Category: music

Opera Australia has turned to a money expert to be its new chairman. “Dr Gordon Fell, 38, has strong links to the money networks of Sydney, including his business partnership with David Coe, chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art. These are vital connections for Opera Australia, whose operating deficit was $2 million last financial year. It expects a loss of $1 million this year.”

The musicians who win the top prizes at major international competitions are, of course, some of the best players in the world. You would think that such prizewinning talents would immediately find themselves with a full schedule of recital dates and solo appearances in the world’s top venues. But in fact, most prizewinners quickly find that their careers get only a minimal boost from even the most celebrated competitions. Case in point: Van Cliburn gold medalists Olga Kern and Stanislav Ioudenitch, currently touring such classical music meccas as, um, Kansas City.

Conductor Myung-Whun Chung has decided to leave as principal conductor of Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. “News reports said Chung had a tense relationship with chairman Luciano Berio. The orchestra said in a statement that Chung’s decision not to renew his contract had been made ‘in complete harmony’ with the orchestra, adding that Berio was ‘deeply grateful to Maestro Chung for the excellent work he is carrying out’.”

Cancellations are coming in from European musicians and ensembles wary of performing in America in the midst of a globally unpopular invasion of Iraq. Last week, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu cancelled an appearance at the Met Opera, and this week, the Rotterdam Philharmonic called off a major U.S. tour, which would have included a stop at Carnegie Hall. Some of the performers have cited security concerns – others have merely said that they don’t wish to be in America while the war is going on.

Ever since the record industry began cracking down on illegal file-trading services like the now-defunct Napster, consumers looking for a legal way to download music online have been stymied by an industry which seemed more interested in stonewalling the digital music movement for as long as possible than in finding a way to turn the new technology into profit. Now, a new site called MusicNow has been launched, aimed at 30-to-50-year-olds who want digital music, and won’t mind paying for it. The fees are reasonable – $10 a month for unlimited downloads, and 99 cents for a single song – and the company behind the site hopes it will finally begin to attract music consumers with money to spend.

“Hook a whole bunch of brains up to a computer, capture and play the sounds they make, and you get, well, not quite music, but certainly some interesting noise. That’s exactly what happened at the Cyborg Echoes Deconcert in Toronto over the weekend. The concert was billed as a participatory event, and it certainly was: Audience members’ brains were scanned, the scans were transformed into sounds, mixed with a solid little backbeat from some heart scans, combined and played back to create Music in the Key of EEG.”

So how did San Francisco Opera, one of the biggest in America, work itself into a $7 million debt? “In 1999, with 93 performances and $24 million ticket income, we had an optimal year. Last year it was $22.4, the previous two years, $21.2 and $23.7 and for the current year we are projecting $21.5. There is Iraq, and the tourists are not coming. We’re trying to cut costs as responsibly and as carefully as possible. Every dollar. It would be phenomenal to end with zero deficit.”

The American Guild of Musical Artists has filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint against the San Francisco Opera. In February the companay, which is having big money problems, announced it was cutting its annual Western Opera Theater tour because “the costs, scope and purpose of the Western Opera Theater tour were no longer in line with the Opera Center’s need for fiscal responsibility.” The union says that the company violated the National Labor Relations Act “by taking such action without prior notice to or bargaining with the union.”

Scotland has long made a contribution to jazz out of all proportion to its size. The list of famous players runs across generations and genres. But the 1990s were a particularly invigorating period for Scottish jazz. ‘This is a small scene. It doesn’t have the economic power to keep buying American tours. What’s been appreciated here in recent years, and what is becoming apparent inside and outside Scotland now, is that we’re growing our own stars’.”

London’s Royal Opera House, out to prove it is more populist than in the past, has scheduled its first musical for the main stage: Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Music director Antonio Pappano “said he wanted to open the windows … ‘I am not interested in this old argument about what is opera and what is musical theatre. Often it’s so intense and serious here, but it is OK for this opera house to have fun too’.”