Category: music

“People turn to music in times of crisis — I do — but even as it brings happiness and helps process deep feeling, it can feel like something extra. There’s an urge to repurpose it, to figure out how it can serve a higher cause.”

“To reach these figures, Forbes added together all musicians’ touring money, record sales, publishing royalties, merchandise, endorsements, and other major business ventures.”

“The Philharmonie is a huge, organic structure rising up in the Parc de la Villette, the arts and science park built just inside the boulevard périphérique on the site of the old Paris meat market and abattoirs. It is the latest and, sadly, possibly the last major manifestation of the energy and willpower of Pierre Boulez, composer, conductor and the godfather of music in France.”

“I can only see that the orchestra and I have not been able to share a common artistic vision, and that is why, in the interest of their future as mine, I made ​​the decision to leave. “

“But Tower’s flagship Tokyo store, nine stories high, has remained the Godzilla of the world’s record stores, the largest and indestructible. It’s still there, just up the block in the Shibuya district from the busiest intersection in the world. A giant sign in Tower yellow and red reads: No Music, No Life.”

Less than a week after the orchestra’s staff openly demanded the resignation of their boss, Park Hyun-Jung, artistic director Myung-Whun Chung (a local hero in Seoul because of his high-level career in Europe’s capitals) said that Park’s on-the-job behavior “is a clear violation of human rights [of her staff] … such attitude is not acceptable.”

“First prize in the 2014 Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition was awarded … to the competition’s first female winner, Elim Chan. The 28-year-old was born in Hong Kong to British parents and currently studies at the University of Michigan.”

“How you define that something, though, is hard; and its elusiveness can turn conducting competitions into strange events of questionable meaning. … Good orchestras instinctively compensate for directorial shortcomings. But hearing successive conductors unleashed on the same orchestra in quick turnover, as is the case in such competitions, shows that the person wielding the stick can make a difference.”

David C. Bohnett, founder of GeoCities (remember GeoCities?), intends half of the amount to fund efforts to spread classical music through technology.