Category: music

“Serious,” of course, is a cheater word that adds latitude to any discussion. At what point does a risk cease to be manageable and become serious? Many Canadians, pummeled by tendentious headlines and frightened by news anchors who have mastered the art of sounding ominous, have come to believe that there is no such thing as a COVID risk that fails to meet this threshold. The statistics bear looking at. – Scena Musicale

A reader writes to James Hamblin, a physician and the magazine’s medical writer, asking if it’s safe for her daughter’s quintet to practice in the backyard. Reviewing the evidence gathered so far, Hamblin responds, “Although there are no clearly documented cases of coronavirus transmission via woodwind, there is a lot of evidence of the benefit of kids studying musical instruments.” – The Atlantic

Inspired by the sheng, a bowl-shaped mouth organ that a French Jesuit missionary brought back from China in 1777, various hand-powered free-reed instruments that became the accordion and concertina were being developed in Europe by the 1820s. They made it to the New World in fairly short order and, by the 1880s, had reached Japan. For about half a century, there were even “player accordions” that used rolls of punched paper the way pianolas did. Laura Stanfield Prichard offers a brief history of the much-loved and -hated instrument. – Early Music America

“It is really fair to say that in the 178-year history of the Philharmonic, this is the single biggest crisis,” said CEO Deborah Borda of the shutdown caused by the COVID pandemic. (A possible silver lining: could the hiatus be used to get started on reconstructing the orchestra’s concert hall?) – The New York Times

“Live and festival-centric performances, which is all these musicians have known through generations, barely bring in money, and an online presence has become mandatory for creative mileage. Many music traditions are dying out, with practitioners taking up menial labor to make ends meet.” Enter Abhinav Agrawal. – Ozy

The key, writes David Patrick Stearns, is that there are “far more numerous entry points. … The era of self-produced recordings, ushered in by LSO Live!, allowed major symphonies by major artists to be delivered at a lower price, so buyers could take a chance on something they only might want to hear two or three times. The world has also become populated by boutique labels that will issue all manner of recordings, often handed to them ready-made by the artists with no overhead cost, and issued with a curatorial sensibility that’s considerably less narrow than major labels of the past.” – WQXR (New York City)

Does this seem like a headline from before the pandemic? Think again. The first recording was released in June, with more on their way. (But it may be a while before the orchestra can record live again in Severance Hall.) – The New York Times

And, because of the pandemic, soprano Janai Brugger experienced some challenges. “She recorded her part in a makeshift studio inside her home in Chicago, surrounded by noise-dampening moving blankets. She occasionally had to wait for the noise in the alleyway outside her office window to die down in order to get a clean take.” – Los Angeles Times

The iconic magazine fell prey to the coronavirus in July, but songwriter Paul Heaton (somewhat unlike Britain’s current government, according to recent reports) didn’t want the staff to be “left on their arse.” So he gave a large donation that the final editor shared with 40 staffers and freelancers alike. – The Guardian (UK)