Category: music

Rupert Christiansen goes to this year’s Kathleen Ferrier competition and wonders: “What is it about young singers today? It’s not that their techniques are uniformly bad or that the sounds they make are unattractive. It’s just that they so seldom seem rigorous or engaged: there’s a crucial lack of depth, feeling, imagination. They leave you with the old-fart thought that they’ve had it too easy.”

Four fans of the band Creed are suing the band for $2 million in damages after a concert in Chicago, claiming that the band “failed to perform substantially” at the show. “Lead singer Scott Stapp is alleged to have been either so drunk or so stoned that he was unable to sing a single Creed song. Instead, he frequently left the stage, rolled around on the floor and appeared to pass out. On one hand, it’s difficult to hear this story without smirking. On the other hand, however, it sets a frankly terrifying precedent. If the lawsuit is successful, where will it lead? Every band has their off nights – will any dissatisfied fan then go rushing to court? Who will decide what constitutes a substandard show? How?”

A new British Top 40 chart has the BBC fighting two commercial companies. “Before the arrival of the internet, BBC Radio 1’s Top 40 countdown on Sunday afternoons – based solely on single sales – was the pre-eminent chart. But now commercial companies believe it is vital to take airplay and internet listening into account because online music piracy is widespread and teenagers are often long bored of a single by the time it is released in the record shops.”

Why is a new Top 40 music chart needed to determine which music is most popular? Many think the current system measuring only CD sales, is inaccurate and open to manipulation. “The use of radio airplay as a criterion is contentious: the playlist is compiled by radio-station programmers. And one area not yet factored in by any of the charts is arguably the most important for the music industry’s future: internet sales.”

Bard College’s new $62 million Frank Gehry performing arts center is alluring, writes Nicolai Ouroussoff. “Wrapped inside its shimmering steel container, the main performance hall faces a lush, rolling meadow. The smaller theater and rehearsal rooms are plugged into one side of this form. A dense patch of woods acts as a backdrop for the center, with the Catskill Mountains rising in the distance. The arrangement allows Gehry to create a mesmerizing architectural narrative.”

Bard College’s new performing arts center makes a goo impression on Mark Swed. “During a noisy and exuberant opening weekend, this marvelous new facility for music, opera, dance and theater, at a small liberal arts college in the Hudson River Valley, has already begun making a statement that is hard to ignore.”

Bard College’s new Frank Gehry-designed 900-seat adaptable auditorium “is an inviting and intimate place to hear music. The simple décor is handsome, with smooth concrete walls, wood-paneled balconies and a soft-hued wooden proscenium (retractable to accommodate the staging of opera and theater works). On first hearing, it’s hard to assess fully the work of the acoustician, Yasuhisa Toyota.

David Patrick Stearns wonders about all these attempts to make classical music cool. As if it isn’t already. So maybe watering it down, or sexing it up exposes more people to the art. But does it really? And besides, doesn’t art reward those who make efforts to get close to it (rather than the other way aound)? “So if the latest wave of classical crossovers isn’t making us cool, what is it doing, besides attempting to make money?”

Last week the Florida Philharmonic announced it must raise $20 million by May 2 or face a bankruptcy. “In the meantime, some arts executives and community leaders fear that bankruptcy could cloud major cultural plans, including a proposed concert hall in Boca Raton, and send a dangerous message about the health of the cultural scene. But some also say the orchestra’s collapse is long overdue, given the organization’s nearly $3 million deficit and constant cries for help.”

According to industry insiders, many successful mainstream artists in most genres of music – perhaps a majority of artists – are using pitch correction. Now some in the music industry think the focus on perfection has gone too far. “Vocal tuning is contributing to the Milli Vanilli-fication of modern music. What a singer sounds like has always been manipulated and massaged by producers: The difference nowadays is that it is so easy to do – maybe too easy. ‘Pro Tools is the industry Frankenstein that’s taken over. Everything has to be exact, and I blame engineers and producers. It’s been overdone’.”