Category: music

“Jennifer Barlament has worked at the Cleveland Cleveland Orchestra since 2013, where she is responsible for all facilities, orchestra operations, touring, media, front of the house operations and collective bargaining. Before that, she was the general manager of the Omaha Symphony in Nebraska and then the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.”

“Some top vinyl-pressing plants operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in an attempt to keep up. Because of the format’s sharp decline in the 1990s, many plants were shuttered, leaving the few players that survived to cash in. Others have cropped up to service the boom, but still, the grand total of U.S. vinyl-pressing plants of varying sizes hovers around 15.”

“I’ve had men hitting on me, sadly, since I was really young. At 8, I had men putting dimes in my hands saying, ‘Call me. It’d be so great to f— when you’re older.’ And just horrible stuff.”

In the end, one must ask why Béla Bartók’s Hungarian-oriented music has prevailed over that of Elgar, Sibelius, Nielsen, and other nationalists. One suspects that its universality stems not just from its folksong-inspired idiom, or its use of comprehensible forms, or its earthy, forceful rhythms. Its broad appeal seems rooted, rather, in Bartók’s belief that “every true art is produced through the influence of impressions we gather within ourselves from the outer world of ‘experiences’.”

“It’s not surprising that musicians would be upset at their work being appropriated this way. But do they have any rights to songs that they have released to the public? How are these messes likely to resolve?”

“Pavel Frumin hit the streets of Kiev, Ukraine, with a GoPro at either end of his violin. The cameras reveal his fingers racing up and down the instrument’s fingerboard as if in some crazy finger tap dance.” (video)

“The Apollo has partnered with Hologram USA to bring extended, permanent hologram technology to the theater. Ms. Holiday, who performed at the Apollo in the flesh nearly 30 times, will be the first, and is scheduled to debut around Thanksgiving.”

The ensemble, called The Orchestra Now, provides free tuition, health benefits, and a $24,000 annual stipend. This year TON will be performing at Bard, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and plans to give free concerts in New York City’s outer boroughs and East Village.

“BMI, one of the two big agencies in the United States that handle the licensing when songs are played on the radio or streamed online, plans to announce on Thursday that it exceeded $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time, led by rapid growth in digital music.”

“Mr. Nelsons, 36, will continue to lead the Boston Symphony, which recently extended his contract through at least 2022, after he begins his five-year contract at the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the fall of 2017. … Boston and Leipzig are working to make a virtue of Mr. Nelsons’s involvement with both orchestras. The Boston Symphony will perform in Leipzig, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra will perform at Symphony Hall in Boston. They are starting a joint commissioning program that will begin in the 2017-18 season.”