Category: music

Music giant EMI announces that it will put 90 percent of its music catalogue online. “The company is to make available for sale online over 140,000 tracks from over 3,000 EMI artists, allowing customers to burn music onto CD-R, copy tracks to portable players and purchase singles online as soon as the songs are serviced to radio and in advance of their commercial release on CD.”

The Louisville Orchestra warns it might not be able to make next week’s payroll. The orchestra is carrying an $800,000 debt. Orchestra musicians say they’ll play a series of concerts next week during the Kentucky Derby celebrations in hopes of raising money so they can be paid later.

“Last month all music teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District were handed pink slips, an action that gives the district the right not to renew their contracts next fall. The decisions are in the hands of school site committees, one for each school, made up of the principal, staff, parents. The view of individuals knowledgeable in the matter is that, faced with stringent budget limitations, many, perhaps most of those committees will cut music entirely at their schools. One music teacher began doing something about it long before the current budget crisis…”

What music do 250,000 listeners of Classic FM radio in the UK most like? According to a new poll, it helps if the music has been featured in an ad or movie. “Pieces of music made famous by advertisements made up most of the contemporary music featured on the list. The work in first place for the third year running, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto in C minor, also has a connection to films.” Rocketing high on this list was a newcomer – the score to the movie “Lord of the Rings.”

The Florida Philharmonic, said to be carrying a $3 million debt, is declaring an emergency and asking community leaders to help. “Based on what is known today, the FPO is projected to run out of operating cash in early May.”

It’s the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. “But if the political and geographical implications of the land deal have been copiously documented, the cultural implications of the Louisiana Purchase have yet to be fully decoded. For although jazz is universally deemed a distinctly American musical idiom, in fact it was the confluence of European, African and Caribbean cultures in parts of the Louisiana Territory – especially New Orleans – that gave rise to the radical new sounds. The intermingling of cultures that produced a new American music would not have happened, however, without an explicitly political act – the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory.”

The Charleston Symphony is the latest to be threatened with closing. “Though it is the largest performing arts organization in South Carolina, and though ticket sales are up this year, it is in dire economic straits. Its endowment is puny, it’s considering shortening its 38-week performance season, and its board is scrambling to come up with a rescue plan.”

The New Jersey Symphony is the recipient of an amazing bounty – 30 violins from the Italian Golden Age – including 12 Strads. “The collection makes its official debut Saturday , when guests at a fund-raiser charging $2,500 per ticket will hear the instruments played at the historic railroad terminal hall at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. As the date nears, a new dilemma arises: In the midst of such bounty, who gets to play one, and who doesn’t?”

The Seattle area is getting a second big-venue outdoor amphitheatre. Great – there’ll be more concerts to choose from and ticket prices ought to go down because of the competition, right? Wrong. In the big pop concert business, competition causes ticket prices to go up….

As major recording labels backed off recording orchestras, some of the orchestras began producing their own discs. They’ve done okay, but “these homegrown labels are not a development that the majors’ classics division chiefs particularly welcome. EMI Classics, indeed, has become so riled by LSO Live that they have stopped hiring the London Symphony Orchestra for their own recording projects.”