Category: music

Jazz on film has an erratic history, starting in 1927 with the first sound motion picture, The Jazz Singer.

The philosopher Hegel argued that music is so necessary because it rehearses in the language of the body concepts and truths we are in danger of losing touch with when they reach us only through our rational faculties. Music is, he said, “the sensuous presentation of the crucial ideas”.

Mark Wigglesworth: “ENO’s identity as a team defines its past and will be its greatest asset in protecting its future. Cutting the core of the company – musicians and technicians alike – would damage it irreparably.”

The American filmmaker (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette) “is to make her opera debut this year with a production of La Traviata at the Opera of Rome – a star-studded coup for the beleaguered venue, which has long been overshadowed by La Scala in Milan.”

The Georgian National Opera House in Tbilisi has survived tsars, commissars, civil war and economic shock over its 165 years. Now, after a six-year, $40.5 million renovation paid for by the country’s richest man (a former prime minister), it’s open again.

“By mathematically analyzing scans of the auditory cortex and grouping clusters of brain cells with similar activation patterns, the scientists have identified neural pathways that react almost exclusively to the sound of music — any music.”

“The Island’s longest continuously operated performing arts institution … suspended its subscription concert season more than five years ago due to financial shortfalls. It shut down after a failure to reach an agreement to renegotiate terms of a loan that would allow the Philharmonic to continue paying its freelance musicians and skeleton staff.”

Gregory Weber was first hired as the company’s general manager in the fall of 2014; he left the following June for an executive job at Michigan State University’s arts center. Now Oklahoma has lured him back with a newly created position, general director and CEO.

“Tours … are morale-boosters for an orchestra, building a sense of solidarity … and bringing the group in front of new audiences – something more important than ever, since there are fewer opportunities for an orchestra to be heard in today’s uneven recording landscape. … They’re also hugely expensive – and more popular than ever.”

“Martin … first rose to prominence in the mid-nineties writing a string of hits for [Britney] Spears, Backstreet Boys and [Justin] Timberlake. … Bartoli, from Rome, Italy, is best known for her interpretations of the music of Mozart and Rossini, and has seen her solo releases achieve enormous success.” Each receives a cash award of 1 million Swedish kronor (currently $118.000).