Category: music

“The most popular theory about the origins of music on elevators, repeated everywhere from the New Yorker to the writer Joseph Lanza’s history of Muzak, is that elevators were terrifying, and people needed the music to calm their frazzled nerves. … Yet on closer interrogation, there are a few holes in this explanation. The earliest known references to music in elevators are from the early 1930s … Were people really afraid of elevators nearly 80 years after they were invented?”

The Philadelphians’ performances in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem have gotten unusually warm receptions (standing ovations and rhythmic clapping) from Israeli audiences. And yet, reports David Patrick Stearns, several musician visits to community organizations, including to a center for disadvantaged children and to the leading music center serving Israeli Palestinians, have been cancelled because those organizations didn’t want to get caught up in the controversy and media attention surrounding the tour.

“The shop — in the heart of the Diamond District, on West 47th Street — is crowded with used instruments and the whimsical sculptures that [Perry] Ritter creates during his downtime from spare saxophone parts. … His workbench is nestled in one of the densest commercial hives in the city, in a building largely occupied by jewelry merchants.”

“In its heyday, the Estey Organ Company factory was the beating, bleating heart of Brattleboro, Vermont. It produced more than half a million organs in total and, at its peak, employed more than 500 people. On a fateful day in 1960, however, the assembly lines shut down and workers departed. After nearly a century in operation, the organ factory had gone silent. And then, like the most improbable boomerangs, the organs started coming back.”

“The studios were originally constructed in 1909 as a short-lived rollerskating venue. The BBC took over the building in the 1930s and refurbished it to serve as studios, making it one of the broadcaster’s oldest buildings. However, the distinctive and unusual building is in a residential area and contains asbestos, increasing the cost of refurbishment.”

In addition to his post at the Zurich Opera, Fabio Luisi is the principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and is succeeding Zubin Mehta as the music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Earlier this decade, many observers had expected Mr. Luisi to become the next music director of the Met. He won over critics and audiences while filling in for an ailing James Levine in the midst of a new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, and was named principal conductor in 2011. But Mr. Levine returned after two seasons away and resumed his post.

Recently, I found myself blinking back tears while chatting with a colleague as I was summarizing the story I had seen at the Houston Grand Opera’s Resilience Theater. It really was a beautiful story about, and told by, people who had refused to accept the risk of losing the place that they call home.

That is, a typewriter – or laptop – keyboard. The Qwerty Ensemble “bonded in an empty conference room over Mozart and Brahms two years ago, gathering after work on a regular basis,” and now they’re rehearsing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.

Why did playwright David Henry Hwang and composer Huang Ruo take on the story of the 2011 suicide of 19-year-old Private Danny Chen? “Opera deals with big themes, with epic themes. … It’s very comfortable dealing with tragedy, with death and, of course, with love, also,” the playwright said, and the composer said, “This was an American story.”

The programme, which opens on December 7th, will include the veteran US director’s riotous rendition of Gianni Schicci, set in New York’s “Little Italy” in the 1930s. Allen’s version, which was a hit in Los Angeles in 2015 with Spanish legend Placido Domingo in the title role, will play in Milan in July 2019.