Category: music

Ton Volf, the filmmaker of the new documentary Maria by Callas has colorized the famous black-and-white film clip of her 1964 performance at Covent Garden as well as film of Callas in the final scene of Norma at the Paris Opera in 1965. Michael Cooper talks to Volf about why he did it.

Songwriters and publishers will experience a better licensing process, and higher royalties. Legacy artists will now be ensured of payment from digital radio, in some cases at the highest rates in history. And producers will be better able to collect digital royalties. But there are other issues and injustices that need fixing.

OK, “blame” might be a bit strong, but seriously … “Millions and millions of children, all poised with arms snapping like a shark, have been listening to a few bars of the ‘Allegro con fuoco’ from the Czech composer’s 1893 symphonic masterpiece. Which is lovely, when you think about it.”

In Oaxaca, Mexico, rap and hip hop have been dominated by men. But women are changing the scene. Every month in the central plaza, Oaxacans can hear “a tight-knit group of women who are rapping as a way to draw attention to issues like poverty, gender inequalities and disenfranchisement of indigenous communities.”

The Kingdom Choir and its leader Karen Gibson weren’t well-known, and then Meghan Markle and Princy Harry asked them to sing at their wedding. Then they sang “Stand by Me” at the May 19 nuptials. “For a group whose biggest previous audience was 200 people, the transition from obscurity to international acclaim was instant.”

She was the daughter of Allaudin Khan, the greatest Indian classical musician of his age; her brother was Ali Akbar Khan and her first husband was Ravi Shankar. Her specialty was the surbahar (bass sitar), and when she and her husband performed together, audiences were even more impressed by her than by him. About a decade into that (very stormy) marriage, she stopped performing in public entirely and became (though something of a recluse) one of India’s most revered classical music teachers.

“We need to rethink who we’re pitching to. There are too many people that think: “Man, do we really need an orchestra that good if we can’t afford it? Isn’t good enough good enough?” That’s our problem. We have to educate people on why it’s important to invest in an orchestra like this. What’s the return on the investment?”

Results of the study—which was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig—showed that metered and rhymed verses were perceived as more intensely affecting and were aesthetically preferred over non-metered and non-rhymed versions.

“Three of the city’s powerhouse musical institutions — the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, [the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles], and USC’s Thornton School of Music — have come together to create the Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship. Launched in August, the program selected four fellows who, over the course of two years, will be trained by LACO musicians, perform in concerts throughout the city, instruct aspiring young students at ICYOLA, and pursue a music certificate at USC.”

The Hungarian State Opera “is in the midst of one of its biggest expansions ever, thanks to the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars by the increasingly autocratic right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who … has described Hungary’s theaters, opera houses and concert halls as ‘temples of national culture.'” Yet there have been political attacks on some of the company’s programming, and most of Hungary’s internationally famous classical musicians are vehement opponents of Orbán’s government.