Category: music

Ian Pace (yes, he’s a musicologist): “Unfortunately I have encountered too many academics – not a majority, but still too many – who have very little interest in listening to music, at least in a manner which requires any sustained attention. Some even have a sneering and superior attitude to anyone who really cares about music at all, and exhibits any enthusiasm for it. I have even had the misfortune to be faced by the argument that playing music in lectures is a waste of time.”

“I attended both expecting to trumpet the virtues of a more collaborative and flexible model. But I was disappointed. Different though they were, the two performances had a few things in common: Both offered a lot of energy and emoting, but both fell short on the details, with too many moments of sloppiness and too much defaulting to the same general tempo, dynamics and emotional flavor.”

“The album – complete with two different versions of the hit song Let It Go – sold four million more than its nearest rival, Taylor Swift’s 1989, which sold six million according to music industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).”

“Slated to cost $1.4 million, orchestra officials fell short in fundraising by $400,000, and were faced with the dilemma of either not presenting Lumenocity this year or charging attendees a fee.”

“Gayle Heatherington, Ars Viva executive director, said Monday morning that the ensemble was in ‘excellent financial health’ with record subscription and single ticket sales and that the decision to draw the curtain was purely ‘a personal one.'”

“The Philadelphia Orchestra, which once played an 18-concert series in Fairmount Park, and more recently nine, will perform six this summer – and only three can be considered purely classical.” The venue’s CEO says she’d like more from the orchestra, whose administrators respond that they can’t schedule it.

“What’s a vaudeville consultant doing in an opera house? It turns out that not just anyone can choreograph a decent slosh routine, a messy staple of slapstick in which whipped cream, custard or shaving cream is wielded as a projectile, hopefully to comic effect.” So David McVicar decided to make the itinerant clowns of Pagliacci into a traveling vaudeville troupe, he turned to this man.

“On the Friday before their final performance, only 480 tickets had been sold. ‘Trying to get Green Bay residents into a classics concert— even this one this Saturday night— is very difficult.'”

Peter Himler, a P.R. strategist who advises clients on crisis management, agrees that the TSO didn’t get out ahead of the story. “There is not one Tweet from them bringing up this issue,” he said. “I think they should be up front and continually communicating their point of view. That’s one of the rules of thumb in crisis communication.”