“How is universal music possible? Is not music, like language, born of culture and environment? Is not each musical style a unique expression of place and experience?”
Category: music
Is This The World’s Busiest Choral Conductor?
“These days the world’s most sought-after choral conductor may well be Simon Halsey, who has racked up plenty of frequent flier miles in recent years bouncing among posts in his native Britain, Germany and elsewhere in Europe — and working around the world with leading orchestra conductors, especially Simon Rattle, with whom he has collaborated for decades.”
These Musicians Make Music With Their Brainwaves
“This program directly accesses the brain via electroencephalogram (EEG) technology, allowing four severely motor-impaired people to create the musical piece in real-time by choosing between four different musical phrases.”
Explaining The Philadelphia Orchestra Strike (And Suggesting The Man Who Could Do It Best)
Peter Dobrin: “Anyone who thought the walkout [at the opening gala] was staged simply for effect, or as an act of petulance, should have really studied the musicians’ faces. They looked miserable, and maybe a little surprised themselves. … But there’s one person uniquely capable of explaining to board and donors why the musicians behaved the way they did and to validate, at the very least, some of their most sincere concerns.”
Charles Dutoit, At 80, Says Women Conductors Can Be ‘Even Better’ Than Men, But Young People Today Are ‘Well-Informed But Uncultivated’
“There is no reason why women cannot lead orchestras. Their talent is the same as men’s. Often women are even better. … Today there are no myths and young people can access an excessive amount of information. … Everything is done quickly, and because of this, … people are well informed but uncultivated.”
L.A. Opera Extends Plácido Domingo’s Contract Again
“Legendary tenor Plácido Domingo has renewed his contract as general director of Los Angeles Opera through the 2021-22 season … Domingo’s positions within the company have included artistic consultant from 1984 to 2000, artistic director from 2000 to 2003 and finally, general director from 2003 until now.”
Has El Sistema’s Flagship Orchestra Stumbled?
“The decision to turn the Simón Bolívar orchestra pro, in a sense, may have been a miscalculation. For one thing, it raises expectations of excellence. When it was a student ensemble, it was easy to simply root for these inspired young musicians. But the music-making during these three recent programs, though exciting, was uneven, certainly not at the level the orchestra’s current status would call for.”
How Computers Are Learning How To Listen and Write Music
“In July, a team of scientists from Queen Mary University of London reported they had trained a neural network to determine musical genres with 75% accuracy by feeding it with 6,600 songs in three genres: ballad, dance, and hip-hop. Then they tore apart the layers of the computer’s neural network in order to see what the network learned at each layer when the scientists exposed it to songs from Bach and Eminem.”
Lyric Analysis: Country Music Is Getting More Sexist
Researchers found that songs from the first half of this decade were “more likely to refer to a woman’s appearance, to women in tight or revealing clothing, to women as objects, and to women via slang than songs in one or both prior decades.”
An Italian Opera House That’s Thriving (So What’s The Secret?)
“The fact that the Teatro Regio is thriving raises the question: if it can reverse its fortunes despite its somewhat lesser status, what’s to stop other Italian opera houses from doing the same? If nothing else, their name power would attract plenty of sponsors.”