“By the mid-1950s, the civil rights movement in the US had become a major international news story. People were horrified by the brutality of Emmett Till’s lynching in 1955, and by the mob violence directed at young black students in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. It undercut America’s claims about freedom and equality. US foreign policy officials decided that America needed to create a new international narrative about its domestic racial struggle.” Enter Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and their colleagues.
Category: music
Half Of Britain’s Orchestral Musicians Don’t Earn Enough To Live On, Says Musicians’ Union
“Wages have stagnated as funding cuts take hold. Young musicians are particularly affected, with two-fifths of newcomers taking unpaid work in the last year. Forty-four per cent of players told the MU they struggled to make ends meet. And two-thirds of veteran musicians – who’d been playing for more than 30 years – said they’d considered alternative careers.”
Poland Has A New Chopin Competition – Using Strictly 19th-Century Pianos
“As Poland celebrates the centenary of its independence this year, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in collaboration with Polish Television and Polish Radio has organised [the International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments] not only to celebrate the country’s most beloved composer but to recapture Chopin’s sound world by using Érards, Broadwoods and Pleyels – period pianos with which Chopin was intimately familiar.” Reporter Andrew Larkin meets the competition’s founder, Stanisław Leszczyński.
When Music Critics Could Kill: A Look Back At The Glory Days Of Pitchfork
Amos Barshad: “It’s been years since the site had the kind of cultural cachet on which it built its empire. But music fans of a certain age can still rattle off the acts that landed notorious reviews and landmark 0.0 ratings – Travis Morrison! Robert Pollard!! Liz Phair!!! … A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to look back at those last moments when critics could kill. … I would talk to Black Kids and to Travis Morrison and to the other targets of Pitchfork‘s most infamous reviews, asking them: How did it feel? What did those reviews do to you?”
Paris’s Opéra-Bastille Closed For 18 Days Due To Mishap With Fire Curtain
Last week, two 18-ton cables that serve as counterweights to the stage’s metal fire curtain snapped. While no one was injured and the fire curtain did not fall to the stage, Paris Opera management has closed the auditorium until the cables can be repaired and other cables can be inspected. All of last week’s and this week’s performances at the Bastille have been cancelled; the theater should reopen on May 13. (in French)
Why Did Famed Gibson Guitars Go Bankrupt?
Faced with the prospect of paying off $500 million in debt—while tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon enter the speaker market—Gibson was forced to file for Chapter 11. Luckily, this doesn’t mean rockers won’t be able to replace the Gibson Les Pauls they smash on stage. The company reached a deal with its debtors that will let it continue to make its iconic guitars, as well as the other musical instruments it sells under brands including Baldwin pianos, Wurlitzer, Dobro, Epiphone, KRK, and Cerwin Vega.
The First Pussy Riot Oratorio
Prisoner of Conscience, composed by Jennifer Jolley for female vocal quartet the Quince Ensemble, draws its texts from the Russian punk rockers’ lyrics and from the transcribed proceedings of their 2012 trial on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for an impromptu (and very brief) protest performance they gave before the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.
This Singer Spent The Entire Rehearsal Period In The Hospital And Still Triumphed On Opening Night
Mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel was set to sing the female lead, Penelope, in Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses for Toronto’s baroque opera company, Opera Atelier, when she suffered third-degree burns in an accident. But she was determined not to miss out up on the project – and she didn’t. Here’s how she and the company pulled it off.
Toronto Symphony Finds Its Next CEO In Philadelphia
Matthew Loden, currently one of the two temporary co-presidents of the Philadelphia Orchestra (and before that, VP for institutional advancement), takes over in Toronto in July. He succeeds Gary Hanson, the former Cleveland Orchestra chief who stepped in after Jeff Melanson was forced to resign in 2016.
Leonard Bernstein And His Struggle For A New American Music
This August will mark Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday. The centenary celebrations started last August and are worldwide. The Bernstein estate counts more than 2,000 events on six continents. And there is plenty to celebrate. But if Bernstein remains a figure of limitless fascination, it is also because his story is archetypal. He embodied a tangled nexus of American challenges, aspirations, and contradictions. And if he in some ways unraveled, so did the America he once courted and extolled.