Category: music

The music industry is in a horrible slump. Really. Just ask any CEO of a big corporate record label or mega-CD chain. But owners of many of the country’s independent record stores continue to thrive, and their proprietors say that the big, impersonal chains have no one to blame but themselves. “Without the resources of the big national chains, independent and mom-and-pop stores might seem ill-suited to weather the tough sales market. But free from the big-business mindset of corporate labels and the chain stores beholden to big releases by bigger stars, independent record stores are increasingly in a position to succeed where so many big companies and chains are failing or faltering, finding unique and creative ways to trump the slump.”

With the corporate megalith that is the music industry closing ranks around the nation’s independent radio stations, it has become increasingly difficult to hear an original mix of truly diverse music anywhere in America. So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that, as companies like Clear Channel continue to gobble up stations faster than Pac-Man eats dots, the raw and edgy world of college radio is becoming increasingly popular with listeners.

Yeah, yeah, we know. You have a lot of down time at work, and so, for the last couple of years, you’ve been using your high-speed internet access to download a few hundred of your favorite songs without, technically, paying for them. Now the recording industry says it’s hunting down people like you, and you haven’t slept in a month wondering if you’re headed for a court date. But there’s hope: a new web site allows you to plug in your file-sharing username and match it against a list of subpoenas filed by the RIAA.

Gary Graffman embodies the Curtis Institute of Music. Just as the Philadelphia-based school is simultaneously one of the world’s leading musical academies and one of its best performance showcases for young musicians, Graffman, the institute’s director, is both a consummate educator and a revered performer. He is also 74 years old, and Curtis has officially begun the search for his successor. Curtis is a unique school, housed in an old Philadelphia mansion and offering little in the way of non-musical academics, and it is an old institute tradition that the director must be an acclaimed musician first, and a manager second.

Opera audiences tend to be a fairly conservative bunch, artistically speaking, and opera houses have generally followed their lead. But in the Pacific Northwest, the newly renovated home of the Seattle Opera has risen in a mass of populist glass and metal, inviting comparisons to the Gehry-designed shrine to Jimi Hendrix located mere blocks away. “Metallic scrims cross the plaza in front of the hall and extend into the spacious multilevel lobby, in a further gesture meant to break down the barriers between opera and the public. At night the scrims will glow with colored lights keyed to the music being performed.”

“The municipal corporation overseeing the redevelopment of ground zero has determined that there is no place at the site for an opera house, a decision that all but dashes the New York City Opera’s hopes of moving there from Lincoln Center.” However, there appears to be some confusion as to whether City Opera has been officially informed of this development. City officials swear they contacted the company last week, but NYCO’s director insists that, as far as he’s concerned, a move to the site is still very much on the table.

The pipe organ is not generally thought of as a sexy instrument. After all, organs are huge, bulky, loud, impractical, and completely unportable – precisely the opposite of the 21st-century definition of alluring. The fact that most of them reside in churches probably doesn’t help the image, either. But 100 years ago, the pipe organ was the very height of musical cool, and audiences flocked to hear their awesome power. Department stores installed massive organs as a sign of prestige, and the wealthy even had organs in their homes and on their yachts. Radio, TV, and recorded music may have been the biggest enemies of the organ, but some see a comeback in the offing.

To most music lovers in the Midwest, the Ravinia Festival is nearly synonymous with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But the partnership betwen the two organizations has seen far better days, and since the CSO does not own the festival – a nearly unique situation among major American orchestras – Ravinia is considering serious changes to its schedule which would deemphasize the orchestra’s participation. Ticket sales for CSO performances at Ravinia have been off sharply for the last several years, and that has the festival seriously considering a plan which would cut the number of performances the orchestra puts on at Ravinia each summer.

The new generation of teens and pre-teens are, naturally, more computer-savvy than any previous bunch of kids. And that means that they do a tremendous amount of file-sharing, and they know exactly where to find the free (and illegal) music. Furthermore, they do not appear to be terribly responsive to begging or threats. So the recording industry is trying to get to them in the only way they think might have an effect: they’re calling the little pirates’ parents.

“University officials are working with the music and movie industry to find a peaceful solution to the piracy problem, even as they’re fighting a firestorm of subpoenas seeking information on their file-swapping students. The universities are exploring technologies that would control illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. In addition, they are working with digital music and movie companies to offer downloading services tailored to universities.”