Category: music

Or at least that’s how it appears from the press release about the short 2018 Miami season, which “contains no statement or explanation about why the orchestra has shortened its season or even any acknowledgement that it is doing so.”

Hari Kunzru takes a road trip through the Deep South to figure it out. “It is extraordinary music, if you can really hear it. I’ve been making playlists of songs originally recorded on 78rpm shellac discs in the years before the second world war, songs that sounded like the work of ghosts. The voices of the old singers were distant in time, muffled by crackle and hiss, and yet somehow immediate.”

They only showed four shows – the last in August. But ten people just emerged from “an uninhabited private estate that the Ministry of Defense used as a training ground during World War II, The Radio Times of London reported. A six-foot fence was erected on three sides of the estate, with the fourth side bordered by the sea.”

What is American music? And, perhaps more to the point, why do we care so much? “I remember being asked in Prague not so long ago, ‘What is your obsession, you Americans, with American music?’ ” said Robert Spano, the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which will perform at SHIFT on March 31. “The only answer I could give . . . was: It’s because we don’t know who we are, and so we’re endlessly fascinated, because there are so many things that make up America . . . so much to wrestle with and balance and try and understand. . . . I was kind of defending our self-obsession.”

John Wetherill, 62, accuses music director Krzysztof Urbański, 34, of a five-year campaign of harassment, including attempts at public humiliation, in an effort to get Wetherill to retire or give up his principal chair in favor of a younger player. The ISO has no comment. (Where’s the musicians’ union?)

It’s called the encephalophone (brain instrument), and it was developed “with a double-edged purpose: to explore new frontiers in music technology and as a possible therapeutic tool for people who’d suffered from strokes or neurological problems like ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).”

“The most venerable American orchestras take pride in having a distinctive sound: the Philadelphia strings, the Chicago brass, the Cleveland blend. The New York Philharmonic has prized a virtuosity that edges, for better or worse, into brashness. The L.A. Phil, by contrast, has a tradition of no tradition: its sense of self resides not in a fixed repertory but in a mediation between past and present. That spirit of flux has persisted across several generations and now seems part of the institution’s identity—although, in the fragile sphere of the performing arts, nothing can be considered permanent. As a critic, I have made a habit of following this orchestra wherever it goes, and I am therefore hesitant to offer advice as it plots its future. But the adage of another noted Southern California composer comes to mind: keep on keeping on.”

“When it comes to opera, the council does not appear to know what is best for opera in Ireland and seems shy of taking the advice of the report writers it has hired to tell it what might be better for opera in Ireland.”

“A performance of Verdi’s Ernani at the Capitole de Toulouse was cancelled last Tuesday, because South Korean tenor Alfred Kim, who held the title role, was placed under custody over violence against his girlfriend.”

“The situation is an active threat to the ability of global music artists to tour the United States— something that is often already complicated—and arrives, paradoxically, at a time when audiences are more easily immersed in international sounds than ever before. It seems like an opportune moment to consider the meaning and relevance of what has been called “world music,” as a global refugee crisis and a rise in nationalistic fervor in Europe, Russia, and the United States newly threatens open cultural exchange.”