Category: music

The accident led to the discovery of other, more insidious problems: Matteo’s three-hundred-year-old insides were collapsing. The top was losing its arch; the cracks were widening. “A domino effect,” Matt Haimovitz said. He visited every two months. Once, he arrived to find cello parts scattered around the room, attended to by different experts, like an intensive-care unit. “For thirty years, it goes everywhere with me, and then, so suddenly, not to have it around? And then to see it—” He broke off, full of emotion.

Pope Francis has authorized an investigation into “possible financial irregularities” within the Sistine Chapel Choir, Reuters reports.

Tovey, 65, recently stepped down as head of Canada’s Vancouver Symphony, where he was music director for the past 18 years, conducting as many as 50 concerts a season. He is also principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in England, and last year was named head of conducting studies at Boston University, where his 20-year-old daughter Jessica is a violin major.

“The LSO East London Academy will open in spring 2019 and will aim to identify and develop the potential of talented people between the age of 11-18. It will be a bridge between secondary schools and conservatoires. Crucially it will be free, offering training that can normally cost as much as £3,000 a year.”

The Erato recording of Berlioz’s opera, co-starring Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Stéphane Degout and Michael Spyres with John Nelson conducting the Strasbourg Philharmonic, won the magazine’s top award. Orchestra of the Year, won by the Seattle Symphony, is a new prize chosen by public online vote. Conductor Neeme Järvi received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Baroque violinist Rachel Podger was named Artist of the Year.

Artist managers are often drawn from the ranks of graduates in performance, musicology or related fields. Their passion for classical music makes them vulnerable to exploitation such as low starting salaries and unpaid overtime.

“Indeed, the musical performance had invigorated the crowd. The audience passionately chanted patriotic slogans, stormed into government buildings, and began destroying factory machinery. Within days, they were flying the flag of Independent Belgium, which was tied to a standard with shoelaces.” Lucas Reilly recounts the story of William I of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici, and the Belgian Revolution of 1830.

I have served as Chairperson and panelist for countless composer competitions and residencies over the course of the past twenty years. I have yet to witness any winner be selected because of a resumé stuffed with Important Sounding Awards. Not one. When the panelists and I looked at someone’s attached C.V., it was often just a passing glance. The composers who received these juried opportunities were selected because of one marvelous thing: the excellence and creativity of their music. Imagine that. And keep it in mind.

“Much of how we think about contemporary music criticism traces its roots to The Voice … The paper provided crucial early coverage of hip-hop, was dedicated in its coverage of jazz and modern classical, and weighed in on obscure rock and hyper-mainstream pop. On this week’s two-part Popcast, several former Village Voice music editors and music critics, whose tenures date from the paper’s early years up to the last decade, look back.” (podcast)

The sad truth is that all too often jazz suffers the same kind of casual dismissal that hip-hop, country, and EDM used to get before they took over the mainstream. Granted, this might be something only a jazz lover would notice but since at least the ’70s, jazz has become something of a niche market, to put it mildly. In terms of yearly record sales, jazz usually sells as much as classical music does, one of the many things the two genres have in common. Far too often jazz comes off as dated or quaint; it’s your granddad’s make out music. Worse, there’s an implied snobbishness often projected onto loving jazz — it’s a little like explaining that you prefer to spend your Saturday nights translating Hegel or making artisanal cheese.