Category: music

The Theater Chamber Players, a “much-admired Washington ensemble that presented a brainy mixture of new and established music” founded by pianist Leon Fleisher and Dina Koston in 1968 is disbanding after 36 years. “The group elected to retire because of differing views on its most appropriate future direction.”

“Continuing its transformation into a full-fledged arts center from merely one of the world’s most storied concert halls, Carnegie Hall next season will fill its three stages with 140 classical concerts, plus more than 45 jazz, folk, world-music, and even pop performances.”

“So far, foreign rappers have had little success in the United States. But that could change. Hip-hop has long spoken in foreign accents, even if Americans have turned a deaf ear. And if Americans assume that rappers from elsewhere are just copycats, merely translating rather than creating, they’d be wrong.”

The first Seville International Festival next September is offering a $28.5 million production of Carment staged in the actual places they’re set in the opera. “It will unfold in six hours and on three separate stages, all linked to the original sites described in what is hailed as the world’s most popular opera.”

The New Hampshire Symphony says it will have to cut back its season and let some musicians go if it fails to raise more money in the next few months. “The symphony has already scrapped two planned performances, scheduled for late February, as a cost-saving measure. Officials say smaller monetary donations from corporations and individuals, reduced government support, and the level of ticket sales have contributed to the trouble.”

“Rock music, to adopt Nietzsche’s famous distinction, is perceived as alluringly Dionysian – a surrender to instinct and emotion, an invitation to the orgiastic. Classical music, on the other hand, has become purely Apollonian: it represents restraint, structure, order and discipline.” But, writes Rupert Christiansen, the way to incite the passions about classical music isn’t to hip it up. Rather, play to the strengths…

The reviews are in for the Minnesota Orchestra’s Monday night Carnegie Hall performance. Violist Sam Bergman writes of concerts and place-kickers (yes, there’s a connection) in his blog RoadTrip before getting on a plane Tuesday afternoon for the orchestra’s European tour.

Sales of downloaded music in the UK are rivaling sales of singles-format CD’s. “More than 150,000 downloads were sold last month, exceeding sales of 12-inch, seven-inch and DVD singles, the Official Charts Company reported. This included a record 50,000 downloads in the week after the 19 January launch of online music service MyCokeMusic. CD singles remain the most popular singles format, however, with 341,461 sold during that week.”

“The iPod records what songs have been played both most recently and most often, so it quickly becomes a record of the owner’s internal aural landscape. Listening to someone else’s iPod is thus an intimate, almost invasive activity. On the scale of personal exposure, it’s not exactly trading diaries, but it’s much more revealing than a mix tape.”

After Norah Jones sold 18 million copies of her debut album and won eight Grammys, the conventional take on her success was that “she’s a homegrown success who prevailed in an era of pre-manufactured and overmarketed pop stars. The truth is a little more complicated.”