Category: music

Mariss Jansons quit as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic last week to protest poor working conditions, particularly bad acoustics in the city’s concert hall. – Newsday

– named to direct Royal Liverpool. – Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“If music is truly distinct from speech, then it ought to have a distinct processing mechanism in the brain—one that keeps it separate from the interpretation of other sounds, including language. The evidence suggests that such a separate mechanism does, indeed, exist.” What exactly is the biology behind our reaction to music? – The Economist

Washington DC’s Austrian Embassy is “essentially a concert hall with offices wrapped around it, a fitting architectural metaphor for a country whose primary exports in the past century have been intellectual and artistic.” Pianist Andras Schiff was supposed to have played a concert at the embassy last night, but canceled in protest over right-wing extremist Jörg Haider’s rise in the Austrian government. – Washington Post

The London Symphony Orchestra played in Vienna this week. How odd, writes one of the orchestra’s cellists, to think of oneself as a national export from somewhere. But a new climate of nationalism was in the air and in the concert hall. With a French conductor, Argentinian-Jewish soloist, playing French and Russian and Austrian music, the LSO has been asking itself many questions on this tour. – The Scotsman

– classical music. The city’s only classical music radio station is the top music station in town, narrowly beating an adult-contemporary station. “The breezy, unchallenging classical format currently in favor at KDFC may have raised the ire of committed music lovers, but the station clearly has found a niche among a wider Bay Area audience.” – San Francisco Chronicle

Don’t quit your day job. – MSNBC (AP)

– Brooklyn Philharmonic’s well-regarded Robert Spano as its new music director. Atlanta’s budget is $21 million and has an endowment nearing $70 million, making it the largest performing arts organization in the Southeastern US. It is ranked 13th in budget size by the American Symphony Orchestra League. Spano is considered among the most important young American conductors. – New York Times

• San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles appointed Atlanta’s principle guest conductor. – San Francisco Chronicle 02/09/00

– records a $2.7 million deficit for last season, its largest ever. – Los Angeles Times

The big lie in writing about hip hop. – New York Press