Category: music

Kirill Serebrennikov has been confined to his home for well over a year on embezzlement charges many say are trumped-up. Zurich Opera House had engaged Serebrennikov to direct Così fan tutte two years ago and decided to go ahead, figuring that he’d be released by now. No such luck — worse, he’s not allowed to use the internet or even a telephone. Shaun Walker reports on how Serebrennikov is managing to stage the production anyway.

This is the third such accusation against William Preucil, who has been suspended by the orchestra while management investigates the initial claim. As with that first allegation, both of the women who have just come forward say that the incidents happened during private lessons with Preucil.

“Given my experiences in Mexico, my lingering question has been, “Who decided, or why do we feel, that we must upend our programming in order for people of targeted ethnicities to comprehend and enjoy classical music played by a live orchestra?” It strikes me as suspiciously odd that, for all our talk about the universality of classical music, administrators, and, certainly some musicians, when they think of specific ethnic groups, must suddenly condescend to them, patronizingly and awkwardly changing what we do to suit all the clichés.”

Why doesn’t folk play a larger part in environmentalism? There is wonderful and powerful music already out there; Karine Polwart and Nancy Kerr are among the artists writing environmental material. And there’s a fascinating new project, Songhive, that highlights the plight of Britain’s native bees. But much more can be done to poetically explore the environmental challenges we face as a species, the politics that underpin the damage we are doing and how as humans we are responding.

Spotify speaks to this silent majority of music fans. Audiophiles, object fetishists, anti-capitalists, musicians – these groups noisily protest Spotify, but are marginal compared with the number of ordinary listeners, who never read the liner notes in the first place. For many people, music is just for mood, something to work, exercise or have sex to – situations that Spotify usefully caters to with playlists such as Productive Morning, Extreme Metal Workout and 90s Baby Makers.

“Located on the other side of an unassuming door within a larger complex, In Sheep’s Clothing — offering tea, coffee, cocktails, craft beer, wine and Japanese whiskey — was inspired by Japanese jazz cafes, known as jazz kissaten, or jazz kissa. Designed to evoke first-glimpse wonder, the minimal room, with blond wood, a half-dozen bar tables and mismatched Mid-century Modern chairs, has a sound system that costs as much as a luxury car. Where a restaurant website might list its farm sources, In Sheep’s Clothing lists its audio components.”

As the music is created by a sizable number of musicians working today, jazz is something other than—and maybe something more than—a heritage. It is a way to confront the particulars of the present day and give voice to what it feels like (and sounds like) to live in a time of seemingly endless access and cultural volatility. While some jazz critics are at home in the present (I’d like to think of myself as one of them), no writer has confronted the of-this-moment character of contemporary jazz with the clarity and authority that Nate Chinen has brought to it, first in his journalism and now in a daring and illuminating book, Playing Changes.

Jens Lindemann said his rental car didn’t move so much as an inch for about 10 hours after multiple traffic incidents, including a jackknifed semi-trailer, made the road impassable. “During the day, it was a little funny at first because I grabbed my trumpet and started playing some trumpet fanfares and O Canada and people were getting out of their cars and talking to each other.

The project will look back at 100 years of classical music in the UK and will be covered online and on BBC Four, BBC Two and Radio 3. The corporation has one of the biggest classical music archives in the world, with recordings from the BBC Proms, BBC orchestras and choirs along with BBC Young Musician and BBC Introducing.

The choir was renamed Friday to strip out the word Mormon in a move aimed at ending shorthand names for the religion that have been used for generations by church members and others.