Category: music

PBS’ Jazz series two years ago was a big success. Will the same happen for the new Blues series? “The dust from Ken Burns’s Jazz has settled enough after 2½ years to allow some consideration of its impact – its successes and its consequences – now that Martin Scorsese’s The Blues is on the air. Foremost among those successes are the sales for the Burns series CDs on the Verve and Columbia/Legacy imprints – a five-disc boxed set and 22 single releases devoted to individual artists…”

The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra will perform in Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. “The orchestra, which was formally organized in 1959, will play on Dec. 9 at the center with the National Symphony Orchestra with music director Leonard Slatkin and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The concert – with a program still to be determined – will be free. ‘I want to put a spotlight, not just on them, but Iraqi arts and the needs of Iraqi arts . . . and encourage the building of institutions, bit by bit’.”

Can’t see Elvis or the Beatles or the Eagles or ABBA in person? How about their soundalikes? “Overlooked for years in rock-music circles and most often dismissed by critics as schlocky Las Vegas lounge acts, tribute bands are increasingly becoming headliners at nightclubs, concert halls and state fairs, all of which see them as lucrative draws. They span the musical alphabet, from Abba to ZZ Top. There are dozens of Beatles tribute bands alone.”

“The blues are a bore. Played currently by a well-meaning array of half-talents and schooled fakers, the music has taken on a bland, generic display, performed to audiences of doughy complexion by uninteresting players of minor status. The blues has lost its soul.”

“The Recording Industry Association of America says it has reached settlements with 64 people accused of downloading copyrighted music over the Internet as music companies try to combat piracy they say cost them $700 million.” Earlier this month the RIAA sued 261 people for file-trading.

After the Akron Beacon-Journal’s music critic blasted the Akron Symphony’s first concert of the season, readers wrote in to protest. Why so harsh, they wanted to know, particularly when the performance got a standing ovation? The Beacon-Journal’s public editor writes that the orchestra must be held to a standard: “If it wants to charge major league prices for tickets, it shouldn’t expect to deliver minor league performances and not be called on it. Readers deserve honest reviews from the music critic, not flattering boosterism.”

The Philadelphia Orchestra is indisputably one of the world’s great musical ensembles. But behind the scenes, the much-admired Philadelphia Sound has often been eclipsed by a perception that the orchestra is perpetually mismanaged on the financial side. Its fund-raising machine has always lagged far behind those of other “Big 5” orchestras, and in fact, Philadelphia’s endowment is more comparable to those of second-tier orchestras in Minneapolis and Washington than it is to its peers in New York and Boston. This year, the Philadelphians have announced plans to change all that, with a massive endowment drive off to an impressive start. Peter Dobrin has heard this type of boast before, but the early results show that Philly may finally have its eye on the ball.

The US Congress may have declared this the year of the blues, and a new PBS series focuses attention on the music. But “you rarely hear a blues song on the radio, and it’s hard even to find the CDs in stores. Sales of blues records this year dwindled to only 1 percent of the US market, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures. Yet fans and industry insiders are hoping against hope that a change is coming. Can you say ‘blues revival’ one more time?”

This week, New Zealand teenager Hayley Westenra became the latest classical singer to muscle her way onto the pop charts with an album of so-called “crossover” tunes. But what is crossover, really? We’re talking about a genre of music that exists mainly to please the musically retarded, a market-driven style that depends on trend research and technological innovation to churn out pap that appeals to the lowest common denominator of music consumers. “Crossover once took place on a peaceful side-road. Now it swirls round a vast Spaghetti Junction. There are no traffic lights, and a shocking number of fatal pile-ups…”

Kent Nagano, writes Joshua Kosman, is one of the top 10-20 conductors in the world. So why is he still conducting the Berkeley Symphony – a community orchestra – after 25 years? “Nagano’s dedication to the BSO has occasionally had a far more concrete impact on his activities. Because of a scheduling conflict with a Berkeley concert, he says, he had to turn down an invitation to make his first appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic – not once, but four times before he finally debuted with the orchestra in 1997.”