Category: music

Just as the advent of the commercial recording industry (and, later, the evolution of analog recording formats, from wax cylinders to 78-r.p.m. disks and long-playing vinyl records) changed the way musicians write and produce songs, so, too, has streaming. With everything now cleaved from its original time and circumstance (and, it feels worth noting, its cultural and historical context), young songwriters can cull influence from all sorts of disparate sources and make work that feels, somehow, both new and ancient.

“The Elgin Symphony Orchestra’s season finale concerts were saved by ‘an outpouring of support’ from the community, which donated more than $140,000 since a public plea 10 days ago, orchestra officials said.”

“Much of the public conversation about important issues in the music business seems light in nutritional value, or narrowly focused on the concerns and actions of a handful of superstars. If you’re working in a genre or music subculture that isn’t based around mass-market assumptions, your concerns may be absent. We can all read dozens of hot-takes on the latest celebrity copyright kerfuffle, but how many of them examine whether a young composer whose work has been infringed has any meaningful recourse, if she can’t afford expensive legal representation?”

“In the 1960s, [Saul] Chandler was one of the most promising classical violin prodigies in New York. … But when Mr. Chandler turned 16, the pressures of producing excellence consumed him, and he had a nervous breakdown that derailed his career. He estranged himself from classical music and in an act of reinvention legally changed his name. He would lead a circuitous life that has since involved running a seedy hotel in Times Square, a successful career in mathematics and dramatic voyages at sea. Thirty years ago he started building boats on City Island, where he found peace on its waters.”

“There are violinists who talk about Strads, which are old, and Zygs, which are less old. The violinist Chad Hoopes, who used to play a Strad, now plays the other. The word ‘newer’ would have been tidier in that first sentence. But ‘less old’ seemed appropriate after Mr. Hoopes, who went from playing a Strad made in 1713 to playing a Zyg made in 1991, said that the Zyg is ‘not a new violin.’
‘It’s older than I am,’ he added, quickly.”

Today’s Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is in large measure Tovey’s creation, having brought in more than half the players and significantly raised performance standards, as anyone could testify who attended this year’s recently concluded Spring Festival.

They anointed themselves the “most accessible orchestra on the planet,” and have gone some ways toward justifying that superlative. Tickets are cheaper than at other orchestras; my press seat, on the left orchestra aisle, would have cost twenty-five dollars. Neighborhood concerts reach into underserved communities. Most strikingly, the Detroit offers free Webcasts of its concerts—an initiative that seems obvious but that few other orchestras have tried. Anne Parsons, the Detroit’s president and C.E.O., told me, “We’ve gone from three thousand viewers on average to around seventy-five hundred—in one case, thirty-five thousand. It’s brought great young musicians to us—they can see what we’re doing. I was sure that, by now, everyone else would be doing it. I’ve stopped wondering and haven’t looked back.”

“That night, it didn’t take long for some rather prominent coughing to break out, before the crowd let loose with less subtle forms of protest: boos and catcalls, the agitation growing over the course of the piece’s 15-plus minutes. At one point, an older woman approached the stage, took off a shoe, and banged it on the stage, imploring the ensemble—which included Reich and Tilson Thomas—to stop. Someone else sprinted down an aisle, yelling, “All right! I confess!” Other aggrieved patrons simply left.”

By analyzing the kinds of songs and artists that had the most success on the Hot-100, we can see that in 9 short years, there have been major changes in music.