Category: music

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is in full red alert mode. The PSO is facing enormous deficits, little community support, and its search for a new managing director appears to be dragging on a bit, even as other major orchestras begin to snatch up promising candidates. Furthermore, the orchestra’s musicians have no input into the search process, which is highly unusual among major orchestras, and no one seems quite sure where the organization is headed. But everyone involved seems to agree that, whomever the PSO settles on as its new chief executive, a major change in the way the orchestra does business is a must.

It seems that Wolfgang Sawallisch’s tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra is coming to an end none too soon. The 79-year-old maestro, who has been battling severe fatigue lately, managed to muster the strength to conduct his final Carnegie Hall concert with the Fabulous Philadelphians this week, but his exhaustion has forced him to pull out of this week’s concerts back in Philly, and the orchestra is making no guarantees that he will even be on hand for his farewell concerts next week, or for a taxing 3-week tour beginning immediately thereafter. All this is unfortunate, says Peter Dobrin, but “Sawallisch’s last Carnegie concert will stand as a stunning and poignant musical memento.”

Metamorphosis, an Edmonton-based chamber orchestra, has had a good first season after being born from the ashes of the relationship between the Edmonton Symphony musicians and their management. Grzegorz Nowak, the conductor who was deposed from the symphony’s music directorship only to announce that he would stay in town and start his own orchestra, has backed off his original brash plans of competing directly with his old employer, and crafted a much-needed niche ensemble. In fact, starting next season, the smaller group, which will be renamed the Canadian Chamber Orchestra, will be playing its concerts at the same hall occupied by the Edmonton Symphony.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s long-awaited new music downloading service this week, with a single song going for 99 cents. That’s a good price, but many observers are already saying that it isn’t nearly good enough to lure consumers away from peer-to-peer file swapping services, where they can get the same songs for free. There seems to be no shortage of opinions on what the proper price of a song really is, but no one really knows how Apple will fare, since their unique non-subscription-style download service hasn’t really been tried before.

A recording industry trade group says it has settled lawsuits it brought against four college students for music downloading. Settlements range from $12,000 to $17,500 each, with four college students the industry claimed had been operating illegal song-swap networks on campuses.

Will Apple’s cool new music file-trading service put file-swapper services such as Gnutella or Morpheus out of business? Not hardly. Why? Because an ever-increasing percentage of files being swapped online isn’t music at all – it’s porn. “There is absolutely no way Apple is going to make a dent in file sharing. Smut was the most sought-after content on the Gnutella file-trading system, according to a February survey, with 42 percent of all users hunting for blue pictures and movies.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent admission that he doesn’t really appreciate classical music is telling, writes Norman Lebrecht. “The problem is one of late adolescence. Most of us rebel at puberty against parental values, only to adopt most of them willy-nilly when we raise children. It used to be one of the more copper-bottomed truths of the music industry that kids who bought rock and pop in their teens and twenties switched to classics around their mid-thirties. The Blair generation is the first to buck that trend, clinging to decrepit rock idols like Jagger, Dylan and Eric Clapton, and embarrassing their offspring by listening to the White Stripes instead of making a mature transition to more intricate music.”

Why are vjazz and popular music shut out of the annual Pulitzer Prizes? It’s become an award about “serious” composers about other “seious” composers. This year’s Pulitzer winner spoke out against the Pulitzers’ overlooking of wide swaths of American music. So why is the focus so narrow?

The Florida Orchestra has a new incoming music director, a new associate conductor, and a revitalized artistic vision. But it also has the same fiscal stresses being faced by nearly every other professional orchestra in North America. On a budget of $8 million, the Tampa-based Florida Orchestra (not to be confused with the Florida Philharmonic, which is based in Fort Lauderdale and has been warning of impending bankruptcy,) is expected to run a $1 million deficit this season. No one is pushing the panic button just yet, but like so many other non-profits, the orchestra’s leaders fear that their organization will not survive much longer without a serious resurgence in the national economy.

So Apple’s getting into the music download business. At first look, “the integration between the one-click purchase service, Apple’s iTunes music jukebox software and the iPod player goes well beyond what any other music service has done. It will genuinely make paying for music online easy, even an impulse buy, and artists and music labels see that as a big step forward. Label executives privately say the Apple service is an experiment, which could be expanded if it proves successful. Apple’s small market share means that the stakes are relatively low.”