Category: music

The US Congress declared 2003 the Year of the Blues. But the blues are in trouble. “When the blues tries to grab a mainstream crowd, it cleans up and cools down a genre that began as raw field songs and work hollers. Today’s popular version reeks of facsimile, with theatricality replacing raw passion, and mimicry usurping originality. Rare is today’s blues singer or guitarist who doesn’t call to mind his biggest influences with familiar riffs first played with fire a half-century ago. Rarer still is the songwriter who can craft an inventive blues tune. It is as if imagination has been banned.”

Construction began Monday on the Norwegian capital’s new opera house. “The project, budgeted at NOK 3.3 billion (nearly USD 500 million), sparked years of political debate. Oslo’s current opera house at the central square known as Youngstorget is well past its prime, but the sheer cost of a new opera, not to mention where it should be located, was the subject of seemingly endless argument.”

The Grammys are about artistic excellence, right? But some of this year’s nominations are inexplicable. Greg Kot is discouraged. “So many worthy artists got the shaft this year that I now offer not only predictions on the winners in some key categories, but also the biggest oversights. One of these years, the Grammys really may be about “artistic excellence.” Until then, let the griping continue . . .

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has launched what it is calling an online conservatory on its web site, with features designed to draw in tech-savvy younger audiences, and make the old music the BSO plays relevant to a modern audience. So how did they do? Three tech experts give the orchestra high marks for the effort, but say the content and style have a long way to go. Still, the project may be the beginning of a new movement designed to drag symphony orchestras into the Internet era.

Sopranos are famous for their temperamental nature, of course, and these days, few are surprised when a big star storms off in a huff or refuses to take the stage until some detail or other is attended to. But soprano Sumi Jo managed to shock even the hardened pros at Opera Australia this week, when she left not only the company, but the continent, in the middle of a run of performances of Lucia di Lammermoor. The singer, who is pregnant, reportedly returned home to Rome on doctor’s orders, but did so without informing the company, the director, or even her own manager. Opera Australia execs found out when Sumi Jo’s hotel phoned up to tell them she’d checked out.

“The 200th anniversary of the birth of arguably France’s greatest composer Hector Berlioz has sparked a row over his final resting place. His devotees are divided over whether his remains should be moved to the Pantheon in Paris. The committee organising a year of celebrations and concerts to mark the bicentenary wants the highpoint to be the transfer of his body in a state ceremony on 21 June – France’s annual Fete de la Musique, or Music Day. But it is met with unexpectedly harsh opposition from many of the composer’s own fans, as well as from critics who say Berlioz was a right-winger with no place in France’s Republican Valhalla.”

Surprisingly, the Metropolitan Opera still holds a lowly position in the minds of many old-school European opera fans, who look at the New York institution as little more than a plaything for ultrarich Manhattanites. But if such views were once at least founded in truth, they have little to do with what the Met has become in modern times. True, money is still a big factor in its success, as it is for any opera company not subsidized by a government (as all those old-school European operations are,) but fiscal largesse aside, many critics now believe that the Met offers the best, most consistent operatic product to be found anywhere in the world.

Soon, it seems, there will be nothing left of the Colorado Springs Symphony but the name, a board, and a whole lot of questions. In the last month, the symphony has filed for bankruptcy, seen its music director resign in protest of that action, and gotten a judge to void its contract with its musicians. Now, the CSS’s associate conductor has resigned as well, taking some nasty shots at the board on his way out the door.

The Colorado Springs Orchestra, which hasn’t performed since December because of a million-dollar debt (and a filing for bankruptcy in January) petitioned a court to void its musicians’ contracts, arguing that “the contract put an untenable financial burden on the organization.” A judge voided it Thursday, and so now what happens? Maybe not much – without a contract the orchestra has no musicians. Without musicians, it’d difficult to play concerts. The orchestra’s future is getting cloudier…

The University of Indiana has long been known for its first-rate music school. Now it’s being known for its “piano team. In 1991 pianist Alexander Toradze – the Tbilisi-born, Moscow-trained piano virtuoso – was appointed as professor and began building a studio of young student and professional pianists from all over the world. “The model for his program in Indiana, Toradze explains, was the ‘class recitals’ he heard as a student at a music school for gifted children in his native Tbilisi and later during his studies at the Moscow Conservatory.”