Category: music

Led Zeppelin Did Not Steal Chords In ‘Stairway To Heaven,’ Rules Jury – What Will This Mean?

Scott Timberg: “At times, it looked like it was going to bend the other way. But a Los Angeles federal jury has decided unanimously that Led Zeppelin did not break copyright law in the composition of its song ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ … So what’s likely to be the effect of the judgment? This is probably a case where a process that seems to be accelerating will halt for a little while.”

How The Dallas Symphony Came To Pay Jaap Van Zweden $5.1 Million In One Year

“Mr. van Zweden, a Dutch-born maestro with a growing reputation, received more that year than any other orchestra conductor in America, including Gustavo Dudamel at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and his total pay was more than twice that of the nearest runner-up, Riccardo Muti at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” Michael Cooper explains how this came to pass.

‘For The Long Haul’: Dallas Opera Extends Institute For Women Conductors For 15 More Years

“As female conductors aim their batons at cracking classical music’s glass ceiling, the Dallas Opera has invested in fueling their battle. The organization has committed to running the Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors for 20 years, 15 more than initially promised, general director and CEO Keith Cerny said Tuesday.”

A Music Store Closes And It’s Tempting To Write The Definitive Eulogy

“Critics can and have read Other Music’s bow-out as representative, in an allegorical way, of any number of bigger Ends: the End of music as a physical medium to be collected and doted over, the End of curated off-line retail, the End of curation, the End of the East Village, the End of New York. Most of those Ends—whether real or imagined—have already been eulogized so aggressively that to revisit them now seems plainly indulgent.”

David Gockley – An Opera Pioneer Reflects On The State Of The Art

“While his substantial contributions are being lauded widely — with an all-star “Celebrating David!” gala earlier this month at the War Memorial Opera House here, the publication of a coffee-table book about his career, and numerous articles and accolades — Mr. Gockley was in an introspective mood during a recent lunch in which he discussed the significant challenges ahead for opera.”

Report From The Front: Is This The Future For Orchestras?

“The young musicians orchestras most need will not gravitate to orchestras. Instead, orchestras will get the blinkered conservatory graduates who don’t care about the institutional life of an orchestra – who will dutifully rehearse and perform. It therefore becomes more than ever incumbent upon orchestras to empower musicians to more fully participate in an expansive institutional mission.”

A Jazz Revival – Where The Jazz Scene Is Thriving (But Where There’s Little Money)

“Musicians like Linda Oh — musicians’ musicians — don’t care that their work isn’t a mass phenomenon; they’re the anti–Taylor Swifts, the un-Beliebers. In that way, they’re countercultural, as were their forebears during Charlie Parker’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop revolution uptown at Minton’s in the Forties, or the Ornette Coleman–led free movement unleashed at the Five Spot in Cooper Square in 1959, or the post-Coltrane howls at Studio Rivbea during the loft era, in the decrepit streets of 1970s Soho. That heat and currency appears to be swirling around the jazz world once again.”