Category: music

“Under Andreas Mitisek’s artistic leadership, the 43-year-old company moved boldly into more productions of modern and contemporary work.  It also began producing away from its sophisticated but hard-to-fill home base at the Harris Theater.  During the last few years, COT also eliminated its debt, established a cash reserve of more than $850,000 (thanks largely to a MacArthur Foundation grant), and took in its largest gift ever, a $1.5 million donation from Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson.”

“It used to be that you toured to help sell the record. Now the record helps support the tour.” How has this come to be? In the case of Live Nation, it’s the result of systematic growth over a decade that has seen the Beverly Hills-based company establish a presence in more than 40 countries via acquisitions or partnerships.

“It’s not quite true that he’s not interested in the trappings of celebrity – his New York apartment certainly fits his profile as star musician. Indeed, the limelight may fuel him – but he defines it on his own terms. Take his relatively recent foray into conducting.”

Last year the government of the town where the museum (in the composer’s former house) is located forbade France-TV to film there; last month a local official called the police on Charles Dutoit and Martha Argerich while they were visiting; last week the custodian, on the job for 30 years, was fired; there are concerns that objects and archives are missing. Sanjoy Roy looks into the situation and explains why losing the museum permanently would be a tragedy.

Tonight (Wed., Feb. 8), orchestra musicians are performing music drawn from the seven countries singled out in the executive order. The concert is sold out, but it will be streamed live at 7:30 pm Pacific Time on the SSO’s Facebook page.

The rock star and jazz saxophonist “are no stranger to awards: they have 26 Grammys between them.”

Among the things he’d like to do in his next three-year term is include one contemporary work on each program, as he does with his concerts in Europe. (Jennifer Higdon, who lives just down the street from the orchestra’s hall, was mentioned as a possibility.)

Yasuhisa Toyota’s Nagata Acoustics has just 20 employees globally, but it dominates acoustics work for halls in Japan and is expanding abroad. He’s designed the acoustics for orchestras in Los Angeles, Helsinki, Paris and Shanghai. Another of his projects, the Elbephilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, opened Jan. 11.”

When the reels were discovered in the cellar of a seedy London hotel, “there was literally plasticised gunk oozing from every inch and, in truth, saving the sound quality of the recordings looked like it was going to be a hopeless task.”