Category: music

Does an audience have the right to boo? Certainly there’s a long tradition of it (and some would say not enough booing goes on) at the opera. But “at some point, doesn’t loud booing cross the line from an expression of displeasure to a disruption of the performance? The issue was raised recently at the Metropolitan Opera during the season’s first performance of Mozart’s ‘Entführung aus dem Serail’…”

None of this waiting for years between appointing a new music director and the time he starts conducting your orchestra. The Toronto Symphony announced Peter Oundjian as its music director only last month. This week he gave his first concert. Were people excited? You bet. “Torontonians who, for the most part, have acted with severe ennui to the recent decline in fortunes of the Toronto Symphony” showed up in droves. “Roy Thomson Hall, which has often been half-empty for some of the greatest performers in classical music, was filled to overflowing for the free concert. The place was stuffed to the rafters, with lineups outside the hall and hundreds of people turned away. Hundreds turned away. When’s the last time that happened for a TSO concert? Answer: never.”

An instrument that resembles a Dalí-inspired melted viola is causing such excitement that there is a two-year waiting-list. Although the body is spruce and maple, the traditional ebony fingerboard is replaced by Formica to give it a lighter weight. Its eccentric shape also reduces the strain of arm and wrist stretching. The instrument, whose $12,000 (£7,300) cost is comparable to that of a normal viola, was made in America, at the Oregon workshop of David Rivinus. ‘The only thing sacrificed is visual symmetry. Does the shape change do anything to the sound? No’.”

A federal judge has ruled for the Met Opera in a dispute with the uniuon that represents the opera company’s restaurant workers. The judge said that “the union and its lawyers had victimized the Met through bad faith, willful misconduct, lying and withholding evidence.”

Kent Nagano, strongly rumored to be the leading candidate to replace Charles Dutoit at the helm of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, seems to have Canadian critics and audiences eating out of the palm of his hand these days, and his latest performances with the MSO are garnering rave reviews. “The audience was now enamoured. Coughs were stifled and allowed to burst forth only between the movements (instead of peppering the music with an independent staccato), and when the work was done, the crowd roared its approval. Musicians beamed, Nagano beamed and the audience was determined to show him they’d love him to bits if only he said yes.”

Legendary bluesman Ray Charles has cancelled an appearance in Colorado Springs this weekend, citing the presence of the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra, which was sponsoring the event, on the “Unfair List” of the musicians’ union. Charles is a longtime union stalwart who appeared on the cover of a recent issue of the national union’s monthly newspaper. The CSSO is in the midst of an acrimonious dispute with its musicians over the future of the organization. The two sides are hoping to agree to third-party mediation in the near future.

There are, of course, no more castrati, male singers castrated in their youth so as to preserve their high, immature voices. And while no one would ever suggest a return to the barbaric practice, music historians have long lamented the loss of the unique sound such performers produced. In the last century, the parts originally written for castrati have been largely sung by countertenors, men singing in highly developed falsetto. But many of the most difficult Baroque castrato operas have been all but abandoned for lack of skilled enough performers in the countertenor range. Until now.

Pakistani musicians near the Afghanistan border say police are harrassing musicians. “Several artists in Peshawar, North West Frontier Province, said they have been arrested and treated unfairly by police on the request of hardline Islamic parties. They claim it is part of a move to crack down on the arts by a six-party alliance of religious parties.”

Another small American orchestra is expected to shut its doors forever in the next few weeks. The Tulsa Philharmonic, the only full-time professional orchestra in Oklahoma, is struggling under a $1 million accumulated debt, and is not planning to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The orchestra has been playing concerts for 54 years.

Musicians of the Houston Symphony are planning a one-day strike Saturday, canceling a performance with guest soloist Midori. “The musicians said they scheduled the strike for Saturday because it’s the day management intends to impose a 14 percent salary cut, raise health-insurance premiums and begin reducing the orchestra by five players through attrition.”