Category: music

Having trouble getting tickets to that pop concert you’ve wanted to attend? Even if you call TicketMaster the day tickets go on sale, it often seems impossible to score seats. Why? It’s the super-scalpers. They buy up as many tickets as they can, then scalp them for sale on EBay. The concert might be in Winnipeg, but the seller is in San Diego. Or Maine. And scalping laws don’t seem to slow things down.

Mobile (Alabama) Symphony conductor Scott Speck was watching CNN in March when the news ticker at the bottom of the screen flashed: “Beethoven oboe concerto premieres in the Netherlands.” “I said, ‘WHAT?'” Speck recalls. “What Beethoven concerto? What are they talking about? As far as I knew, there was none. And if there had been one, surely I would known. Even if there was one, what do they mean by ‘premiered’?” So he tracked down the recently-discovered piece, and scheduled it for the orchestra’s next concert…

“The saga of American music in the 19th century is a tale of outsized personalities, showdowns and rampant can-doism. The American myth has much to do with raising yourself by your own bootstraps, and that is what American music did in the 19th century: beginning with mostly amateur fiddlers, fifers and bawling congregations, ending with some of the best orchestras and opera houses anywhere.”

Is it really possible that Brits’ taste in classical music is as bad as the annual Classic FM hit parade vote would indicate? “Is it really possible, I wonder, that millions of Brits really believe that Howard Shore’s music for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the greatest piece of classical music of all time? And will I have to listen, yet again, to Rachmaninov’s super-saccharine Piano Concerto No 2, in C minor (that’s the music from ‘Brief Encounter’)?”

This fall the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra will mount video screens on either side of its stage. The video presentations will accompany all of the orchestra’s “Musically Speaking concerts. “The screens will be used to show live close-ups of the conductor and soloists. With wall-to-wall dreamscape visuals accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack, the VSO’s experiment will venture beyond the live footage to include a visual script with images of featured composers and the people and places that inspired them.”

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony could be the world’s most famous piece of music. “Next month, when it is auctioned at Sotheby’s, a copyist’s manuscript of the work, replete with Beethoven’s last scribbled revisions, is expected to fetch more than any manuscript of classical music has done before. If the ninth symphony is the most powerful symbol of absolute music in the classical music canon, it is also the most politicised work of all time.”

A US judge has ruled that ISP Verizon must turn over names of cutomers suspected of downloading illegal copies of music to music producers. “The latest rulings mean consumers using dozens of popular Internet file-sharing programs can more easily be identified and tracked by copyright owners. Even for consumers hiding behind hard-to-decipher aliases, that could result in warning letters, civil lawsuits or even criminal prosecution.”

So you’re an American orchestra looking for contemporary music to play. But it can be frustrating hunting down and auditioning scores. So the American Music Center has created NewMusicJukeBox. “The site offers access to audio recordings, downloadable music scores, and information on new music artists. Its creators describe it as an online marketplace where producers, performers, orchestra administrators, concert programmers, movie directors, choreographers, students, and audience members can easily hear music 24/7 by American composers.”

Citing “years of financial instability and poor management” the Florida Philharmonic says it may file bankruptcy if it is unable to raise $20 million by May 2. “We built the orchestra before we had put in the proper financial infrastructure. That’s the problem.”

Few orchestras have recording contracts anymore – even the Chicago Symphony, which has made 900 recordings over the years and won 60 Grammys. But when producers were looking to make a fast recording of pianist Lang Lang in a couple of concertos in February, the orchestra rolled into action and it was like the old days…