Category: music

Conductor Mariss Jansons almost died of a heart attack at the podium during a “La Bohème” in Oslo four years ago. Now at the helm of both the Oslo Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony, his career has hit an updraft – Vienna’s Musikvereinsaal recently launched an exclusively Jansons subscription series. – The Telegraph (UK)

It’s a mad project – mad – demented, even. “Take the egos of 19 composers and assign them roles in a compositional undertaking in which they have to conform to a single overriding artistic direction, to be interpreted by a dozen ensembles sometimes playing outdoors in a massive site. There will be “333 musicians, 2,000 bell-ringers, hordes of scouts and cadets, and thousands of Montrealers and visitors are expected to mass at the gardens of St. Joseph’s Oratory and be surrounded by the sound of the $1-million Symphony of the Millennium – a work collectively composed by 19 people. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

MP3.com announces it will supply background music to supermarkets and retail stores over the internet. Stores can program in their own commercials. – Variety

An awful lot of indie music is turning up on commercials for luxury items these days. Why? “If selling today’s college kids on conspicuous consumption is easy, selling it to twenty- and thirty-year-olds is a trickier proposition: how to define in marketing terms a demographic which, not so long ago, defined itself in opposition to the market? The answer is simple if you grant that ironies are like submarines; dangerous only when submerged.” – Feed

Joseph Dalton has been a tireless promoter of contemporary music with his recording label CRI. But after a decade running the company, the 37-year-old has stepped down – a loss for fans of new music. – New York Times

Outgoing music director Bramwell Tovey built a major new-music festival – one of the best in North America – and rebuilt the Winnipeg Symphony. But he also spent it into the ground, says the orchestra’s president. – CBC

Benjamin Britten’s estate has been managed so effectively that it is Britain’s most generous private patron of new music. But behind the fund, a Byzantine web of layers and policy maneuverings. – The Telegraph (UK)

“What opera needs, at least as much as great voices, is great personalities. Not ‘divas,’ in the debased sense of egomaniacs with mannerisms, but intrepid explorers of the human condition, each a Ulysses who has traveled far, seen much, felt deeply. Explorers who convey the fullness of experience through music, word and gesture, touching, in ways unique to themselves, the chord of the universal.” – New York Times

What happened to the jazz solo? “More often than not, I brace myself at that moment when all members of a group simmer down to accompany a solo from a frontline musician. Because it often means that I’m going to hear not just one solo, but a bunch of them. They may be long, far longer than they need to be. They may seem like place-fillers for what could be stronger, shorter, more memorable music. By the end of the tune, I’m often left wondering how it is that solos – and especially that theme-solos-theme format – became such a necessary part of jazz.” – New York Times

BBC’s Head of Classical Music Peter Maniura defends the BBC against recent criticism that it’s gone soft on classical music programming. – The Telegraph (UK)