Ideally, conductors and directors enable musicians and actors to express themselves as individually as possible, while inspiring them to do so along a route that they have chosen for the group as a whole. Managing a broad coalition that still has a distinct vision as its aim might appear a contradiction to some, but achieving this – without any sense of artistic compromise – is definitely the goal.
Category: music
Tim Page: How I Rebuilt My Brain With Music After A Brain Injury
“When I was still very sick – confused and frightened, with no sure prognosis and the possibility of another seizure looming – I determined to try to rebuild my thought processes with music. And so I spent much of every day listening to complicated pieces which were already familiar but not too familiar – Bach cantatas, Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations,” Wagner operas and long symphonies by Bruckner and Mahler.”
Recording Academy, To Address Diversity Problem, Adds 900 Members To Pool Of Grammy Voters
“Invites were extended to a broad range of music creators, including vocalists, songwriters, instrumentalists, producers and engineers. All 900 invitees, who were pre-qualified to vote by the Recording Academy, are female and/or people of color and/or under 39.”
BBC Philharmonic’s Next Chief Conductor Is Omer Meir Wellber
The 36-year-old Israeli takes over the Manchester-based broadcasting orchestra next season, succeeding Juanjo Mena. He is also chief conductor at the Semperoper in Dresden.
Violinist Leila Josefowicz Wins $100,000 Avery Fisher Prize
When she was given the prize on Thursday night, she was performing with the New York Philharmonic in Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto — which, as reporter Michael Cooper observes, “counts almost as early music for her.”
An Opera About Locusts (Yes, Really)
Rocky Mountain locusts, to be specific. In the late 19th century, trillions of them laid waste to gardens, farms, and fields in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. Then, by 1902, they vanished completely. Two University of Wyoming professors, an entomologist and a composer, wrote a chamber opera about the ravenous insects’ rise and fall; it premiered last week in Jackson Hole.
How John Adams Became Irrelevant?
Adams still gets standing ovations, and “Harmonielehre” is a staple of the symphonic literature, but his relevancy has tapered off over the last 15 years. How did this happen? When did this happen? The answers could only be in Adams’ heart and mind, if he indeed can step back to see the current state of his art.
What Experiencing ‘The Mile Long Opera’ Is Really Like
Josephine Livingston: “The effect is extraordinary. It’s polyphony, but you, the listener, control what you hear. Curious about how the music melds with the music further down the park? Just keep walking. Captivated by a particular passage? Stay where you are. Dynamics in sound become dimensions in space. You’re so close to the singers that it’s awkward. Look them in the eye or look at your feet: It’s your choice. … In The Mile Long Opera, there are as many operas as there are listeners, because it changes according to your position in space and your frame of mind. It exists to the extent that one is tuning in.”
Heidi Waleson And Justin Davidson: Why New York City Opera Failed
City Opera faced two major problems. First, by the mid-1990s, the audience that had sustained the company in its early years had gotten considerably older. Younger people were coming in — a thrill-seeking audience, interested in unusual works — but not enough of them. Which brings us to the financial problem. Ticket sales were flat and costs were going up because of inflexible labor contracts. These trends affect companies everywhere.
An Oral History of Vibe Magazine
“Conceived as a hip-hop magazine by two unlikely parents — the most powerful black record producer in the world, Quincy Jones, at the behest of the most powerful media executive in the world, Steve Ross … [Vibe had] a creed that championed hip-hop but thought broad and wide about the genre’s connections to the past and the future, and its implications for just about every other art and science. … What follows is a selective oral history of the magazine, from its birth and ascent, through its 21st-century transformation into a digital cultural bellwether.”