Category: music

To suggest that classical musicians are physical workers, like athletes, is to invite a wave of snickers and snide jokes about the fat guy in the back of the second violins. But the repetitive motion of playing a string instrument, for example, is tremendously stressful to the muscles involved, and increasingly, orchestra musicians have been sustaining career-threatening injuries from the simple act of pulling a bow back and forth. Enter Janet Horvath, who is on a one-woman crusade to teach orchestral musicians how to avoid such injuries. Horvath’s credentials: she’s a cellist who, back in college, was hurting so badly that she couldn’t turn a doorknob, but who has now served as associate principal cello of a major American orchestra for 20 years.

“The discovery last week (first reported on the front page of The Wall Street Journal) that Mr. Dylan may have lifted as many as a dozen lines for his remarkable 2001 album, ‘Love & Theft,’ from Japanese writer Junichi Saga, and his 1989 book ‘Confessions of a Yakuza,’ is a nonstory. The singer, as anyone with even a passing interest in pop music and American culture of the last 40 years knows, is both playful musical archaeologist and sly trickster – a man of many masks.”

Producing new operas is a mostly-miss proposition. But tiny Central City (Colorado) Opera “hasn’t fared too badly with its handful of commissioned, Colorado-oriented musical tales. Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956) remains in the international repertory. Same thing, on a smaller scale, with Henry Mollicone’s Face on the Barroom Floor (1978). Robert Ward’s The Lady From Colorado (1964) bombed – but two out of three ain’t bad. So, with the premiere Saturday at the Opera House of Mollicone’s Gabriel’s Daughter, one question was unavoidable: Could Central City make it three out of four?”

The art of piano tuning is becoming more scientific. “The Kansas City, Mo.-based Piano Technicians Guild says computers are now used by at least half the 10,000 tuners who service America’s 18 million pianos.” The debate about the quality of tuning manually versus that using technology is about equally split…

“Onstage nudity is costing Opera Australia nearly three times the going rate, as it gears up for the production of the passionate Richard Strauss opera Salome. During the Dance of the Seven Veils, four dancers will unveil just about everything, at a total cost to the company in nudity payments of $140 per performance.”

Recording industry get-tough threats to music downloaders seem to be having an impact on the number of people downloading music on the internet. “Kazaa and Morpheus — two popular file-swapping services — had 15 percent fewer users during the week ending July 6, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The decline translates to about 1 million fewer users on Kazaa. About 41,000 fewer users signed on to Morpheus and the iMesh file-sharing service that week.”

Things are looking up considerably at Glyndebourne. Artistically the offerings are getting better, and new management is steering a progressive course, and… no one seems to be fighting about which direction to charge…

Two Venetian electricians have been sentenced to six- and seven-year prison terms for negligence in starting the fire that burned down Venice’s La Fenice Opera House seven years ago (it still hasn’t reopened). “A court last year decided that the two electricians had negligently laid electric cables, which short-circuited, and the two were found guilty of arson. A number of high-ranking city officials, and the director of the opera house, were acquitted by the same court on charges of negligence.”

Traditional big recording companies are in a tough way these days. They’re getting tougher on consumers who illegally copy their music. But they’re also going after government to make tougher laws. Trouble is, they’re becoming so broke, finding a solution they can afford becomes tougher and tougher…