“I will add that I’ve enjoyed my years as a critic and journalist writing about music and musicians. It was fun while it lasted, and the free tickets were much appreciated! But at the same time, the precariousness of the work has taken a toll. For the last decade, the life of a freelance critic has become an increasingly difficult and frustrating struggle – and the end-result of the struggle was not any kind of advancement to a more secure, ongoing situation, but just more struggling.”
Category: music
How Koranic Chanting Morphed Into Sizzling Afropop
“Across working-class Muslim neighborhoods in Yorubaland, for nearly 50 years, a high-energy sound has been heard on busy street corners and at parties. Fuji, a raw and percussive musical style, was born out of these communities; a cultural cornerstone adapted by a number of players to a backdrop of a continually shifting Nigeria.”
Hurricane Harvey Cost Houston Grand Opera $15 Million
“Houston Grand Opera has raised more than $9.5 million to offset losses caused by the flooding of the Wortham Theatre Center last August during Harvey. The company expects financial losses will total $15 million over three years, according to a report detailing information presented during HGO’s annual meeting on May 30.”
An Opera Written For The Space Under Brooklyn’s Most Famous Graveyard
“[David Hertzberg’s] The Rose Elf features a pair of star-crossed lovers who are figuratively torn apart when one of them is literally torn apart by a jealous rival. … Opera-goers will follow a candle-lit pathway through [Green-Wood Cemetery] to the subterranean tombs, and take seats along one wall of the catacomb’s long, narrow hallway, with the performance taking place all along the crypt-lined corridor.”
We Need To Bring Opera Back To ‘Its Essential Simplicity’: Conductor Mark Wigglesworth
“When people say that opera is not for them, I think – more often than not – they mean that going to the opera is not for them,” writes the former music director of English National Opera. “Or at least what they perceive the experience of going to the opera to be. I don’t believe the art form is the problem. But many find it hard to imagine opera away from the expensive, exclusive and entitled associations attached to it. That’s understandable. For at some point the reputation of opera became separated from its actual performance. The evening parted company with the event.”
Why Classical Music Should Care About Architecture
“Our destinies are very much tethered to the direction of the overall city. Certainly a hall can be an anchor institution, but if nothing is going on inside the hall most of the time, then it is dead space. It is important that as we design these halls they can be used throughout the day. One of the things that I am trying to do is to re-imagine the foyer of the concert hall as a shared workspace. It could be like a public library, where pretty much anyone can go in there. What if we were to merge public libraries and concert halls so that the experience is like going into a learning center that has a concert hall within it?”
Could A Classical Music Talent Show Become A TV Hit? (Well, It Worked In Hungary)
“Virtuosos is a talent contest which already has a track record of attracting a mass viewership – in its native Hungary. It was started in 2014 by entrepreneur Mariann Peller, … with impressive results: the show’s fourth series has been reaching audiences of over 700,000 per episode, with the 2017 final not far short of the million viewer mark – nearly one in ten of the country’s population, which is comparable to the reach in the UK of mass market talent shows like The X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent.” Now Peller is going to try bringing the show to Great Britain and the U.S. – with no less than Plácido Domingo signing on to be a guest judge.
‘It’s The Most Gorgeous, Loveliest Thing You Can Possibly Hear”: Charles Wuorinen On His Opera ‘Brokeback Mountain’
Okay, he was being a bit facetious, but he said that and a whole lot more to reporter Tim Teeman for an extended feature on the genesis of the opera from the hit film and E. Annie Proulx novella and on its upcoming production at New York City Opera.
Study: Loud Music In Restaurants Promotes Unhealthy Ordering
Dipayan Biswas, a marketing professor at the University of South Florida, conducted the study at a cafe in Stockholm, where various genres of music were played on a loop at 55 decibels and 70 decibels at different times, for several days. When the music was louder, researchers found 20 percent more customers ordered something that was not good for them, compared to those who dined during the lower-volume times.
Kansas City Symphony Chief To Step Down
Frank Byrne spent 27 years with the U.S. Marine Band, initially as a tuba player and then executive assistant to the director and acting chief administrator before coming to the Kansas City Symphony as general manager in 2000. Then-Symphony board Chairwoman Shirley Helzberg asked him to take on the executive director role in 2002. Since then the Symphony’s budget has grown from $8 million to nearly $19 million. Last year the Symphony successfully completed a $55 million fundraising campaign to strengthen its endowment.