Category: music

Chicago is one of the rare US cities that has two classical music stations. That may soon change. WNIB, the second station, has been sold, and it’s not considered likely that the new owners will keep the classical format. – Chicago Sun-Times

• A mood befitting a bedside vigil has descended on Chicago’s classical music community, with tributes issued, guarded hopes expressed and numerous experts trying to determine whether WNIB’s situation was symptomatic of some grave illness plaguing America’s classical music scene. – Chicago Tribune

“In this month’s Jazzwise magazine, saxophonist David Murray, the most recorded artist in the history of jazz, issues a declaration of war against Wynton Marsalis. Murray accuses him of stifling the creativity of a music which is inherently about change and improvisation, and of using his power to exclude those who do not adhere to his conservative agenda. ‘This is the most non-creative time in the whole history of jazz. They’ve stopped the clock and gone back again, to the 1960s and late 1950s, to define jazz. These guys are not doing jazz a service’.” – The Independent (UK)

Maria Callas’s personal things are being auctioned off. “Among the 415 lots are a pair of seamless, black stockings, a pale pink satin slip, a purple and black silk corset, and the much-photographed white mink stole that Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis gave her before he abandoned her for Jacqueline Kennedy.” – CNN

Baritone Thomas Allen is tired of the charges of elitism being hurled at London’s Royal Opera House. “If you want excellence, you can’t escape élitism. It’s the same with football. Cream rises to the top. Manchester United wants the best and works hard to get it. It’s nearly as expensive and impossible to get into a great football match as into an opera house.” – The Observer (UK)

So the major recording labels gutted their classical rosters and new releases slowed to a trickle. Small independent labels took up the challenge this year. Here are the Chicago Tribune’s picks for best classical recordings of 2000. – Chicago Tribune

Some critics are seeing improvement in tenor Andrea Bocelli’s singing in his new recording of “La Boheme.” Why? “Mr. Bocelli’s fans find his singing to be moving. I don’t know what they are hearing. His life story may be moving: a blind, ruddily handsome Italian of modest background takes up singing late, overcomes his timidity and achieves a dream-come-true career. But his singing is flat expressively. Phrase after phrase of Rodolfo’s music is sung with a husky, generic earnestness. Did no one discuss subtle points of interpretation with him?” – New York Times

Three years ago women in rock music dominated popular music. But in the past year there’s been a backlash. ”Lilith didn’t rock. It was like, `OK, women want to go off and do women’s music.’ But how can men identify with this? Especially young men? They were accepted at Lilith, but they weren’t really welcome. And I think it’s partly responsible for what’s happening in rock now. The music is loud and rude and crude. Guys can relate, but women can’t. There’s definitely a backlash against women in the rock world.” – Boston Globe

The self-effacing pianist Maurizio Pollini has always been a bit of a mystery, ever since his abrupt withdrawal from public life after winning the Warsaw Chopin Competition at 18. “When I learn a new piece, I try to work as quickly as possible at first; I have to know how it sounds, before I can begin to work on what it means.” – The Independent (UK)

“In the days before World Music, the Music of Africa series of 10 LPs, recorded in Africa and introduced by Hugh Tracey, were one of the few ways the general listener might encounter African music. A charismatic Englishman, Tracey was the great pioneer in the recording and study of Africa’s traditional sounds. But, throughout the surge of international interest in African music in the Eighties and the world-music boom that followed, Tracey’s name was barely mentioned. Not only did his ethnographic approach seem antiquated, Tracey himself was an embarrassment – a colonial figure who had distorted the music for his own purposes and allowed himself to become a tool of apartheid.” – The Telegraph (UK)