Category: music

“For this project, the music streaming service Spotify gave me data on how frequently every song is listened to by men and women of each particular age. The patterns were clear. Even though there is a recognized canon of rock music, there are big differences by birth year in how popular a song is.”

From a children’s choir to pop stars to a soprano who sings with Theatre Bonn and who was “arguably the star of the night,” here are the musicians who got listeners around the world buzzing in the opening ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Musicologist Douglas Shadle: “Everything she was doing was musically mainstream but at the same time idiosyncratic. … Her music has kind of a luminous quality that strikes me as her own. Our understanding of American modernism of the 1930s and 1940s is not complete without Price’s contribution.”

Robert Meya proposed to the search committee that he be considered as part of a management “troika” that would divide administrative, artistic, and musical responsibilities among three people. This differs fundamentally from the company’s historic model, in which the general director has assumed lead responsibility for all of those areas. The Opera’s board is authorized to appoint only the general director and, as a matter of policy, does not act directly in other staffing decisions. Meya is accordingly being hired as general director with the understanding that his first act of business is to name Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company’s general director Alexander Neef to the newly created position of artistic director and Santa Fe Opera’s chief conductor Harry Bicket to be the company’s music director. The three members of the management team have all been acquainted with each other for years.

Berklee wants to build new spaces both physical and virtual and break down barriers between all the arts disciplines emphasizing the transferability of skills. And perhaps best of all for the students, it focuses attention upon affordability which in turn will support recruitment and retention. The plan is visionary and under the extraordinary leadership of President Roger Brown more than doable. As Brown puts it, “With music, movement and digital technology converging, artists possess powerful new means of creative expression in the theater, on the concert stage, and through emerging platforms.”

Mark Swed, in the LA Times, risks hyperbole when he writes, “No orchestra has ever come close to the ambition of this centennial season.” But it’s hard to think of an immediate counterexample.

Alex Ross looks at Florence Price (1887-1953), whose works are undergoing a modest revival that, Ross argues, ought to be much bigger.

Susan McClary: “So when I published Feminine Endings, I thought, Well, I’m just bringing the kinds of questions everyone in the social sciences and humanities were already asking. I just wanted to be able to make sense of music at various moments in history, and to read it in the ways that literary scholars read plays or novels – to talk about how they are making cultural sense. I hadn’t realized how isolated musicology was.”

“Acclaimed pianist Inon Barnatan has been chosen by the La Jolla Music Society to succeed Cho-Liang ‘Jimmy’ Lin as the music director of SummerFest, the nonprofit arts organization’s annual August chamber-music festival. … Barnatan, 38, will take over in 2019 from Lin, 58, who will conclude his 18th year heading SummerFest on Aug. 31.”

In addition to their rare performances abroad, North Korea’s modern musicians play an essential role at home as propagandists for the government. Songs are usually aimed at building the Kim personality cult and legitimizing the Kims’ leadership role by invoking Mount Paektu, the sacred symbol of the family. Titles include “Our Comrade Kim Jong Un” and “We Know Only You.”