“The video above traces the strings’ journey from the butcher to the sound bridge. Fair warning: if you’re not a fan of watching the proverbial sausage get made, maybe give this one a pass – or at least skip the front end, which deals with a lot of raw intestines.”
Category: music
Audience Member Screams During Stravinsky, And Of Course It Goes Viral
The North State Symphony was performing Firebird in Redding, California, and at one point where there’s a big, sudden crescendo, one Stephanie Evans screamed. Alas for her, the moment was caught on video. Here’s how the conductor and orchestra handled it, and how Evans explains it.
‘The Music Of The Plants’ Is A Real Thing (Meaning Plants Are Really Playing Music)
“During a small lecture at a private residence in Delray Beach earlier this month, I watched a houseplant play music, unabashedly and beautifully. Potted and still, it was hooked up to a MIDI machine via electrodes, its bio-emissions creating twinkling melodies. Attached to the same machine, an orchid and rosemary plant played nothing, but this one was active and virtuosic, as though it enjoyed playing.” A reporter talks to a leader of the Music of the Plants project about how all this works.
This New Concert Hall Really Is Pulling In A New Audience
Before the Philharmonie de Paris opened in early 2015, many observers fretted that the mostly older, well-heeled classical music fans in the city would not travel out to a big, modernist venue on the northern edge of the city. Nearly three years later, concerts are selling better than they used to at the (older and smaller) Salle Pleyel, and the crowds are younger and more diverse.
El Sistema Comes To Kenya
“Though Faith Syovata had almost lost her voice because of a cold, the students still hung on her every whispered word. With violins tucked under their chins, the 14-year-olds at Kawangware Primary School here had their bows at the ready as she pointed out notes for the song on the blackboard.” A reporter visits a Sistema classroom in a Nairobi slum.
How Facebook Has Become A Home For Composers
“It has seemed that for the entire 2010s thus far, Facebook has been a place for composers and co. (whether to chat, laugh, share work, share opportunities, discuss musical issues, discuss politics, fight like hell) to come together. The same is true for actors, string players, academics, doctors, and bankers, to some extent, I’m assuming. But for composers, or for the several hundred spread over six continents whom I’m FBfriends with, at any rate, it has functioned as one of the relevant gathering places for those of us who couldn’t make it to the show last night. Our lot, as a rule, doesn’t congregate.”
The Most-Anticipated New Opera Of The Year Faces Backlash
The piece has “taken many aback with some startlingly negative reviews as well as bending-over-backward attempts to find some value in a work by a team that has given us operatic masterpieces in the past. Without question, the most highly anticipated new opera of the year — a year in which John Adams turned 70 and Peter Sellars, 60 — “Girls” has also been presented as the first opera of Trump times. The populist spirit of the 49ers, the lack of regard for the environment in pursuit of wealth, along with the rampant racism against Latinos, Chinese and black people has created the expectation of the kind of political opera that the lyric stage has historically been very adept at.”
Listen To This Year’s Grawemeyer Award Winner, Bent Sørensen’s ‘L’Isola Della Città’
“Written for the Danish ensemble Trio con Brio and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, which gave its premiere last year, L’Isola della Città (‘The Island in the City’) unfolds over nearly half an hour in five continuous movements. Stealthy and subtle, its central threesome of soloists – piano, violin and cello, as in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto – finds oases of calm amid flares of intensity from the orchestra.”
#GrammysNotSoWhite: Pool Of Major Nominees May Be Most Diverse Ever
“This year’s increased number of artists of color and women may be a response to the current political climate in which many in those groups feel both threatened and moved to speak out. It most certainly reflects the academy’s attempt to address criticism that it is out of touch with notable artists and trends shaping pop music.” (For a complete list of nominees, click here.)
Classical Grammy Nominees Are *Not* The Usual Suspects
Two of the five opera nominees are by Alban Berg, and the closest thing to a warhorse is The Pearl Fishers. (Unless Wozzeck counts.) All of the nominated orchestras are American, but none are from the old “Big Five.” Three nominations went to the South Dakota Chorale. There’s one likely shoo-in, though: the late Dmitri Hvorostovsky, for Sviridov’s Russia Cast Adrift. (For a complete list of nominees, click here and scroll way down for classical.)