Category: music

Matthew Shilvock, “educated at Oxford (music) and Amherst (arts administration), came from Houston Grand Opera with Gockley in 2005, and has acted as a senior executive in all aspects of company operations, production, financial stability, and strategic development. He has had a prominent role in labor relations, negotiating with AFM and AGMA unions, with responsibility for contract maintenance.”

Digital downloads of songs continued to fall out of favour in the first half of the year, while free and paid music-streaming revenue kept growing, even without much of a bump from the launch of Apple Music.

As the asymmetrical groove of the “Ritual of the Rival Tribes” chugged into motion, men in their 20s and 30s began to bob their heads. Soon, movements grew more demonstrative (aided by a couple of professionals planted in the crowd). In the amorphous sections of “The Sacrifice” a few couples gamely tried to slow dance. The violent “Glorification of the Chosen One” briefly spawned a hardcore-style mosh pit in the increasingly steamy hall.

“The Mikado poses special problems: it has some of the most beautiful music and wittiest lyrics of any Gilbert and Sullivan work, but its use of a fictional Japanese setting to satirize British culture presents staging challenges if it is not to come off as a jumble of ugly caricatures and stereotypes. A production last year in Seattle was criticized as ‘yellowface’ by a columnist in The Seattle Times, setting off a wide-ranging discussion of the work.”

“The letters that spell ‘Avery Fisher Hall’ and ‘Home of the New York Philharmonic’ over the box office windows had already been taken down last week, and some carefully coordinated lobby remodeling was going on. The brass replacement letters were downstairs on a conference table — the 8 3/4-inch capital letters in ‘David Geffen Hall’ are taller than the capitals in ‘Home of the New York Philharmonic’ by 4 3/8 inches.”

“Talks, which began in April, have yielded little progress, the sources said, and members of the full ensemble authorized a strike several weeks ago. Players had hoped to regain ground lost during the bankruptcy.”

“For all the buzz about vinyl, sales are still small potatoes compared to digital downloads and CDs, making up only 3.6% of all albums sold in the US last year. But since 2009, their sales have increased by 260%.”

“Clara Wieck was already thirteen years old when she started writing her piano concerto, and all of the composers on the aforementioned goodness scale wrote their masterpieces by the age of ten. Little-known fact: Strauss called the Four Last Songs that because he wrote them on the eve of his fifth birthday.”

“Is there anyone you’d like to duet with?”

“Barbara Streisand – I’d love to sing with her.”

“Alsop first came to the Cabrillo Festival in the summer of 1992, following in the job famed composer John Adams who served on an interim basis for one year after the 17-year stint of Dennis Russell Davies. In her time at Cabrillo, the festival has become one of the most high-profile summer new music festivals in the world. She has brought a couple of generations of composers, musicians and conductors into Santa Cruz every summer that would have been her otherwise.”