Category: music

“What I find particularly interesting in this technological revolution is the continuing resistance from many musicians, conductors, architects, clients and funders who remain vehemently opposed to electronic acoustics — despite their obvious benefits. This camp claims that the technology and underlying power supplies are not dependable, that the complexity of the system is beyond them, and that the sounds are just not good. This resistance is not a small thing. Installation of these new technologies forces huge additional expenditures and investments in order to create the volumes of space, proper materials and reflecting angles required.”

“It’s still amazing to hear the seemingly impossible clarity of Gould’s playing, the sometimes manically fast tempos. And, for all his frenetic energy, in passage after passage, he brings out the music’s majesty, dancing grace and tenderness. Hearing the intense young Gould at work during these arduous recording sessions, playing through a variation at a breakneck tempo with prickly sound, then playing it again, and again, and again, is not just exhausting; it’s stupefying. What, I asked myself, was the point?”

Unless you’ve toured the orchestra’s archives, you cannot fully appreciate its scope. Stored in the lower levels of Severance Hall are thousands of recordings on every medium from wax pressings and reel-to-reel tape to digital formats and video, preserving events of all types from almost every year of the orchestra’s now 100-year existence. And that’s just the audio collection. In addition to recordings, the trove also includes a wealth of physical objects and artwork as well as print material such as program books, photos, musical scores, and historical documents.

Why haven’t those kids – and his own children – seen any money yet? It’s an ugly story, “chock-full of accusations of bigamy and corruption, racism and the fraternity of the South Carolina legal and political establishment. ‘This is a mini-series,’ said Jay Cooper, a lawyer who handles estates and has represented Katy Perry, Jerry Seinfeld and Etta James. ‘You really need a map to go through this whole thing.'”

Yes to this: “The Anglican choral tradition is one of the great successes of English cultural diffusion, to rank with Association Football (soccer), cricket, and the works of William Shakespeare. It has a cultural heft way beyond its parochial and very specific origins, and it turns up in the oddest places.”

Slate’s Aisha Harris explains how to know – and why we’re so satisfied when we can “expose music fakery.”

You hire them as musicians. But for real, even though they’re not in the marketing department, four Millennial musicians in Milwaukee “were willing to share their ideas on how to attract more people their age to performances. Their thoughts boil down to ‘accessible repertoire,’ to use McCullough-Benner’s phrase, and friendly concert experiences.”

A Met official disagrees with the union (American Guild of Musical Artists), which asserted that a written apology and a rehearsal change would have been enough. The Met official said “that while the chorister had indicated that he would accept a written apology, he had also communicated to Met officials that he did not want to see Mr. Copley either in the underground rehearsal rooms or on its stage, and threatened to consult a lawyer if he did.”

He’s the year’s best-selling debut artist (so far) across all genres, and – to quote another article about this phenomenon – “His first recording, which includes works by Shostakovich and Leonard Cohen, takes its place alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran and Eminem.”

The opera hasn’t had a costume sale for nine years, and people snapped up tickets quickly. Not everything is on sale, of course: “Pieces of the Dutch National Opera’s recent history — the sweat, drama and flecks of fake blood — may end up at other opera houses or in the closets of avant-garde dressers. The house plans to keep its prized pieces for its archives.”