Category: music

The Philadelphia Orchestra had a deficit of $1 million on a $35 million budget last season. Not too bad, considering. “But look a little deeper, and the real problem becomes obvious. Since 1999, the orchestra has racked up a total of roughly $14 million in deficits, and only about $8 million of that has been paid off – through bequests from, among others, Gretel Ormandy, the widow of Eugene Ormandy, the orchestra’s fourth music director. The orchestra has covered the rest, about $5 million, by borrowing from its endowment.”

So is all forgiven of the New York Philharmonic now it’s decided to pass on Carnegie Hall and stay at Lincoln Center? Maybe. But the orchestra has to negotiate a new lease at the West Side culture campus. And there are just a few things Lincoln Center wants to change about its arrangement with the orchestra…

Cecilia Bartoli has been named the world’s most popular classical music artist at this year’s Gramophone Awards. “The mezzo soprano beat Sir Simon Rattle and Nigel Kennedy to the Classic FM listener’s choice prize, voted for by fans of the radio station.”

The recording industry has widened its legal offensive. Now it’s suing owners of flea markets. “The lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America charges that the market has made only token efforts to deter the sale of counterfeit and pirated recordings, and says that, like many flea markets, Columbus profits by virtue of its underground reputation as a marketplace for cheap discs. ‘There are 3,000 flea markets in the country, and at many of them, vendors are offering home-burned CD’s or other illegal recordings’.”

“Two years of boardroom rows, budget deficits, strike threats, sackings and redundancies, plummeting box-office sales and the critics’ thumbs-down have taken a chastening toll on an institution that once breezily proclaimed itself as opera’s ‘Powerhouse’. Now ENO is beginning to reinvent itself in less aggressive guise, with a new managerial team led by artistic director and chief executive Sean Doran.”

The English National Opera has been in a crisis for so long, it’s getting harder and harder to remember when the company was able to just concentrate on producing good work. Now some good news. “Yesterday the artistic director, Sean Doran, announced the biggest sponsorship deal in its history, £3m over three years from Sky and the digital channel Artsworld. And its Ring Cycle next year has got the largest sponsorship for a single production – £300,000 from the MFI group, best known for bargain kitchens.”

The First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra has left the crisper for a European tour (they have a CD, natch). “The orchestra’s instruments consist entirely of fresh vegetables, minimally abetted by some kitchen gadgets and a power drill. Before a show, the nine orchestra members go produce shopping and spend about four hours honing their particular devices. Carrots play a major role: some are hollowed out and made into flutes capable of mean trills; others are lined up like a xylophone; a few get grated. Gourds are slapped, peas and celery snapped, leeks used as drumsticks on pumpkins. Perhaps the prettiest instrument, the gurkophon is made from a cucumber with a carrot mouthpiece and a red pepper bell.”

The Charlotte Symphony strike is a month old today, with no signs of movement from either the CSO management, or the musicians. The latest round of talks, which concluded Friday, left the sides seemingly as far apart as they were a month ago. Four sets of concerts have been cancelled, and starting this week, the strike will affect the city’s opera and ballet companies, which employ the CSO as a pit orchestra. However, the orchestra’s contracts with the opera and ballet say nothing about strikes, so the two groups are likely to hire the CSO musicians on a freelance basis.

Relations between Canada and the U.S. have been a bit frosty ever since the American invasion of Iraq last spring, and the usual diplomatic channels don’t seem to be having much of an effect on an increasing divide between the two populaces. So the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs is writing a $250,000 check to underwrite a two-week U.S. tour of the Ottawa-based National Arts Center Orchestra. “It might not repair the relationship between George W. Bush and Jean Chrétien, who are as chummy as two scorpions can be. But it will put Canada in the newspapers for a couple of weeks in a way the politicians can’t. If it’s an attempt to buy some good will, so be it.”

Napster is back, and it’s legal this time. The embattles song-swapping service was shut down last year after the recording industry filed multiple lawsuits alleging copyright violation. The new Napster is owned by media company Roxio, which had no connection to the original service, and which is hoping that the notoriety of the Napster name will help it cash in on the growing consumer base desiring legal downloading options.