Category: music

“Even though an estimated half of venues have closed within the past decade, dance music industry figures insisted the scene is in rude health, with people instead choosing all-day events in parks, raves in pop-up spaces and festivals for their weekly freakout.”

“The musicians, who are represented by the American Federation of Musicians Local 72-147, lambasted management’s decision to cancel concerts scheduled for more than a month away.”

“As well as enlarging – or perhaps subverting – the subject matter of opera, Tristan und Isolde also marked a turning point in the history of music. The opening chord in the prelude, the so-called Tristan chord, is seen by some as the beginning of modern music, introducing chromaticism, dissonance and, according to the composer Arnold Schoenberg, even atonality.”

“[Louis P.] Ciminelli has been chairman of the BPO’s board for two terms, assuming the office in 2012. He has been generous to the orchestra, and his tenure has been a time of prosperity. In 2015, when his 60th birthday coincided with the BPO’s fall season-opening gala, Ciminelli gave the orchestra a gift of $1 million. “

Says conductor Thomas Crawford of 25-year-old contralto Avery Amereau, “I don’t mean to exaggerate, but this woman made my knees shake.”

“[Cappella Romana], the Portland-based vocal ensemble, which performs annual concert series in its hometown and Seattle, has released more than 20 recordings. Its tours have brought the group’s sometimes ethereal, sometimes austere, always powerfully moving music to venues such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles’ Getty Center, the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford and Yale universities and festivals throughout Europe.”

“When it comes to musical performance, the Museum’s tacit mandate is to spotlight all of African American music – which is like trying to put a frame around a living person and call it a portrait. It’s tough to pick ‘African American’ music out of the fabric of American musical history, of which it is an essential, even dominant part. Concerts at the Oprah Winfrey Theater could conceivably range from opera to hip-hop, jazz to country, R&B to classical.”

“Discovering new kinds of music is easier than ever … But having all this music at our fingertips was only part of the equation – we needed to be armed with information.” And where is all that information kept? “Today, we talk about AllMusic, one of the internet’s first – and best – archival projects.”

Barton Swaim just didn’t get it. So he made another pass at the composer’s 9th symphony. “Mahler’s achievement, if I’m right, was to translate the things that make human life by turns fulfilling and painful, elegant and stupid—the tawdriness, the chaos, the dignity and comedy and splendor—into exquisitely beautiful works of art. They are overpowering and outrageous in their scope, but beautiful all the same. Six months ago I didn’t see the point of Mahler’s music. Now, as I write, I hear the jokey pulsations and majestic horn trills of the Ninth’s second movement in my head, and it’s hard to see the point of anybody else’s.”

“I realised there was a growing audience of people who grew up on club music who were used to listening to music for timbre and texture, rather than vocals, who were listening to music for the experience, who could graduate from Aphex Twin to this. That’s taken a long time, maybe 10 years.”