Category: music

Only two years removed from a CAN$1 million deficit and a monthlong musicians’ strike, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra has posted its second straight surplus. The ESO also reported a 9% uptick in subscription sales, and announced a new three-year agreement with its musicians, which includes an 8% salary increase over the life of the deal.

Under its new music director, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is about to abandon, at least temporarily, one of the more persistent beliefs guiding orchestral programming: that audiences will embrace contemporary music if only they are taught to understand it. “After this week’s concerts, during which the orchestra will play a short new piece by Canadian composer Matthew Whittall, the old and the new will be kept well apart from each other.”

After two years of searching, the Canadian Recording Industry Association has found its new president. “Graham Henderson, an entertainment-industry lawyer, who was managing Universal Music Canada’s digital-music business and helped to launch the on-line music service Puretracks, will assume the top job at CRIA on Nov. 15.”

“The competition began with 56 cellists. After two days, the field narrowed to 15. A day later, there were five. On the fourth day, there are just two.” All were vying for a single opening in the Minnesota Orchestra.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, in the early stages of its search to replace departed music director Mariss Jansons, will fill the leadership void with a triumvirate of conductors in supporting roles. Sir Andrew Davis will take the title of Artistic Advisor, and will program most of the orchestra’s concerts. Yan Pascal Tortelier will become principal guest conductor. And Marek Janowski will be a guest conductor with a specially endowed chair. The arrangement is already being compared with the innovative (and controversial) leadership model adopted last year by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

A new program is offering live music for fans who can’t leave the house: The players will come to their homes. “A total of 1,500 musicians from 30 orchestras are taking part in the Musicians on Call scheme, including members of the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.”

Australian orchestras are mounting a major push for increased government support in the face of overwhelming deficits and draconian budget cuts, but so far, their efforts are finding few sympathetic ears. A new report commissioned by the government may help in the long run, but the situation for many orchestras is growing worse by the day.

“By extending its contract negotiations, the Philadelphia Orchestra has joined three other top American orchestras working on borrowed time, all four struggling to navigate issues in an economy less generous to nonprofit organizations and less conducive to growing endowments.”

Seeking to avoid a strike, the players of the Philadelphia Orchestra tried an unusual but seemingly effective tactic. “Convinced that management’s negotiating committee had no real authority to change the parameters of the deal, orchestra musicians wisely cut out the middlemen and -women and went directly for those who hold the orchestra’s pocketbook: the board.”

So much for the recording industry’s claims that the culture of digital music would be the end of its profit margins. “Apple Computer, the dominant legal download business in Europe and the US, retains just 4 cents from each 99-cent track sale while ‘mechanical copyright’ holders – generally the record labels, who own copyright in the song’s recording – take 62 cents or more. Music publishers take the rest – about 8 cents. With the sites, the copyright owners have doubled their share of royalties, even though the marginal cost of manufacturing has fallen to almost zero.”