Category: music

Hip-hop is big business, and full of branding opportunities. “It’s a pop culture phenomenon because it’s receptive to brands as opposed to other music genres which are diluted when commercial interests come in. With hip hop, it’s almost the reverse – they feed one another.”

“Over the next month, the Kennedy Center will present an ambitious Tchaikovsky Festival as part of a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. Among the participants will be the Kirov Opera, Ballet and Orchestra, straight from Russia, under the direction of Valery Gergiev; the Suzanne Farrell Ballet; cellist Yo-Yo Ma; pianist Yefim Bronfman; violinist Gil Shaham; the Vermeer Quartet; and the National Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Leonard Slatkin and Emil de Cou.”

An opera production produced by homeless people has been staged in Oxford. “”The charity behind the project, Streetwise Opera, helped train volunteers to sing, perform and develop theatre skills. Professional opera singers joined them for last night’s production at New College, which was sold out. The show’s director, Matthew Peacock, said he hoped the music boosted the confidence of the homeless people involved and would help them in life.”

David Robertson conducts the New York Philharmonic. So? There is a sense that younger conductors are being given chances to work with the orchestra with an eye to the future. “To the credit of the current music director, Lorin Maazel, the orchestra has done a much better job of introducing promising younger conductors — and potential successors — to its podium, musicians like Robert Spano and Alan Gilbert, as well as Osmo Vanska and Gianandrea Noseda, who made their debuts recently.”

The famed Boys Choir of Harlem has declared a financial emergency after corporate and individual donations have fallen dramatically. “Everybody thinks we must be rich. Well, we’re not. This is the worst time period in our 35-year history.”

For the 110th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, Chinese officials are releasing an album of great songs by the former Communist leader. The songs have been re-recorded, one even remade as a rap. “Ten years ago, the album ‘A Red Sun’ brought a crimson tide of songs rushing through our music industry. This year … the China Record Company has finished the production of the powerfully red ‘Mao Zedong and us’.”

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is apparently going to try to buy Warner Chappell, the music publishing business of Time Warner. The company is valued at about $1 billion. “Andrew is seriously interested. He is confident he can get a consortium together.”

Better music in the past year helped sell 232 million albums last year, a record amount. But “heavy discounting by stores has seen the total value of music sales drop 4.6%, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Singles sales fell 31% in the 12 months up to September, the BPI said.”

In addition to giving National Public Radio $200 million, Joan Kroc has left the San Diego Opera $10 million in her will. “In appreciation of the bequest, the San Diego Opera will dedicate its 2005 40th anniversary season to Kroc. Thereafter, one of the five operas scheduled each season will be dedicated in memory of Kroc.”

The Scubert purists didn’t like Lang Lang’s recent Carnegie performance. But Charles Michener was thrilled: “Unlike the droves of super-trained but faceless young graduates—many of them of Asian parentage—who pour out of our conservatories, Lang Lang isn’t afraid to show us exactly who he is. Like Liszt, Paderewski and Horowitz, to name a few of his most adored predecessors, he comes to us not just as a virtuoso, but as a showman. If he was overdoing it the other night in front of the German crew who were filming the concert, I say God bless him. Another Liberace I can do without—but right now, classical music can use all the sensational showmanship it can get.”