Category: music

Chamber music series all over America have been struggling. But the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, celebrating its 60th birthday, has never been doing better. Its budget has doubled in the past decade, it has a record number of subscriber, and it consistently sells out its concerts.

Who will take over the top jobs in New York’s top music administrative jobs? There aren’s a lot of good candidates. “The dearth of leadership material is not a consequence of poor remuneration. It is, rather, the fault of a system which diffuses authority in too many directions. The boss of most opera houses and concerthalls (Carnegie excepted) has an artistic director who makes the fun decisions and a board of big givers who double-guess everything else. The boss’s hands are manacled. Initiative is stifled and financial setbacks swiftly punished. The manager of a tyre plant in Denver has more power to transform the product than the president of any US arts centre or opera house.”

Last year’s acclaimed Scottish Opera production of Wagner’s Ring cycle is blamed for helping precipitate the company’s financial crisis. There was a recording made, but it appears the company isn’t likely to release it. “Making and releasing a recording of the Ring Cycle, with its four separate parts, would be a major undertaking in a shrinking market for new classical recordings. But it is clear that a recording would have been widely welcomed by opera fans in Scotland and worldwide.”

“New studies show that young people have little interest in owning prepackaged music when just about every recording they want can be had as a download. For people stricken with the collecting disease, this plastic-free vision of the future sounds a little alarming. Sure, we smirked when Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin was urged to go into plastics in “The Graduate.” But we’ve really come to love our plastic, especially when it contains the audio and visual stimulation we crave.”

“The winds of change are blowing through the Australian National Academy of Music in South Melbourne as a new team takes charge following the abrupt departure of the former director, Englishman Frank Wibaut, five months ago.”

Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: “The first element in Düsseldorf is always the concert hall. The Tonhalle is quite striking, visually, with an all-wood design, a conical ceiling that gives the whole room something of an observatory look, and every seat located quite close to the stage. However, this is probably the dryest hall we will play on the tour, and everyone in the orchestra remembers it from previous trips. Sound seems to die six feet in front of the stage in Düsseldorf, and the loudest, most resonant chord can dissipate so quickly that you feel as if you’re performing in an airlock.”

The Sphinx Competition was created to help encourage African-American and Latino string players. “This year, some 20 major orchestras — the Detroit Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra among them — will showcase Sphinx winners in solo appearances. Meanwhile, the number of competition entries jumped to 80 this year from “the 40-50 range” in 2003.”

Norah Jones’ second album has sold more copies in its first week than any other release in the past 2 1/2 years. “Ms. Jones’s second album, “Feels Like Home” (Blue Note), sold 1,022,000 copies during the week ending Sunday, the best performance since ‘N Sync released “Celebrity” in July 2001, according to Nielsen SoundScan.”

The English National Opera has had a rough couple of years. Perhaps it’s coming out of its slump (and a string of bad luck). But there’s plenty of work needed to recover. “It seems crucial for the company to strengthen its sense of purpose and identity, particularly at a time when not only is the Royal Opera on a high, but impresario Raymond Gubbay is launching his cheap and cheerful Savoy Opera in the West End, featuring young voices performing opera in English.”

The biig music industry companies sued 531 more music downloaders. “Like the 532 people it sued last month, the RIAA identified its targets by the ‘John Doe’ process, where the identities of these alleged file swappers are unknown. The defendants are listed by their Internet Protocol address. Those identified had shared an average of 800 copyright files, the RIAA said.”