Category: music

Scotland’s Castle Toward, an outdoor centre used by tens of thousands of gifted children since the second world war is being sold, and the school has no place to go. About 6000 children from across Scotland take the trip to Toward, 10km south of Dunoon, each year.

“When you think of the kind of writing there was in Rolling Stone 30 years ago and look at magazines now, it doesn’t even need to be pointed out. Most writers are writing in the shadows of Bangs or writing bland stuff. No one’s been able to get over that and create a post-new-journalism template.”

As more and more consumers get used to the idea of paying for music online, a new array of download sites has popped up on the internet. But there’s a problem – many of them do not own the music they’re selling. Consumers pay the sites for downloading, then discover that the music they’ve “purchased” hasn’t been licensed.

The San Antonio Symphony hasn’t performed in eight months, and despite plans to regroup in fall 2004, some observers aren’t sure that it will ever perform again. But if the SAS doesn’t make it back from the brink, it clearly won’t be for lack of effort: on New Year’s Eve, the orchestra’s musicians, music director, and audience reunited for a special benefit concert designed to provide some financial relief for the musicians, who won’t be paid again until September. The concert was a success, but more than 20 SAS musicians have moved on to other cities and other jobs since the shutdown, which doesn’t bode well for the future.

Norman Lebrecht has been proclaiming the death of classical music recording for some time, and now, he is confidently predicting that 2004 will be the last year of the classical recording industry’s existence as a distinctive branch of the music business. Classical records have become a niche market, says Lebrecht, and haven’t even begun to utilize the new technologies available to them. Worse yet, the labels themselves have abandoned any effort to invest in new talent for more than a paltry few albums, thus making it impossible for emerging musicians to develop an international following.

When the Florida Philharmonic folded last summer, many expected its audience to find a home with other local classical groups such as the New World Symphony, or the Miami Chamber Symphony. But the MCS hasn’t performed since February, due to a cash shortage, and this week, the chamber ensemble officially cancelled the 2003-04 season. As in the case of the Florida Phil, donors to the MCS have been reluctant to throw good money after bad, and the group has not been able to stabilize its finances in the 11 months since its troubles became public knowledge.

“One of the Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario) Symphony’s most generous financial supporters is demanding the resignation of the entire board of directors for the “unjust dismissal” of conductor Martin Fischer-Dieskau.”

The Key West Symphony is unlike any other. “The symphony draws talented musicians from other orchestras, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic. They fly in three times a year for a week of rehearsals, fun in the sun and performances that draw accolades from residents and visitors. Conductor Sebrina Maria Alfonso, a Key West native, returned to the island in 1997 after working and studying internationally to bring to life her dream: a world-class symphony in a town with a permanent population of less than 30,000 residents.”

The information most searched for on the internet this year? It was info about Kazaa, the downloading program, says the annual Yahoo! list of most-searched terms. “Kazaa, which has more than 17 million registered users in Europe and the US, attracted attention in 2003 after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) took action to stop web users sharing music through such file-swapping software.”