Category: music

UK Music Companies Have Their Best Year In Decades

UK record labels enjoyed a 10.6% surge in earnings in 2017 to £839m, thanks to the digital popularity of a new generation of artists including Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Dua Lipa and Stormzy. It was the fastest growth since 1995, when Oasis, Blur and Pulp created a high-street CD sales frenzy. Music companies enjoyed a 45% year-on-year increase in subscription streaming revenue – from £239m in 2016 to £347m – as an industry hammered for a decade by illegal piracy now enjoys the success of music lovers turning to legitimate services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Cecil Taylor’s ‘Challenging’ Avant-Garde Jazz Was More Accessible Than (Some) People Think

“Consider the reaction of another listener: Jimmy Carter. In 1978, the president, not renowned as an especially sophisticated jazz listener, hosted a jazz festival at the White House. Most of the bill was reasonably mainstream, if widely varying in style – Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Clark Terry, Chick Corea – but it also included Taylor, who must have been hard-pressed to fit his expansive music into the requisite five-minute slot. The music was far from plain, but the man from Plains was agog. … ‘The president took the pianist’s two hands in his own, looking at them with wonderment and awe. ‘I’ve never seen anyone play the piano that way,’ he marveled.'” (includes sound clips)

Quebec Gives Millions In Extra Funding To Province’s Three Main Orchestras

“[The Montreal Symphony will] receive a supplemental grant of $7.5 million over five years in addition to the $8.8 million it gets annually from the province … The Orchestre Métropolitain [du Grand Montréal] can look forward to an extra $2.5 million over five years – one-third of the money awarded to the OSM, but a formidable sum if viewed as a proportion of its modest budget of about $5 million … The Orchestre symphonique de Québec will get $3 million.”

How The Aix Festival Became A Hotbed Of New Opera

General director Bernard Foccroulle credits the festival’s artist development program, L’Académie du Festival Aix: “You really have to work with a vision of the long term. We have been able to give birth to 12 operas or interdisciplinary creations very close to opera. I’m not only happy with the quality of the works but also with the quality of the reception, because we have proved that we can find an audience for good new pieces today without compromise and without trying to be just popular.”

Straight Actors Win Oscars For Playing Gay, But What It’s Like For These Singers To ‘Sing Straight’ When They’re Not?

They’re navigating a lot of money questions. “Since Years & Years won the BBC’s Sound of 2015, lead singer Olly Alexander has been refreshingly open about his sexuality. Speaking at a Stonewall event recently, he said he was advised by a media trainer not to disclose his sexuality when the band signed a record deal – but he ignored the advice.”

Britain Is In The Midst Of A Jazz ‘Explosion’

Whoa: “In the UK, a new and thrilling jazz movement has evolved. As with Lamar, Thundercat and Washington, it is born out of fresh experimentalism, is reaching far younger, more diverse audiences and doesn’t care for snootiness. Unlike in previous waves, these musicians are in their 20s and early 30s, come from diverse backgrounds and, as with grime, have created their own community outside of major labels and concert halls.”