Category: music

Opera America meets in St. Louis to discuss the state of the art. “On one hand Opera America touts opera’s growth in the last 20 years: more than half of its 119 member companies were founded after 1970, and the organization reports growing and increasingly younger audiences. On the other hand the troubled economic climate has meant shrinking endowments, a falloff in donations and a consequent need for companies to rethink and even to restructure along conventional business lines.”

A couple of years ago tickets to some of the biggest English music festivals went begging. Critics said there were too many festivals chasing too few fans. And (depending on who you talked to)the music wasn’t strong enough to excite people. Well, this summer has stilled such talk. Major festivals are selling out at a record pace. Could it be that good music sells?

A music festival at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium that was “supposed to be a weekend to redefine the music festival – replacing Coca-Cola banners with fan art and teen idols with musicians who actually write their own music – collapsed into 12 hours of ‘put up with it or leave.’ What happened to the celebration of art and nature, to the notion that exposure to new music could carry a show? Why had Field Day, with events and a lineup that had the world talking, dwindled to an audience of 20-somethings just kicking around until Radiohead came out to play?” Says one fan: “Our modern bureaucratic society makes it impossible to have large gatherings of any type. With the current required logistics, anything that even gets off the ground is immediately tainted with falsehood because of the built-in compromise.”

This week Dallas’ Meyerson Hall – home to the Dallas Symphony – is going to be transformed into a giant billboard. The IM Pei-designed building will be bathed in projected-light advertisements for a car-maker and publisher. “The projections will emblazon the symphony hall’s north walls facing Woodall Rodgers Freeway with intricate, abstract designs reminiscent of computers, in a tribute to Bill Joy, Internet wizard, Sun Microsystems co-founder and another of the Audi 8.”

What’s to become of Lincoln Center now the New York Philharmonic plans on leaving for Carnegie? The planning is complicated. Center officials even considered turning Avery Fisher Hall into an opera house in hopes of enticing New York City Opera to stay…

Album sales in the UK fell by 4% in 2002 and music sales dropped by 13% in the first quarter of 2003. What’s the cause? Some blame music downloading. But others blame recording companies who manufacture stars rather than creating artists. “Economically it’s much easier for a record company to sign one pretty young male or female, give them some songs, put them out there, and get a very fast return on their investment.”

The Louisville Orchestra, which was expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday, instead delayed its decision until today, in what may be a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement with the orchestra’s musicians to avert a shutdown. “The orchestra is out of cash and owes two banks $1.3 million in past-due loans, plus a pair of unmet payrolls to its musicians, conductors and administrative staff.” Negotiations between musicians and management broke down last weekend, with management insisting that drastic salary cuts were needed, and musicians livid over what they said was a last-second moving of management’s goalposts.

For years now, Colorado has been a popular summer destination for professional musicians. The state boasts multiple summer festivals from Aspen to Boulder, and this summer, the 15-year-old Bravo Vail Valley series is getting a major PR boost, with the presence of the New York Philharmonic. “The orchestra’s residency will be the first of three annual appearances in Vail as part of an agreement announced nationally by the two organizations in New York in January 2002.”

Apple’s celebrated new MP3 player, the iPod, is making waves throughout the music industry, and in some very unlikely corners of capitalist society, as well. “Instead of piping bland background music over tinny speakers, enterprising music promoters are loading hundreds of hours of hip tunes onto iPods and renting them to restaurants, nightspots, clothing boutiques and hair salons.” The enterprise is giving independent musicians a chance to be heard by a larger audience than they would ordinarily have access to, and clients of the new service are thrilled to be getting something other than the typical Muzak.

Will Edo de Waart become the next music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic? “In a press release issued late Wednesday afternoon, the HKPO said that the 62-year-old Dutch maestro ‘has expressed an interest in the music directorship of the HKPO, but would like to get to know the Orchestra before considering the possibility further’.” De Waart is ending his tenure as music director of the Sydney Symphony and is former music director of the San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra.