Category: music

A group of musicians has criticized new U.S. regulations that will further limit travel to Cuba, urging the United States to build bridges to the island instead of tearing them down.

A South African family is suing Disney for unpaid royalties from the hit song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, originally a Zulu tune composed by the family’s father, who died broke in 1962

Pamela Rosenberg confirms that San Francisco Opera budget cuts played a big role in her leaving the company. A smaller budget means fewer new productions. “That part of the job has always been my most creative — being a midwife to artists and projects, and getting new productions conceived and done,” Rosenberg explained Thursday in a phone call from her office in the War Memorial Opera House. It looks like I won’t be able to do that in the future — we’re taking the budget down by 20 percent, and that will mean we will have the means to do a maximum of one new production a year for at least the next three seasons. At this point in my career, that’s just not enough for me.”

In another sign that the American orchestra crisis may be abating, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has announced a second straight year of increased ticket sales. Overall sales jumped 2% for the 2003-04 season, with a 4% jump in subscriptions and a 12% uptick in online sales. An average of more than 1,900 concertgoers attended each CSO performance.

Ten years ago, the Estonian Piano Factory was in such disrepair it almost went out of business. But after a young entrepreneur bought the company and revamped the instruments’ design, the company turned around. “Today, 90 percent of the approximately 500 Estonias handmade each year end up at U.S. dealerships. Estonias account for a fraction of U.S. sales, which were 40,000 grands and baby grands, and 57,000 smaller upright pianos in 2003.”

One of the most promising innovations in the music industry is the ability to record and sell recordings of live concerts within minutes of their conclusion. “On Monday, Clear Channel announced that this summer, it will offer some 100 live recordings of various artists who will be taped throughout the country.” But beware, independent artists who want to offer the service: “Clear Channel bought the patent for the live-recording technology from its inventors, and the company now claims it owns exclusive rights to the concept of selling concert CDs after shows.”

Pamela Rosenberg was building a new model of an American opera company at San Francisco Opera. Taking some adverturous artistic risks, she had transformed the company in her short time running it, writes Anthony Tommasini. But she was hobbled by the company’s financial woes, and so she’s leaving, in search of a more financially stable situation. American opera is the poorer for that…

Music piracy is a billion-dollar business in Brazil, says a new report. “Of CD’s alone, six out of every 10 music discs sold in Brazil are pirate copies. “The report concluded that piracy in Brazil was heavily controlled by organised crime.”

When London’s Royal Opera House launched a plan to sell 100 of the best seats for £10 each every Monday – “there was rejoicing all round. Until people looked at the small print: only one seat per customer would be available, 90 minutes before a performance. There was an outcry.” So now a plan to rejigger the deal for next season…

The premiere of a production of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio (Entfuehrung aus dem Serail) at the Komische Oper in Berlin has been greeted with outrage from audiences and critics. The production’s director says that “moving the Berlin opera’s action to a modern-day brothel would highlight abuses in the sex trade.”