Category: music

“San Antonio Symphony officials unveiled a slimmed-down budget and debt repayment plan Wednesday that would allow for a 26-week season beginning this fall, if the symphony’s creditors — including its own musicians and season subscribers — accept the proposal.” The ensemble shut down last spring and filed for bankruptcy protection, sparking a wave of angry recriminations from SAS musicians and supporters. The 2004-05 season will be 13 weeks shorter than the 39-week schedule it used to have, and a new strategic plan calls for a wholesale change in the way the SAS markets and presents itself, as well as an overhaul of the fundraising process.

When orchestras go looking for a new chief executive, the first question that must be answered is whether the ensemble wants to hire someone with intimate knowledge of the music world, or a numbers expert with proven experience balancing budgets. The Fort Worth (Texas) Symphony, however, has decided to go with some of each talent in hiring Katherine Akos as its new CEO. Akos is a violinist, daughter of a Chicago Symphony musician, and also an experienced fund-raiser in the non-profit world. She joins an orchestra which is in comparatively good financial shape, but is struggling to avoid a deficit for the current season.

MTV is fighting with independent music labels in Europe, demanding more music for less money. “MTV Networks Europe has warned independent labels, which produce 22% of the European music market, that their stars’ videos might not be shown unless they sign a deal that halves their payments for the music. MTV owns VH1 and its own branded channels and has been accused of ‘bully boy tactics’ over the dispute.”

Scottish Opera is holding meetings with an idea of reinventing the scale and scope of the company, after it was told it must pare down to live within a budget. “Potential job losses could be as much as 80 from its staff of around 200, although the unions involved – Equity, Musicians Union, and Bectu – have not been told what losses are expected.”

A new union of rock stars might seem like a good idea (really?). And trying to get more money for artists for digital downloads is a good thing. But “the issue of artists taking complete control over their music is a long standing and extremely thorny one. Most acts want to free themselves from the malign interference of money-obsessed record companies and follow their muse where’er it may lead. A nice idea in theory, but a vast body of evidence suggests that it is a disaster in practice.”

Norman Lebrecht predects the end of the conventional classical recording business. But Anthony Tommasini begs to disagree: “Smaller labels like Nonesuch and Naxos, which once just filled in the gaps with records of specialty repertory and adventurous artists ignored by the majors, are proving that it is possible to release important recordings at midrange prices and still pay the bills. And though the financial repercussions from the downloading of CD’s have the recording industry feeling besieged and impotent, some bold orchestras have, like many rock groups, taken matters into their own hands and released self-produced CD’s, recorded live and available on the Internet.”

A judge in Miami Beach sentenced a man to listen to opera for 2 1/2 hours after convicting him of breaking the city’s strict anti-noise ordinance by playing rap music loudly in his car. Said the judge: “You impose your music on me and I’m going to impose my music on you.”

A new study by researchers at the University of Frankfurt reports that singing is good for you – that it boosts your immune system.

As the English National Opera gets set to move into its renovated home, some big questions have yet to be answered, writes Norman Lebrecht: “The critical public issue for ENO is, as it has been for a decade, the question of identity. The company is not English, except inasmuch as its singers mangle the vernacular. It is not National, lacking the resources to tour. And it is desperately keen to shed the corsets of Opera in the quest for new audiences and fresh relevance. It is, in sum, a product in need of rebranding, a relic of a very different society that has failed to adjust to post-industrial demand.”

Digital music players are great… for pop music. For classical? Well, the way music is indexed on these things makes it impossible to sort and search. It’s a nightmare. “It’s enough to make you scream. Before classical music is ever going to take off in digital downloads, the whole classical-recording database–this is a mammoth job, but it’s got to be tackled–will have to be rejiggered. Music has to show up correctly labeled, and fully searchable, by composer, composition and performers (with each artist’s role correctly specified).”