Category: music

The Milwaukee Symphony picks up an influential new chairman for its board. The orchestra has also extended music director Andreas Delfs’ contract by three years. “These positive developments come at a low point in the MSO’s fortunes. Attendance has fallen for several seasons, the value of the endowment has slipped to $28 million from a high of over $40 million in 2000, and contributed income has been soft since the economic downturn in 1999. As of March 31, the symphony’s debt stood at $7.1 million, with a credit ceiling of $9 million. That debt includes a projected $3 million shortfall for operations during the current season.”

The MusicPad Pro Plus is a five-pound tablet computer that displays music scores. “The $1,200 device, with a 12-inch liquid-crystal-display touchscreen, is the first of a class of computers that enable musicians to store music and edit it onscreen. Soon it will also allow them to communicate with one another over wireless networks. In much the way that portable digital audio players have changed the way people consume tunes, tablets like the MusicPad are changing the way musicians use sheet music, which is so compact that it can be digitally stockpiled far more cost-effectively than MP3 audio files.”

“The clash of cymbals, blast of recorders and off-key choirs mean music teachers are exposed to noise levels that can cause hearing loss, concludes a University of Toronto engineering study released yesterday.”

“Christian Thielemann is quitting as music director of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper in a dispute with the city government over scarce funding, the opera said Tuesday. His departure follows years of bickering over the future of Berlin’s three opera houses as the capital tries to balance its cultural ambitions with $57 billion of municipal debt. Thielemann has complained that the rival Staatsoper, headed by Daniel Barenboim, was getting a better deal and demanded equal treatment.”

The fierce battle between Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann to become the one true leader of the Berlin opera scene was a tragic but inevitable conflict made necessary when the city decided that it could no longer afford to fully subsidize three full-time opera houses, says Martin Kettle. But Barenboim/Thielemann is more than a faceoff between two great artists scrapping over a common pool of money: it is a clash of ideologies, both musical and political. It is liberal versus conservative, innovator versus traditionalist, and Berlin is caught in the middle.

The guitarist for the art-rock band Radiohead has been named the BBC’s newest composer-in-residence. Jonny Greenwood will fill the role for the next two years, and is committed to composing at least one orchestral work in that time. Greenwood, who is a classically trained viola player, has never formally attempted composition before, although Radiohead’s songs have been hailed by many in the art music world, and pianist Chris O’Riley has even transcribed them for solo piano.

Cellist Matt Haimovitz has given up traditional concert life to play in nightclubs. “No one hearing Mr. Haimovitz at CBGB could doubt his integrity and passion as he continues a 50-state tour that included a performance at a pizza palace in Jackson, Miss. Still, just as there are trade-offs when restless young listeners go to a chamber music concert at a venerated recital hall where they are expected to sit quietly and pay attention, no drinking, no eating, there are trade-offs to hearing Mr. Haimovitz play at a place like CBGB, among them his use of reverberant amplification.”

After last season’s $1.1 million deficit, the Chicago Lyric Opera has bounced back with a surplus of $700,000 for the season that ended Mar. 21. The company sold more than 98 percent of its tickets this season.

The Stradivarius cello stolen from a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic a few weeks ago has been recovered. A woman found it damaged in a dumpster and took it home, asking her boyfriend if he might be able to repair it. “The woman also told her boyfriend that if he couldn’t, the cello might make an unusual compact disc case. ‘Thank God my boyfriend doesn’t work too quickly on things of mine’.”

The ailing Scottish Opera is to be given £5 million of public money to bail it out of a financial crisis on condition that its chorus members go part-time and administrative posts are cut. The opera’s youth work could also be handed to a national youth arts company under plans to restructure the beleaguered organisation. Proposals to cut the 53-strong orchestra have been rejected, but the permanent contracts for the 35 chorus singers could be terminated, while administrative posts will also be scaled back.”