Ruth Mackenzie, a Briton who headed the 2012 London Cultural Olympics and currently runs the Holland Festival, will take over the Théâtre du Châtelet from Jean-Luc Choplin, who transformed the venue from a somewhat offbeat opera and dance producer into a Broadway-by-the-Seine (Broadway’s recent An American in Paris originated there).
Category: music
Inside The Sistine Chapel Choir: A Singer Tells All (Well, Most)
The Vatican’s flagship chorus got a bad reputation during the late 20th century (you may have heard its wobbly yelling on TV when a pope died), but Pope Benedict hired a new director to raise standards, and there’s been real progress. The choir’s only English member tells what it’s like to have a job today in what’s probably the world’s oldest vocal ensemble.
The Music Audience Is Now So Fragmented There’s Virtually No Crossover
“One size stopped fitting all long ago, but now there are clearly two broad groups of music audiences which must be addressed in entirely different ways, across different channels and with different tactics. At the most base level this is a case of youth versus grey, of digital native versus digital immigrant, of playlist versus album, of sales versus consumption. But it is also more complex and nuanced than that. There are overlaps and cross pollination. They may be relatively thin on the ground right now, but like some long-lost treasure map, they may point to how bridges can be built across these two worlds.”
Don’t Go Ahead With Sydney Opera House Upgrade, Warns Architect
“Andrew Andersons wrote to Opera House management in October to urge it to relinquish its architecture-by-committee approach and appoint a single firm to oversee upgrades and to rethink its plan for disabled ¬access elevators that would cut a hole in the unique stairs designed by Jørn Utzon.”
The Internet Hasn’t Democratized Music As Promised
“As music discovery becomes more concentrated and consolidated (goodbye, Vine) thanks to Spotify recs and Tidal-only exclusives (my New Year’s resolution: cancel Tidal) and Beats 1 premieres that one feels obligated to indulge for the sake of relevancy, the free-for-all that once was a deep-dive internet search for a weird track has dissipated a bit, in lieu of streaming services handing you what you want on a platter. ‘Discovery’ features feel like an exercise in marketed groupthink, even when they occasionally do yield new music.”
The Upstart Companies Making Opera Hip In LA
New opera companies are everywhere, and springing up in unexpected places and in unusual formats. And there’s a lot more coming in 2017.
Brian Eno Creates Music That Grows Like A Garden As You Listen To It
His latest release has a regular CD version that’s a single long track of Enonian ambient music. But the iTunes version is a mini-app in itself, using algorithms to create music that’s always changing – “growing” – and never ends.
The Brilliant European Musicians We (Almost) Never Get To Hear In The States
“During a short, pre-Christmas week in Paris, I heard one performance after another of artists barely known in the United States. They included significant, even towering figures.” David Patrick Stearns reports on several of them, including one conductor whom some call the next Carlos Kleiber.
Conductor Gets Mad At Audience Of Young Kids, Tells Them Santa Doesn’t Exist
It was late in a performance of “Disney in Concert” performance of Frozen at the Parco della Musica in Rome when angry maestro Giacomo Loprieno yelled “Babbo Natale non esiste!” (Yeah, he got fired.)
11-Year-Old’s Opera Debuts In Vienna
“Conductor Simon Rattle declared he was ‘absolutely bowled over’ when he first saw her perform, but it was Stephen Fry who first speculated that Deutscher could be this generation’s Mozart, after watching a video of her performing on YouTube. However, it is not a comparison that the 11-year-old is particularly keen on.”