Category: music

“In the end, the shortfall in cash flow meant the company could not continue to operate, he said. The board made the decision Tuesday evening, after much discussion, to shut the doors. The company was also still struggling with a debt of more than $500,000, which became increasingly hard to manage.”

“Indeed, on the eve of his retirement Nov. 30, longtime executive director Gary Hanson likens his departure to jumping off a moving train. For all their enormous impact, he says, his accomplishments weren’t his alone. Neither will the organization fall apart without him. … ‘I’m proud to have had a role,’ [he says]. ‘But I didn’t start it, and no one’s ever going to finish it.'”

Older people are more interested in music as an intense, inner experience, while younger ones view it as a way of escaping bad moods and connecting with friends.

“Starting in May 2016, the M-Prize, as the competition will be called, will be the most lucrative chamber music competition in the field. Prizes will be awarded in junior and senior divisions in three categories devoted to traditional string and wind ensembles, and, in an unusual twist, an ‘open’ category to accommodate groups of mixed instrumentation or those employing technology, voice or improvisation.”

Joining the 40-year-old music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra as Musical America honorees are Tod Machover (composer of the year), violinist Jennifer Koh (instrumentalist of the year), and tenor Mark Padmore (vocalist of the year).

Yefim Bronfman’s rendition of Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra in Vienna Tuesday night was even more dramatic than usual.

“Those who care about the future of the music business ought to spend less time complaining about digital disruptions and expend more energy lifting up the public’s awareness of serious music, because we truly do devalue music when we reduce our most impactful art form to an artifact of celebrity and a lifestyle choice. Complex instrumental music has become marginalized to within an inch of its very existence, and that has a lot to do with industry folk defining “value” in only the way that affects their mailbox money.”

“Carnegie Hall cannot exist without large private donations, gratefully received. But it is primarily a nonprofit institution and a public trust, not a billionaire’s plaything, and preferences on programming can only be discussed between board and staff in the most general of conversations.”

“One of the most common things we see is a relationship between pitch and taste. Lower pitches tend to be associated with bitter tastes and higher pitches with sweet tastes. There are possible health benefits to this: if you play music that makes people think their food is sweeter, the sugar content of the food could be lowered.”

Organizers of the Unsound Festival “said that multiple churches in Krakow … had withdrawn from hosting concerts for the weeklong festival, which started on Sunday.”