Category: music

The 53-year-old Mexico City native, who is also music director of the Louisiana Philharmonic, is accused of paying exorbitant fees to foreign soloists, something both he and his manager insist is a currency conversion mistake. And musicians from the orchestra are reportedly urging Mexican officials to fire Prieto for poor leadership. — The New Orleans Advocate

Gregory Tucker: “What has long been hailed as Baltimore’s ‘other major league team’ is about to risk losing its major-league status. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Board of Directors, of which I was a member until this past June, has decided that Baltimore and Maryland can no longer afford a major league symphony orchestra, given what are real and persistent financial challenges. It is proposing cutting the season by 12 weeks.” – Washington Post

“The TravelBass breaks down into separate components for transport in a custom case, and is assembled for play when double bassists reach their destination. Its makers – out of Parma, Italy – reckon that roving musicians should be able to take it on aircraft as carry on luggage in a custom hard case … designed to survive life in the cargo hold.” — New Atlas

Joan Harvey sings the praises of the astounding variety of music to discover (and facts to learn) at Concertzender.nl. (We here at ArtsJournal can recommend it, too.) Yes, the site is in Dutch, but most of it is available in (sometimes quirky) English if you click on the tiny Union Jack in the upper right corner. — 3 Quarks Daily

“While he hasn’t wanted to make what he called ‘a big fuss’ about his relationship, [Yannick] Nézet-Séguin sees himself and [partner Pierre] Tourville as symbolic of a widening conception of what a conductor can be.” — The New York Times

As the music festival-industrial-complex has become another way of American life, it’s also been increasingly and reasonably subjected to litmus tests reflecting the increased social awareness that society has taken on over the past several years.  – New York Magazine

The results were underwhelming. “Outreach risks taking on a missionary, self-satisfied glow, getting caught up in the innate value of sharing such great music with those who have not been privileged to have been exposed to it. Lurking within this well-meaning construct is the toxic view of music as a kind of largesse: the idea that this music is better than the music you already like. The school concert, with all the best intentions, to some degree demonstrated that if classical music is offered in its own bubble, without context, it has little chance of really connecting with new audiences.” – Washington Post

“It feels, pretty simply, like yet another example of a tech company creating a highly personalized product in seemingly warm partnership with its users, then realizing that it can trade on this goodwill to make money.”  – Vox

After a six-part documentary series on Lifetime in which dozens of women and women’s families came forward to accuse the singer of abusing and molesting young women and teenage girls, prosecutors say he’d be hard to try because “bringing a case is difficult without cooperating victims.” – The New York Times