Category: music

The birthday year of the founder of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra “has been a big deal in the world of classical music, where the conductor is widely regarded as one of the most prolific, rigorous and amiable musicians of his time.” (By the way, he says audiences are “much more sophisticated nowadays.”)

“Called “Shift: A Festival of American orchestras,” and initially scheduled for a three-year run starting in the spring of 2017, the festival is a continuation, or reimagining, of the Spring for Music festival that ran in New York from 2010 to 2014, which brought orchestras large and small to Carnegie Hall with innovative, unusual programs.”

“I realized people will type weird stuff into search engines, and there’s not always songs for the stuff. If you search for ‘love’ on iTunes or Spotify, you’re going to get something like 15 million songs. If you search ‘monkey,’ you’re going to get fewer.” So Matt Farley decided to fill that gap.

“The Minnesota Orchestra will resume recording sessions this spring to complete its cycle of Jean Sibelius symphonies. The project” – released on the Swedish label Bis – “had been put on hiatus during the 16-month lockout of musicians that ended a year ago.”

“The technical problems of making a singable version of an Italian opera can be stated very simply: you have to make English sentences fit music written for Italian ones. However, this is like trying to fit a set of spanners into a velvet box made for a dinner-service. It also means you have to flip the polarity of the whole language.”

“We as musicians have a responsibility to respond to the world around us, to give the people a song to raise their spirits and fuel the fight in their hearts. So, in light of the political climate we live in — for Eric Garner, for Mike Brown, for Palestine — I pick up my pencil and write.”

“The difference between a virtuoso performer and an ordinary music fan is much smaller than the gulf between that fan and someone with no musical knowledge at all. What’s more, a lot of the most interesting and substantial elements of musicality are things that we (nearly) all share.”

“Despite the terrible moniker, and the scorn of modernists and traditionalists alike, minimalism is triumphant. You can hear the echo of its pounding beats, static harmonies and slowly shifting patterns everywhere in the wider world of music, from TV commercials to film scores to pop music.”

“The hall’s vaunting aspiration to energize its environs and redefine the concert-going experience could be for naught if the shortcuts and loss of time to fine tune prove crucial.”

“Despite the graying of the classical music audience — or perhaps because of it — American orchestras and major music institutions are chasing youth with ever more ambitious programs to reach, and teach, the next generation of players.”