Category: music

Vox Music Group has announced that it will burn individual CD copies of any part of its vast out-of-print catalog through a web site, eliminating the traditional process of a small repeat pressing, which often has been quite unprofitable. The announcement is exciting in part because it may signal a new wave of such ‘individual’ pressings by other companies, but also because Vox’s old recordings are some of the most extensive and sought after in the business.

When an orchestra is searching for a new music director or executive director, it can be difficult to maintain a cohesive sound and/or business strategy, since such searches take months to years, and generally involve a general reimagining of the whole organization. So imagine the current stress level at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where they are searching for a new managing director, a new board president, a new music director, a new resident conductor and a new vice president of development. Oh, and don’t forget about that pesky deficit, either.

“Don A. Gilmore, an amateur piano player and professional engineer from Kansas City, Mo, has developed an electronic system that he says could allow pianists to tune their own instruments at the touch of a button.” The system relies on heated strings, electricity, and an elaborate computer program which ‘remembers’ an initial tuning and can replicate it under almost any circumstances. The self-tuning models won’t be cheap, but then, neither are piano tuners.

The latest fad being embraced by the type of folks who rented tae-bo tapes by the case back in the late ’90s, and swore by their carrot juice in the ’80s is “taiko, one of the biggest crazes to hit the boomer generation since pilates and green tea.” It’s not a new idea, really: taiko combines the idea of music as personal therapy with the undeniable truth that it’s fun to make a lot of noise and bang on stuff. But this is more than a new-age experiment in self-esteem. Taiko ensembles are springing up all over, and the noise they make is real music, taken very seriously by those who create it.

“New Jersey philanthropist Herbert Axelrod’s 2-for-1 challenge grant, issued last Monday to help the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra buy 30 of his rare, 17th- and 18th-century Italian string instruments, has so far only netted a few thousand dollars for the NJSO. For every dollar contributed to the orchestra by today, Axelrod offered to take two dollars off the purchase price of $25 million, to a maximum of a $10 million drop in cost. Yesterday, though, it appeared that only a few thousand would be coming off the price tag,” and the orchestra will likely not be able to complete the sale.

The fire that damaged the venerable Moscow Conservatory has crippled one of the city’s great cultural institutions. “As aspiring performers and composers took final exams last week, there was no electricity, limited telephone service and a trickle of heat from an emergency system. A week after the Dec. 17 blaze, 16 precious concert grand pianos sat damaged or destroyed. Bundles of canvas hoses still dangled from the stairwells, and the air stank of soot.”

San Francisco Opera has an almost $8 million deficit. But the company doesn’t seem particularly worried. Rather than sit back and play it safe, Pamela Rosenberg, the company’s general director, has ambitious plans. “We are not going to get through this economic downturn and come out the other end by replacing quality with mediocrity,” Ms. Rosenberg, who has set the company on course to becoming America’s most adventurous opera house, said in a recent telephone interview.”

A homeless choir formed in Montreal in a men’s shelter in 1996 to sing Christmas carols for spare change in the city’s subway, has finally disbanded, a thousand performances later. “The group achieved international recognition, including an invitation to sing at Paris’s busiest subway stations in 1998. The choir also released two CDs, was the subject of a book and a TV program and performed at the Just for Laughs comedy festival as a free street act.” Why quit? Many of the singers found jobs and their lives became more stable.

Glenn KnicKrehm is builing a performing arts complex in Boston. He’s putting $20 million of his own into the project, is raising the rest, and is steeping himself in acoustic theory. “He was a transplanted Californian who loved the Boston area but believed there was a hole in the cultural scene. There weren’t many prime spots for performance. And those that did exist, Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, were run by massive cultural institutions. Smaller arts groups scrambled for open dates in second-tier spaces.”