It’s all about local in Baltimore, and musicians know it as well as anyone. “The city’s emerging musicians represent a collage of perspectives, aesthetics and reasons for being. Some of them are decidedly activists; others wear their political views more lightly, or express skepticism about art’s ability to effect change. Most of the artists acknowledge the influence of jazz and hip-hop in their music, even as it defies categorization. And each in their own way believes Baltimore informed their creativity.”
Category: music
History – And A Lot Of Music – Gets Lost When Writers Think Women ‘Play Like Girls’
The problem starts with access to audiences and continues with the way women who produce, conduct, and play music get described in the media – which ends up leaving women, including an integrated all-women’s swing group that was a direct precursor to the Freedom Riders in Mississippi, out of the histories of their eras.
Six Years After A Strike, The Spokane Symphony Musicians And Management Sign A Three-Year Contract
Impressive change from 2012: “The contract includes a cost of living increase, Family Medical Leave Act language, processes that address air quality at outdoor concerts and scheduling language that will ‘help our musicians balance their multiple jobs so that it is more possible for them to be able to make a decent, living income.'”
Remembering The Now-Gone Music Stores On NYC’s 48th Street
Forty-eighth Street was once famous for stores that sold musical instruments. Those stores catered to musicians of every stripe, but the vibe was very rock and roll. The names that stand out for me are Manny’s and Sam Ash, but there were several others, packed together, one next to the other, each a world unto itself. In my own private atlas of the city, that street was also notable for the degree its character changed in the course of one block, from Seventh Avenue to Sixth Avenue. The music stores, like the support of a seesaw, were the point at which that character made its pivot.
Opera Australia Bets The Future On A (TK) Digital Revolution
Lyndon Terracini is staking much of the future and reputation of the national opera company on a digital revolution designed to immerse audiences and create an experience more akin to watching a movie than traditional opera. The glittering reptiles on the Joan Sutherland Theatre stage are part of the wholly digital production design for OA’s upcoming Aida. It’s the first step along a road Terracini says will revolutionise the way opera is staged and experienced.
A Composer With Migraines Sees St. Hildegard Of Bingen As A Model
Jenny Giering: “In a theological work, Scivias, she described an experience strikingly similar to my own: ‘When I was 42 years and 7 months old, Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast.’ Hildegard is best known, though, for her music — a powerful body of mystical religious chants that are listened to more widely today than the music of any other single composer of her time. I want to talk to her.”
Scientific Study: Beetles REALLY Don’t Like Rock Music
The researchers report beetles who were serenaded by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings ate just as many aphids as those who dined in silence. But exposure to the rock music greatly depressed their appetites. Listening to AC/DC reduced by nearly half the number of aphids they consumed over a 16- to 18-hour period.
Yuval Sharon Wants To Stage ‘La Bohème’ Backwards
The MacArthur-winning director, whose staging of Lohengrin is about to open the Bayreuth Festival, seriously proposes doing Puccini’s opera in reverse order, Acts 4 through 1. “It will work really well, from devastation to the beginning. Some people might even think it’s the way it’s supposed to happen. …You can put it on the moon or anywhere else and it’s still the same old Bohème. But how do you get to the core of this piece if not by radically transforming our ability to listen to this piece and thereby open a door to a way that we’ve never thought about it before? So if we end in Act 1, with them singing offstage with these high C’s, what a wonderful way to end an opera.”
Anna Netrebko And Yusif Eyvazov Cancel Because They’re In Quarantine With Norovirus
The superstar soprano and her tenor husband were to star in this weekend’s performances of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in Baden-Baden until health authorities required them to stay away. Singers Tatiana Serjan and Migran Agadzhanyan are coming to the last-minute rescue.
Donald Trump, The Opera?
Donald Trump is the undisputed hero of this comic opera in three acts. “Comic” does not here mean superficial or laugh-out-loud hilarious: as Rossini so superbly demonstrated in “The Barber of Seville”, comic opera combines a sophisticated analysis of human interactions with a light touch. Foreign policy offers plenty of opportunities to study human nature; at summits, each participant brings not only his or her personality but a country’s sensitivities, strengths and weaknesses to bear. Like Bartolo—the central character in “The Barber of Seville”, a buffoon-like doctor of medicine with ambitions that supersede his abilities—Mr Trump is sung by a bass.