Category: music

I order the set on Amazon, used, for over 100 euros. It comes with a pile of CDs and a “Handbook,” basically a thick CD booklet. One morning, I make myself comfortable next to my electronic keyboard and pop Masterclass 1 into the player. The masterclass begins by talking up the value of perfect pitch. Without it, “something is lacking,” the voice tells me. He says that listening to music without perfect pitch is like watching a movie on a black-and-white TV.

Much of what the orchestra does is, in fact, innovative. The orchestra is well on its way to having one of the youngest audiences in the U.S., if not the world. The orchestra’s adventurous opera productions consistently surpass those of full-time opera companies in terms of production and sheer music-making. Student subscriptions, generously subsidized by philanthropy, are more affordable than those for many other orchestras. And the orchestra maintains residencies at some of the world’s most revered halls, including the Musikverein in Vienna and Lincoln Center in New York. Yet the orchestra’s commitment to innovation stops, frustratingly and inexplicably, with its choice of repertoire.

The seven-day, 26-hour avant-garde behemoth requires not only vocal and instrumental soloists, choir, orchestra, ballet dancers, and electronics, but four helicopters as well. (Yes, the notorious “Helicopter Quartet” is from LICHT.) The Dutch, being practical folk, have now devised a smaller-scale adaptation: aus LICHT, which runs a mere 15 hours of music over three days. Reporter Simon Cummings finds out how they did it (and convinced the famously controlling Stockhausen Foundation to cooperate).

The 40-year-old Colombian-Austrian, who’s also chief conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, succeeds Philippe Jordan (who’s also music director of the Paris Opera) at the start of the 2020-21 season. (At that point, Jordan will cross the street to become music director of the Vienna State Opera.)

“Because of a financial shortfall, the Symphony Orchestra’s board of directors have scheduled a special meeting late Thursday afternoon to see if the group will be able to find a way to afford putting on the final concerts of its season May 5-6.”

Classical or art music has undergone a sea change over the last two decades or so. Music historians debate over when the Common Practice Period — characterized by tonality — began or ended exactly, but most generally put its demise roughly coinciding with the start of the 20th century. When many laypeople think of modern art music, they think immediately of the dissonant Modern period. That’s when composers deliberately eschewed any conventional notions of melody or harmony.

Contained within a walkable radius of historic downtown Knoxville — in a range of ornate landmark theaters, refurbished industrial spaces, art galleries, churches, and clubs — it creates its own atmospheric climate, along with a center of gravity. From its first iteration in 2009, the festival has been a locus of expedition, defined more by a go-anywhere ethos than by any style or genre allegiance.

The case won by Chris Goldscheider has huge implications for the industry and the health and safety of musicians. It is the first time a judge has scrutinised the music industry’s legal obligations towards musicians’ hearing.

“Executive director Eduardo Mendez said the program must overcome a crippling economic crisis that has forced hundreds of musicians to leave the country and move on from the loss of José Antonio Abreu, who created the orchestra network known as El Sistema. … He said 8 percent of the program’s teachers have recently left the country to seek a better life abroad. The network’s marquee Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra has lost 42 percent of its musicians over the past six months, though most of the vacancies have been filled with younger musicians.”

Reporter Mark MacNamara talks to members past and present about how the collective’s members make musical decisions, how they give each other feedback, what kind of person makes a good Orpheus member (meek and deferential won’t cut it), and whether the Orpheus model cam work elsewhere.