Category: music

“‘It all starts with the microphones,’ Chambers says. ‘I don’t care what you’re doing downstream (for mixing and the actual recording), if the mics aren’t right, the recording won’t be. The rule is “take good mics, put them in the right spots and get out of the way.”‘”

Bramwell Tovey: “Deeply concerned at the announcement, I tweeted ‘Distressing to see @VancouverOpera news spun as visionary. It’s terrible news. Vancouver to be only major Cdn city without an opera season.’ Within the hour, VO had tweeted back it was “disappointed” with me, presumably for not following the party line. Like many others, I was taken aback by the news.”

“More than 40m people currently pay to subscribe to a music-streaming service, and this number is increasing by 50 per cent each year. Outstanding questions about low royalty payments to artists persist, but for the customer, at least, the value proposition is obvious—for $120 a year, you get everything. Streaming services are pricey, but once you’ve subscribed to one, you know there’s no going back. Of the original subscribers to Spotify’s first premium offering in 2010, 70 per cent were still enrolled after four years.”

“The 55-year-old institution, the second-biggest opera company in the country, will no longer run a full season. Instead it will concentrate three of its four productions over three weeks in late-April and early May.”

“Apple has said that at least 71.5 percent of the revenue from the service will be paid out in royalties, but labels and music publishers will not be paid during a three-month trial — a deal that major record companies have apparently agreed to but one that has proved unpalatable to many smaller ones.”

“Partisans of “sharing” sometimes liked to say that they were hitting back against fat-cat music executives. In fact, all they were doing was hurting musicians. The bosses continued to do very nicely, thank you.”

“Sleep, an eight-hour piece which the the German-born British composer calls a “lullaby for a frenetic world,” will premier in Berlin this September. The overnight performance will go on from midnight to 8am, with audience members in beds rather than seats. It is set to be the longest single piece of classical yet written, and is scored for piano, strings, vocals and electronics.”

He was leaving a rehearsal with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra when the angry bird swooped, causing Lewis to lose his balance, slip, and sprain a finger – reminding us that Scousers are not to be trifled with.

“The aim seems to be to share the atmosphere as Juilliard students actually experience it. No one who signs up should expect to learn how to dance or play the piano. Yet some of the episodes offer truly unusual insights into how art works.”

“Martin Graham is quietly spoken and not easily fazed, but he has a countryman’s beady eye for detail and disdain of needless extravagance. He knows every inch of the barn theatre and proudly strokes the fine joinery executed by his old friend George from the village. Framed pictures on the walls show blown-up pages taken from Percy Scholes’s The Oxford Companion to Music, a great source of instruction and inspiration when Graham was a lad.”