oregon Symphony last weekend, a sudden hand injury to pianist Louis Lortie only hours before showtime left a major void in their concert where Rachmaninoff’s 3rd should have been. On one half-hour’s notice, the orchestra’s musicians agreed to sight-read Tchaikovsky’s ultra-familiar 4th symphony as a replacement, and won a standing ovation for their efforts. Even more amazingly, with one concert still to be performed the next night, the symphony managed to convince an award-winning soloist to board a plane from Alabama to the Pacific Northwest and perform the original concerto with no rehearsals.