Category: music

Julius Eastman studied piano with the great Mieczyslaw Horszowski at Curtis, got denied tenure at Buffalo, improvised an aria during Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, frequented S&M clubs, drove away his friends – and wrote extraordinary music with unorthodox notation and titles so provocative that they couldn’t be printed in programs.

The internet predictably exploded when this news broke. While most of the initial responses on social media was some variation of “whoa,” a significant number fixated on a quote in the Times report uttered by Fred Santarpia, Condé Nast’s chief digital officer, who led the acquisition.

So many British major labels use a plant in the Czech Republic, GZ Vinyl, that there’s a six-month queue of orders. Sales director Michal Nemec says: “Don’t forget that everything is manually operated, and then there’s the cost of transportation. And there are licences and rights, which have to be counted into the merchant price.”

“Musicians of the negotiating committee did not formally recommend the proposal to the rank-and-file membership, and … released a statement warning that unless Philadelphia’s contract keeps pace with those at other top orchestras, the talent will go elsewhere.” Orchestra management expects a $5.8 million deficit for this season.

In 2013, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia and given roughly six weeks to live, but successfully completed his treatment and continued to work. Late this summer, he learned that the cancer had returned. Despite the difficulties of chemotherapy, Davies finished work on the score of a new children’s opera to be conducted by Simon Rattle.

“The Gamelatron is the world’s first completely robotic gamelan orchestra – a kinetic, site-specific structure created by Aaron Taylor Kuffner, who has rigged 27 Javanese gongs and mallets on five separate steel towers, programming them to play music that he digitally arranged.”

“Punctuating a week of high drama on the city’s performing-arts scene, Boston Lyric Opera has decided that it will not renew its lease at the Citi Shubert Theatre, its home for nearly two decades. Next fall it will move its productions to a temporary venue, one yet to be announced. This is a seismic development for New England’s largest opera company.”

“On the left side of the makeshift wobbly stage, Lang Lang, China’s fresh-faced piano prodigy, stroked the keys meticulously as Chucho Valdés, one of Cuba’s music superstars, struck heavier tones on a second piano positioned to the right. At center stage, standing before the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra with her baton raised high, Marin Alsop, the American conductor, unified the ensemble.”

“Every month, corporate office issued a cassette to be played over the store speaker system — canned elevator-type music with advertisements seeded every few tracks. Around 1991, the muzak was replaced with mainstream hits, and the following year, new tapes began arriving weekly.”