Category: music

Sure, the infomercials speak all too highly of it, and it’s kind of pricey, but the Wave was created from genuine engineering expertise and hard work. Here’s the story of how the speaker system went from Dr. Bose’s lab at MIT to the Sharper Image catalogue and QVC.

In the 1950s, thanks to an odd confluence of postwar economics and intra-Communist rivalry, Mexican music became arguably the top pop genre in Yugoslavia. Most of its practitioners weren’t Mexican; they were local..

“We all have to reinvent ourselves now that paid streaming is starting to lock in. There’s going to be a lot of new technology, and everyone’s going to be reforming their roles. We have no interest in being a label. But we do have interest in making our platform the one that’s best to communicate with the audiences.”

“The history of the French salons in the 19th century, and of the early reactions to musical and literary modernism, has made people aware of how easy it is to miss the true creative product, and to exalt the dead and the derivative in its stead. The safest procedure for the anxious bureaucrat is to subsidize music that is difficult, unlikely to be popular, even repugnant to the ordinary musical ear. Then one is sure to be praised for one’s advanced taste and up-to-date understanding. Besides, if a work of music is easy to assimilate and clearly destined to be popular it does not need a subsidy in any case.”

Acousticians Bruno Fazenda and Trevor Cox suggests several reasons why the answer is probably no.

The Met’s general manager, Rudolf Bing, had put together a particularly glittering programme for the company’s first season in its new home, and to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening, this set brings together recordings of 10 of the operas that were part of it.

A new study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that answers may lie in the wood: Mineral treatments, followed by centuries of aging and transformation from playing, might give these instruments unique tonal qualities.

Over 15 years, Yip Wing-sie has transformed the Hong Kong Sinfonietta from a barely professional part-time orchestra to a full-time, full-pay, adventurous ensemble.

“Bogdan Roscic, 52, will take up the post in 2020, moving from Sony’s classical music unit which he has headed since 2009. Before then he worked at Decca Music Group and an Austrian pop music station, but has never been director of an opera house before. He will replace Frenchman Dominic Meyer, whose tenure, which started in 2010, has been marked by clashes with star conductors Franz Welser-Möst and Bertrand de Billy.”

“According to its box office receipts, the £11.4 million in its current report was up from £8.6 million in the previous year. Its total income was £40.3 million, compared with £38.2 million the previous year. However, money from donations and sponsorship tumbled, from £3.6 million in 2015 to £2.7 million in the year to March 2016.”