Category: music

The ‘swinging’ birds were found after scientists used mathematical analysis to study the song of the thrush nightingale. The nightingale’s song deviates slightly in its note timing, making it more ‘expressive’ like a jazz swing track, the researchers, from the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, found.

“Across the UK, music venues that have flourished for decades have begun to disappear. This week, the Music Venue Trust, the charity that supports the interests of Britain’s small music venues, questioned Arts Council England’s decision to reject its application for funding. The trust argues that while Arts Council England does much to support new music, with money for the internet radio station NTS, live-streaming Boiler Room and contemporary music curators Capsule to name but three, 85% of its music funding has been allotted to opera and classical music, according to the charity, with £96m given to the Royal Opera House alone.”

“The panic was illuminating, because there shouldn’t have been a panic in the first place. … ‘If SoundCloud is no more,’ Los Angeles rapper-producer Jonwayne tweeted, ‘people will continue to make music. Another [better] aggregate will take its place. We won’t miss it.’ … Singer-rapper D.R.A.M. offered a similar sentiment: ‘We gon’ be alright, I promise.'”

“In Nielsen’s latest mid-year music report, hip-hop/R&B had the largest share of overall consumption, capturing 25.1 percent of the total volume in album sales and online streaming. It’s a watershed moment for the black-dominated genre. Former longtime volume leader rock — a genre created by African Americans then co-opted by white artists — dropped to second with 23 percent of the total volume.”

Point Counterpoint II was designed by the great architect Louis Kahn – with a unique structure that opens like a clamshell to provide a stage and acoustical canopy – for the American Wind Symphony Orchestra to use for concert tours along the nation’s waterways. After many years of attempts to sell the vessel, the owners are planning to send it to a scrap- and shipyard in Louisiana at the end of this month. Following an emotional plea from Yo-Yo Ma in The New York Review of Books, there is interest in saving Point Counterpoint II, writes John von Rhein – but donors need to be found for the purchase.

“At least 547 young members of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in Germany were subjected to physical and in some instances sexual abuse over a period of 60 years, a new report says. … Among those singled out for criticism in the report was Georg Ratzinger, elder brother of retired Pope Benedict XVI … [who] was head of the choir from 1964 to 1994 and denies any knowledge of what went on. It was ‘never discussed’ while he ran the choir, he has said.”

“A musician’s unpredictable work schedule, performing and low income are major factors which both from a mental (loneliness, anxiety, depression, personality disorders, substance abuse) and practical (irregular meals when travelling) aspect draw them into a vicious circle of unhealthy eating,” the report finds.

“One thing that disturbs me is that the friends I have dinner with — people who bear the same intellectual, social and political interests as I — don’t listen to my music. Very few of them even listen to Beethoven. They listen to — I don’t know — James Taylor or the Gipsy Kings. I realize I travel in a small cultural arena.”

The music director and librarian of the Bay of Plenty Symphonia in Tauranga were weeding out old photocopies from their files “and [we] found these hand-written scores. We didn’t really believe we were holding genuine Holst manuscripts, but there was just enough of a tingle of excitement not to throw them away.”