Category: music

UK orchestras are endangered because musicians are woefully paid, says a new study. “The average rank and file orchestral musician has been in the job for 21 years and earns £22,500 a year, a Musicians Union survey has found. That is half the average salary of their professional siblings, it says.”

Attendance at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, fell by 11% this year, with BSO staff blaming the decline on lousy weather and a cutback in the number of free tickets available. It was an unusually rainy summer in the Berkshires – 20 rain days in July, and 22 in August – which can directly affect Tanglewood concerts, since many patrons sit outdoors, and even the main Shed, which is covered, has no walls to insulate concertgoers from the rain. Still, more than 320,000 people attended a concert at the famous venue over the ten weeks of the festival.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim will miss the opening of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new season after doctors advised him not to travel from his home in Berlin. Barenboim is being treated for several herniated discs in his back. Sir Andrew Davis, of the Chicago Lyric Opera, will lead the CSO this weekend in Barenboim’s stead. So far, the orchestra expects Barenboim to return for his scheduled concerts later in the month, but isn’t making any guarantees.

“A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.” Other courts had already ruled that recognizable “samples” of another artist’s work required payment, but the new ruling would make even the appropriation of a single note a matter requiring permission and payment. Some in the hip-hop industry are aghast…

Americans dominated at this year’s 8th Banff International String Quartet Competition. “In music, as in the visual arts, European pre-eminence can no longer be taken for granted, in part because of the superior educational opportunities afforded on this side of the Atlantic.”

“An often-cited study by Canadian audiologist Marshall Chasin measured hearing loss among rock musicians and found that about 30 percent were afflicted in some way. Among their classical music counterparts, the figure was 43 percent. Yet while noise-induced hearing impairment is a well-known issue in the rock world, long highlighted in educational campaigns featuring The Who’s Pete Townshend and rapper Missy Elliott, the discomfort from loudness suffered by classical musicians is generally kept hush-hush.”

The Kansas City Symphony has hired 44-year-old Michael Stern as its new music director. “Until recently, he was chief conductor of the Saarbruecken Radio Symphony in Germany.”

Rupert Christiansen is unsympathetic to the plight of Scottish Opera. “Despite a decidedly dodgy balance sheet and the failure to secure a future for its chorus, the management continues to programme at an almost insanely ambitious level. Over the coming year, Scottish Opera must take a new route, under new artistic leadership. The company has been ill served by the Scottish Arts Council, but it should also take responsibility for its own arrogance and misjudgments.”

Finalists for the Gramophone Recording of the Year have been announced…

“An American federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music. Lower courts had already ruled that artists must pay when they sample another artists’ work. But it has been legal to use musical snippets — a note here, a chord there — as long as it wasn’t identifiable.”