Category: music

“Plagued by poor ticket sales and high costs, the Long Island (NY) Philharmonic has canceled the last two concerts of its 25th anniversary season, its second cancellation within four months. What should have been a year of celebration has become a time of trial, with missed payroll deadlines and a $250,000 deficit in the orchestra’s $2.1 million budget.”

Two years ago Vladimir Spivakov resigned (or was let go) as music director of the Russian National Orchestra. Within hours, Vladimir Putin heard about it and asked Spivakov to form a new orchestra. Many of Spivakov’s former players joined him, and a new orchestra was born, and now …

Harlem will get a jazz museum, and the need for it is great. “Since the music has long been an international language, tourists from around the world will be coming to Harlem in ever greater numbers. They won’t see a statue of Charlie Parker, but they’ll be in his presence, along with that of his progenitors. They, and visitors of all ages, will learn, interactively, dimensions of American history through the lives of embodiments of what Ellington called the ‘unhampered expression of complete freedom reflecting the ideals of American Independence’.”

If there can be said to be a single American orchestra which has consistently been at the forefront of efforts to revitalize the classical music industry, the orchestra would have to be the San Francisco Symphony under music director Michael Tilson Thomas. From innovative recordings to fearless marketing techniques to an embrace of technological synergy, the SFS/MTT partnership may be providing a crucial example for other American ensembles to follow as the 19th-century art strives for relevance in the 21st.

The chief executive of the Pennsylvania-based Mountain Laurel Center for the Performing Arts, which was seeking to be the new summer home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra before collapsing under a mountain of debt this winter, has resigned shortly before a meeting of the center’s bondholders. Blaney was hired five weeks before Mountain Laurel’s opening weekend in 2003, after the center’s first CEO, Christopher Dunworth, was unexpectedly fired.

Even as the majority of music industry heavies watch their album sales slip ever further down the profitability chart, and continue to tilt at the file-sharing windmill, thousands of independent musicians, producers, and fans are descending on Austin, Texas for a music festival with a decidedly pro-innovation slant. “South by Southwest, or SXSW, has a special following among artists and fans who are interested in shaping the future of the media industry. The bands and artists who appear at SXSW don’t have Britney’s marketing budget, so they turn to the Net to attract attention and find new fans. In essence, these artists and fans are vanguards.”

Recording companies have been screaming that music downloading is killing there business. So why are sales going up? “After several years warning of dire consequences for record companies because of rampant music downloading and copying, the Australian Record Industry Association yesterday released sales figures for 2003 showing an increase of nearly 8 per cent.”

A Renaissance scholar has discovered that the musical notes painted by Filippino Lippi in a famous 15th Century painting “Madonna and Child with Singing Angels is original music probably composed by the painter himself. “The first several notes of the composition are exactly the beginning notes of a popular Renaissance song, ‘Fortuna Desperata.’ After the first few notes, however, the piece does not resemble Fortuna.”

When composer Libby Larsen started out, there weren’t many women composers successfully making careers writing music. “After 30 years, it’s ‘like night and day.’ The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers has 900 entries. There is now community, history, a consistent body of professional work and generations upon which to build. ‘I can see the next one coming,’ says Larsen knowingly. ‘You need seven generations to make a big change. We can now, at least, find five’.”

Tower Records emerged from bankruptcy court Monday. “Tower leaves bankruptcy protection with a far lighter debt load and a sunnier outlook. The music business seems to be coming back – CD sales nationwide are up 14 percent this year, according to Nielsen/SoundScan market research – and Tower’s revenue has inched up since August, reversing a multiyear decline. Tower says 90 of its 93 stores make money.”