Category: music

“An article published yesterday on the front page of one of Italy’s leading national newspapers draws attention to some remarkable parallels between the story of Bram Stoker’s seminal Gothic villain Dracula and that of the archetypal Latin cad Don Giovanni depicted in Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto more than 100 years earlier.”

Is opera becoming too much the same wherever you go? “Travel to New York, Paris or London, and the similarity of the performances can make it difficult to tell one night at the opera from another. This is “international” opera – the type that could happen anywhere, any time, anyhow. Today’s top singers travel around with their latest roles in their baggage just as much as their illustrious predecessors did. No, the real problem today is that singers on the lower rungs of the ladder have started to travel just as frenetically. Those companies that still want to retain a resident ensemble are finding it impossible to hang on to the singers they need.”

After fierce battles for a year, during which cash-strapped Berlin considered closing one of its three opera houses, the city has decided to continue funding all three. “At a packed press conference last week, federal cultural minister Christina Weiss announced the funding of a long-term rescue package to enable all three embattled institutions to continue independent operations under a corporate-type umbrella structure, the Berlin Opera Foundation, to be set up Jan. 1.”

The Montreal Jazz Festival has become a monster. “More than 500 concerts featuring 2,000 musicians on 20 stages attracting 1.7 million visitors for 10 days and nights of the biggest and best jazz festival on the planet. As it approaches its 25th anniversary (next year), the Montreal International Jazz Festival – which ends Sunday – has become the model toward which all other world-class jazz soirees aspire, or ought to.”

Julian Lloyd Webber is tired of all the doom and gloom about the classical music bhusiness. “In this country only one small orchestra – the Bournemouth Sinfonietta – has closed in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, over the same period, membership of the Association of British Orchestras has increased by 38 orchestras, 19 of which are new. How come the ‘grim reapers’ don’t write about that? Then again, I suppose good news is not news.”

UK musicians are protesting a new musician licencing law passed in parliament last week. “It means that venues catering for audiences of 200 or fewer will have to obtain a licence to stage concerts – with the exception of unamplified ensembles such as string quartets. The government says public safety is at risk from unlicensed events, citing more than 1,500 fires in pubs and clubs in England and Wales in 2001. But the Musicians’ Union says its artists are being singled out – while performers such as stand-up comics and novelty acts are exempt.”

Would it be nice to have someone with you at a symphony concert explaining what’s happening with this music? “Still in the testing stages, the Concert Companion provides written cues to guide listeners through a concert hall performance, moment by moment, as it’s happening – in real time, as they say. Conceived by a former Kansas City Symphony executive and designed in conjunction with two Silicon Valley software firms and a UCLA musicologist, the Concert Companion is creating a buzz in the symphonic world.”

Where did Paul McCartney get the tune for “Yesterday”? “The origins of ‘Yesterday’, which has been recorded by more than 2,000 artists and played on the radio more than six million times, has always been a mystery – not least to McCartney himself. He woke up in his flat in London in May 1965 with the song in his head. He realized that he might have borrowed the arrangement from another song and asked friends if they could suggest any similar tunes. They convinced him it was his and that it had come to him in a dream. Now musicologists have identified echoes of Answer Me, the 1953 U.K. hit for both Frankie Laine and David Whitfield, which was later covered by Cole.”

The electric bass has been a staple of the rock band. “In the past, the bass has played a role in most rock bands of any consequence. Music history has given us legendary bassists from Paul McCartney and Sting to Geddy Lee, from Bootsy Collins to Chris Squire.” But the trend today is bands without basses – and the instrument may have hit a low point…

Participants in a large interactive panel discussion on the future of the British music industry believe that the pop single is on its way out, that the talent pool has been overshadowed by the bland, lifeless, mediocre pop stemming from reality TV shows, and that the ‘dance culture’ popular among British youth has created a generation which is much less likely to buy traditional albums at all. Singer Beverly Knight summed up the feelings of many in the discussion: “Back in the day the chances were that unless it was a novelty record, it was a really good song. It’s hard to sit at home and watch bands you know have been put together by a TV show. It’s mediocrity dressed up as greatness.”