Category: music

What Happened To The Summer Concert Business

It died, that’s what. “A midyear business analysis just released by the trade publication Pollstar concludes that “For reasons that are still unclear, the bottom seemed to fall out of the concert market in mid-April. All three major concert promotion companies and several prominent independents reported a sudden drop in sales of anywhere from 15 percent to 50 percent.”

Fear Factor – Record Companies Play It Safe

Where’s the innovative recorded music these days? “You would think, in the age of Outkast, that there would be a lot of crazy types of innovation going on. Instead, there’s a huge vacancy in left field. Declining revenue, allegedly due to file-sharing, has record execs more risk-averse than ever, particularly where a cash cow like urban music is concerned.”

Aix – Reinventing, One Year After Nothing

Last year’s AIx Festival had to be canceled because of labor unrest. This year the festival starts over. “Aix has always been the prince of French music festivals since it was founded in 1948. It is based in a rich university town with well-preserved aristocratic mansions, winding streets and squares protected from the strong provençal sun by the essential plane trees; a white collar town full of lawyers that looks down on blue collar city of Marseilles, barely 30 kilometres away.”

Nothing Amateur About This Music Competition

The second Washington International Piano Amateur Competition wasn’t about starting careers. “Participants seemed to take sheer pleasure in refining their technique and playing before an audience. It was also apparent that the amateur piano-playing world is a bit of an incestuous society, and the event was as much a chance for the participants to catch up with old friends as an opportunity to hone their Schubert or Beethoven. There was a nice purity to it all: comfortable people reveling in all the aspects of music and piano playing.”

Philly Orchestra Management Takes On Musicians On Website

Contract negotiations between orchestra musicians and managements usually take place behind closed doors, but the increasingly contentious talks currently ongoing in Philadelphia have apparently escalated into open warfare. This week, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s board chairman launched a new corner of the ensemble’s web site, entitled “Securing the Future,” which advertises itself to be an informational update on the negotiations while declaring that “it is our musicians’ turn to share responsibility.” Highlighted on the new site’s front page is a fiery declaration that “Our current trade agreement is a roadmap to extinction.”

A Musical Rebellion Against Music-Playing Technology

“Imagine Thomas Edison going shopping for music today, however: the inventor of the phonograph would reel from one shock to another. Why have records shrunk to compact discs? How do you download songs from computers? How can thousands of them be stored on a tiny personal stereo? As for a portable telephone that plays the latest Britney Spears single – well, at that stage he would probably need a long lie down. The danger of grumbling about these new technologies is that you sound like a mildewy old vinyl bore who thinks records are intrinsically superior (which, let’s face it, they are). Yet there’s a perfectly sound, non-Luddite reason for resenting the attention iPods, ringtones etc are getting.”

Opera – Stuck In The Past?

“While every other art has remade itself several times in the past century, opera stuck to formula and shut the book on self-renewal. Considering the immensity of its contribution to 19th- century opera, it is anomalous that English literature has been bypassed by opera companies in modern times…”