Category: music

Is orchestral music doomed? Will school recorders never blossom again? Yikes: “The evidence we have here is that instruments such as the French horn and double bass are becoming endangered.”

There are only so many Strads in the world, but there are a lot of 3D printers, and the Ottawa Symphony decided to take advantage of the printers to create new violins and violas. “It turns out they have a slightly different pitch.”

“I would call this the equivalent of a shooting script of a movie,” said the critic Tim Page, a professor of music and journalism at the University of Southern California and the editor of “The Glenn Gould Reader.” “He keeps track of which takes he likes, and how long they are.”

Winners of the 2018 Stephen and Cynthia Rubin Institute for Music Criticism have been announced. Jennifer Gersten, a DMA candidate at Stony Brook University, was chosen by a panel of leading national music critics to receive the $10,000 Rubin Prize in Music Criticism for demonstrating outstanding promise in music criticism. Brin Solomon, an MFA candidate at New York University, was selected as runner-up and received a $1,000 award.

Anthony Tommasini: “Classical music has justifiably been criticized for its obsession with greatness, with certifying a repertory of canonical masterpieces that get played again and again. I, for one, go back and forth about how much this quality should matter, let alone how we should determine it.”

When Dudamel conducts an orchestra these days, he feels a ghost at his shoulder. The ghost belongs to his mentor, the Venezuelan conductor and educator José Antonio Abreu, who gave him both his musical training and his philosophy of life, and who had died just a few weeks earlier, in March, at age 78. “I lost Maestro physically,” Dudamel says, “but every time I do this” — he raises his hands as if he’s about to conduct — “a levare, to the orchestra, he’s there. He’s in the sound. I can hear him all of the time.”

“Back in 2005, the Cuban-American singer — sought by some of the world’s most prestigious opera houses — weighed 95 kilograms (210 pounds). Now, she weighs just 56 (123 pounds). … ‘I was told, ‘You need to fix the weight problem if you want to have any chance at all’,’ she said of an early experience at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.” And she did fix it: she started running marathons.

They’ve begun playing in street medians and leafleting concertgoers to bring attention to the fact that they’ve been working without a contract since early September. “The players are seeking a multi-year agreement that, in addition to a boost in compensation …, will implement previously negotiated terms regarding the number of full-time musicians in the BSO. The twice-extended contract called for a total of 83. (In 2000, the total was 96, plus two librarians.)”

“The neighbors of a professional trumpet player had taken the musician to court, complaining about the noise pollution caused by his practicing. Germany’s highest court ruled in favor of Siegfried Ratz – within reason. The decision from the BGH in Karlsruhe reads that the interests of the accused were not in direct conflict with those of the plaintiffs and that a balance between the two parties could only be found by ‘limiting the amount of time spent making music’.” The musician and his neighbors must now agree to a schedule.