Category: music

The Metropolitan Opera has taken down patron Alberto Vilar’s name from the opera house after Vilar failed to make good on a number of promised donations. “The Vilar name had been affixed to the Grand Tier since 1998, when Mr. Vilar pledged $20 million over five years toward a $400 million endowment goal, as well as $5 million to match grants by others. The opera did not say how much he was in arrears or in what form, cash or stocks, but the statement suggested that the amount was substantial. The un-naming at the Met — a stinging rebuke in the genteel world of big-time philanthropy — was the latest sign that arts groups were losing patience with Mr. Vilar’s missed commitments and were willing to speak out, even at the risk of losing any future largesse.”

Birmingham’s Floof! Festival of contemporary music was first rate. But there was no one there to listen. “The trouble with Britain is that it has a showbiz culture, and things are not regarded as worthwhile unless they fill halls. It is important for those involved in contemporary art music to push home the notion that small audiences are acceptable, that new music deserves a protected status, that it should not be judged by how many bums are affixed to seats. This is reasonable. But while it is fine to accept the position that new music can be a minority interest, which ought not be judged according to popularity, it by no means follows that we should be satisfied with that.”

“While new artists like Norah Jones, 24, dominate the airwaves and sell millions of albums, the old folks are cleaning up at the box office. Last summer, five of the top 10 grossing tours were artists that came of age in the ’70s, including Billy Joel and Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, Neil Diamond and The Eagles. Three others were acts that debuted in the ’60s: Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, and Cher. Creed and The Dave Matthews Band rounded out the top 10.”

It’s the 150th anniversary of the founding of the American Steinway company. Time was when pianos were a big status symbol. “By the end of the 19th century, about one in six New Yorkers worked in some piano-related job…”

Jazz critic Stanley Crouch was fired from JazzTimes magazine last month, and he says there’s much wrong with the field of jazz criticism today. “There is such consistency in the jazz press, and its predilections, that it represents a virtual conspiracy?not one that includes clandestine meetings or muttering in code?but a conspiracy of consensus based in modernist European ideas of avant gardism. It?s stapled to concepts that Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg pushed into the art world during the 1940s and 1950s, championing the narrows of Abstract Expressionism as ‘advanced’ because they ignored the body of basic classical skills in the interest of autobiographical methods devised by the painters themselves. But right now, while mouthing those theories, jazz criticism is actually dominated by an adolescent vision of rebellion that arrives from the world of pop music, rock in particular. That is why I was fired last month from JazzTimes.”

Minnesota Public Radio’s American Mavericks series is a collection of first-rate radio shows about American music. But it’s also a valuable website, the “latest attempt to find a home on the Internet for progressive classical music, which is played sparingly in concert and on the radio. “For Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony’s music director and co-host of the “American Mavericks” radio series, the Internet is a logical place for young people to discover new music. Just as cutting-edge composers push beyond common assumptions, he said, a certain adventurous nature is needed to explore cyberspace.”

“With sales of CDs on a three-year slide, the music industry sees mobile phones as powerful outlets for promoting artists and distributing music for profit – something it failed to do in the early days of Internet music-swapping. In recent months, recording labels have entered deals with wireless carriers and other companies. The music companies are selling rights to their musicians’ recordings and images for use in screen savers, digital images and song snippets that are then sold to mobile phone users.”

“I believe the era in which music is treated as an almost fetishistic object of desire is coming to an end. Not for me, perhaps, even though I have been busy recently uploading my entire music collection to my computer, clearing acres of valuable shelf-space by transforming stacks of CDs (never the most beloved format, with their easily cracked plastic boxes, tiny covers and tatty booklets full of microscopic print) into digital sound files on a kind of virtual juke box. And quite possibly it is not yet over for you, either, certainly if you grew up in the vinyl era and have developed a soft spot for albums with distinct identities, the running order of songs identified on the sleeve, just as the artist intended. But it is a very different situation for the teenage students…”

When the Florida Philharmonic ceased operations last month, 80 musicians lost their jobs instantly. This is no small thing, since orchestra players must devote months of practice time and hundreds of dollars in travel expenses even to make a stab at winning a new job in another ensemble. Many Florida Phil musicians were married to others, making the shutdown a financial catastrophe for their families. “Some players already have left town. Some are going home to family. Others are turning to teaching or investigating careers outside music. A few cling to the hope that a miracle waits around the bend and resurrection will come in the weeks or months ahead.”

“The recording industry is playing an old song: It has filed a new copyright-infringement suit against Streamcast, makers of the popular Morpheus file-sharing service. The suit involves a Web radio service never launched by Streamcast.” Streamcast’s chief exec “called the recording companies ‘sore losers’ following U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson’s ruling in a separate copyright lawsuit in Los Angeles against Streamcast Networks.” The new lawsuit is part of an ongoing battle by the industry to shut down companies which enable illegal file-sharing.