Category: music

Grammy nominations got spread around this year. “In years past, a glut of nominations would push a single artist above the fold, but this year the flattened field presented more subtle story lines amid the sprawl of 104 categories. Among those themes: the musical reverberations of Sept. 11, the solidifying of rap’s stature in top categories and the heralding of a new generation of young female stars in the closely watched category of best new artist.”

Grammy nominators did a ho-hum job of picking artists this year. “In the top three categories alone, the reaction to the nominees is likely to range from hurrah to ‘huh?’ to ‘double-huh’?”

Here’s a list of all of this year’s Grammy nominees

In the midst of a major (and controversial) renovation, Milan’s La Scala proposes a big expansion, including a series of new theatre spaces. “It is an odd time to propose an expansion, with budget deficits at the major opera houses and shrinking public funding for culture in Italy. And indeed, the motives behind the project may not be purely artistic. Local observers believe that La Scala is collaborating with real estate developers who seek to enrich themselves at the ultimate expense of taxpayers.”

“To the new generation of music artists and engineers, ‘CD-quality sound’ is an ironic joke. In recording studios, today’s musicians produce their works digitally at resolutions far beyond the grainy old CD standard. To make the sounds listenable on antiquarian CD players, the final mix is retrofitted to compact disc specs by stripping it of billions of bits’ worth of musical detail and dynamics. It’s like filming a movie in IMAX and then broadcasting it only to black-and-white TV sets. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The pop music concert industry sold a record number of tickets in 2002, taking in $2.1 billion. “This was the fourth straight year concert receipts reached record levels in America. There were $1.75 billion in sales in 2001. Paul McCartney had the top-grossing tour, pulling in $103 million, with average ticket prices at $130.

Football’s popular. So maybe classical music ought to be more like football, writes Julian Lloyd Webber. “In future, all concerts must be refereed. Points for performances will be awarded and performers’ league tables established. Issues of promotion and relegation will be keenly watched by merciless, gum-chewing managers, who will have their chosen substitutes from the youth team eagerly waiting on the bench. Wrong notes will be severely penalised and performers adopting too slow tempi will be yellow-carded for time-wasting. String players using over-sentimental portamenti – and pianists who over-pedal – will be justly punished ‘for bringing the music into disrepute’.”

So how is it that six male opera singers have won Kennedy Center Honors since the awards were started in 1978, but never an American male opera singer?

Twenty years after he died of a stroke, pianist Glenn Gould is still a star. David Patrick Stearns wonders why. “Philosophically, I admire Gould’s irreverence: I believe that every performance should confront and challenge the listener. However, his insights often arose from obscure, perverse viewpoints. Once, he recorded Mozart piano sonatas to illustrate why the composer wasn’t, to his mind, much good. These interpretive agendas often weren’t presented with great regard for communication.”

“With a minimum of online searching, fans of virtually any band from arena-filling superstars to cult-worshiped club acts, can find a Web site or electronic mailing list to feed a habit for live CD’s. Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen? No problem. Illicit recordings, or bootlegs, of their concerts circulate soon after the last car leaves the parking lot. But a show by the singer-songwriter Dirk Hamilton or the electronica musician Luke Vibert? Also no sweat. In the music world, you’re nobody until somebody loves you enough to want your bootlegs.”