Category: music

“The conversations we have are conversations about the human qualities that Gould has that are important for doing something that’s really extraordinary — in the way that his musical performance was extraordinary.”

“With his access to music – during this period Universal was cornering the market in hip-hop, which was becoming the most popular music in the world – Glover was able to get albums to RNS weeks ahead of their release. Over its 11-year span, RNS was responsible for leaking more than 20,000 albums.”

“Each item on its agenda would pose significant challenges on its own. But the orchestra must do them all nearly simultaneously, adding layers of counterpoint-like complexity to the tasks at hand.”

“One Saturday in 1994, Bennie Lydell Glover, a temporary employee at the PolyGram compact-disk manufacturing plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, went to a party at the house of a co-worker. He was angling for a permanent position, and the party was a chance to network with his managers. Late in the evening, the host put on music to get people dancing. Glover, a fixture at clubs in Charlotte, an hour away, had never heard any of the songs before, even though many of them were by artists whose work he enjoyed.”

The Pulitzer citation describes the work as “a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.” The prize is for a “distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States” during the previous calendar year and comes with a cash award of ten thousand dollars.

Describer by the jury as “a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th century,” Anthracite Fields was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, which premiered the piece last April with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

“‘Opening up the cultural interaction between two nations whose governments have been at odds for so long can be a window to hope and peace,’ said Iranian-born composer Reza Vali, a Carnegie Mellon University music professor.”

“Pakistan’s second-largest city once had a booming film industry and a flourishing music scene. Classical musicians, with their tabla drums, violins and sitars, would perform on stage, in movies and in crowded markets. Then in 1977, Pakistan’s sixth president, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, clamped down on the film and music industry.”

“Artistic director John Berry is far from the first ENO captain to face the prospect of budgetary collapse – it has always been next to impossible to balance the costs of the huge auditorium with the funding requirement to produce risk-taking, accessibly priced work.”

“Polisar went home and wrote a song about a mean teacher. Then teachers at other schools heard about the mean teacher song and asked him to come sing it. Then he wrote some more songs. Then more schools called. And so it went, until he had enough music to make two albums by the time he graduated and enough gigs to forget about teaching and try music for a living.”