Category: music

Conductor David Zinman resigned the music directorship of the Baltimore Symphony five years ago, unhappy with what he called the orchestra’s increasingly conservative direction. At the time, many observers assumed that Zinman would never again agree to lead an American orchestra, that he was just too disgusted with the place of the arts in his native country. But now, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra revving up its search to replace outgoing director Mariss Jansons, Zinman is apparently willing to consider a return to the States. “I told them that it really depends on who the new executive director is and who the new board president is,” he says. “Then I would be open to talking about it.”

With the Charlotte Symphony’s 7-week strike finally over, the organization is hoping to get back on track quickly, and begin raising the money the CSO will need to stay solvent throughout the five-year contract it just inked with its musicians. CSO president Richard Early says in an interview that the organization’s focus must now be on mending fences with its subscriber base, and reminding the city’s corporate community of the importance of supporting the orchestra.

The Florida Philharmonic is gone, a victim of the bad economy and public indifference. But, like so many other communities which have lost symphony orchestras, music fans in South Florida are holding out hope that a new ensemble will eventually rise from the ashes of the Phil. This week, the Dade Community Foundation struck a deal that makes such a revival much more likely: it’s purchasing the Philharmonic’s music library for $180,000, and storing it until a new orchestra can take it back. An orchestra’s music library is its most irreplacable asset, and building one from scratch takes years of careful purchasing, so the preservation of the library was a major priority for the musicians of the defunct Philharmonic.

MIT has shut down a new file-sharing system set up by students. “The music service had its official start one week ago but within hours, music companies, including the Universal Music Group, complained that they had not granted – or been paid for – the required legal permission to make the copies of their songs used by the system.”

“Doesn’t it seem odd that these fully automated online e-commerce systems, with software that ought to be able to track and respond to customer behavior instantly, unimaginatively mandate the same fixed price across the board? One of the Internet’s supposed strengths is its ability to let supply and demand drive prices up and down in real time. Couldn’t the music companies use the Internet as a way to introduce popularity-based pricing, meaning that the songs with the highest demand would cost the most? Compared to eBay, charging 99 cents for every song is price fixing. And while 99 cents for my favorite song seems fair, what about my not-so-favorite songs?”

LA’s Disney Hall is a great accomplishment, sure. And a good place to hear music, writes Joshua Kosman. “But it’s also a great roar of regional pride, a sweeping claim for the importance of the arts in a city and state long derided as philistine. It promises to strike a powerful blow – perhaps even, at long last, the fatal one – against the cultural mythology that says America’s musical life begins on the East Coast and peters out somewhere around the Mississippi River.”

It’s official: downloading pay-per-song tracks is the new darling of the music world. “Pay-per-song is now a legitimate industry promoted by some of the best brains in modern technology and entertainment, from Apple to Napster to Dell. With prices starting low and falling lower, legally downloading your own songs and mixing them to use the way you want is a seductive right that is fast revolutionizing the music business.”

“Digital tracks are outselling physical singles by a growing margin, a sign that consumers increasingly are embracing the brave new world of Internet downloading. Digital download sales outpaced physical singles 857,000 to 170,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures for the week ending Oct. 26. That’s slightly more than a 5-to-1 ratio.”

Ludovico Einaudi is “Classic FM’s most requested contemporary composer. His latest album, Echoes, went straight to the top of the classical charts when it was released in September. It has sold 50,000 copies – enough to put it at number 40 on the pop chart. It isn’t the sort of music you would immediately associate with a concert hall. Certainly, it is perfect music if you’re doing something else at the same time as listening to it. And yet he has just performed to a packed Barbican, where he received a standing ovation.

One of Scottish Opera’s unions suggests the company ought to sell off its home – the Theatre Royal, in an attempt to cover its mounting losses. “The radical proposal for the Glasgow theatre reflects serious concern over staff cuts amid reports of the company’s latest financial crisis.”