Category: music

Heritage preservationists and music lovers are pitted against one another over the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s proposal to replace the famous Hollywood Bowl’s outdoor orchestra shell. The 71-year-old shell has notoriously poor acoustics and is so small sometimes one-third of the musicians have to sit outside. – CBC

“Everything boils down to money in Dallas,” at least in the eyes of conductor Andrew Litton who became music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1994 and has been fighting to bolster the DSO’s reputation ever since through an ambitious touring and recording schedule. – The Times (UK)

Banned from singing in public for the two decades since the overthrow of the Shah, Iranian singer Googoosh is finally taking the stage again, playing to sold-out, tearful crowds on her first North American your. “This is her power: the woman who encompasses for Iranians the resistance of John Lennon, the sensuous tragedy of Marilyn Monroe and the fame of Elvis. – Time (Europe)

Last November the recording companies sought to “reclassify under the nation’s copyright laws all sound recordings, like cassettes and CDs, as ‘work made for hire’. That slight change would mean musicians would never again be able to own their recordings. Instead, record companies would become the sole legal owners of a record over its legally copyrightable life, currently 95 years.” – Salon

Crossover recordings, once a low-risk, easy-profit cash cow that the big classical companies employed to subsidize more serious and expensive recording projects, have become a primary lifeline for those firms now that sales of classical recordings have flattened. But as the stakes grow higher and the new releases pile up, the debate about crossover flares anew. Is it a healthy means of bridging the gap between the classical and non-classical public? Or a crass ploy to kick new life into a sagging market? – Chicago Tribune

For whatever the music and productions were at this summer’s Bayreuth Festival, most of the interest and attention was turned on the festivals’ internal squabblings for power. – New York Times

Ishmael Reid has written what he calls a “gospera,” a new term to describe a new theatrical form, a combination of gospel and opera. Ensconced at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, it has been attracting enthusiastic audiences for a month now. ‘This was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera Company in 1992,’ Reed says. ‘The Opera wanted to present it as an opera, but I felt, considering the source, it would fit the story to add gospel voices’.” – New York Daily News

Conductor Leonard Slatkin took his lumps from female musicians after making sexist comments about the proper concert attire for women. – The Guardian

Slatkin’s remarks “prove is that in the orchestra pit, as in every other walk of life, it is always open season on women. Men, by contrast, tend to be mutually protective of one another. We will know we have achieved true equality when they congregate anxiously at social events, sucking in their stomachs and asking: ‘Does my belly look big in this?’ – The Guardian

“More and more prospective young instrumentalists and singers are attending jazz music schools, but find nowhere to play after completing their studies; clubs presenting jazz are finding it particularly difficult to fill rooms, and this goes for Manhattan as well as San Francisco.” – San Francisco Examiner

Musicians of the Atlanta Ballet orchestra have been on strike for 11 months. This week, six weeks before its season opens, the Atlanta Ballet says it will hire musicians from the Czech Republic for an October premiere and the annual holiday “Nutcracker.” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution