Called the Warner Music Prize and funded by industrialist Len Blavatnik, who purchased Warner Music Group in 2011, the award “is expected to be given out annually to an instrumentalist or singer between 18- and 35-years-old who shows strong career potential.”
Category: music
“Noble Intentions”: Alex Ross Takes Down The Cello-Suites-Really-Composed-By-Mrs-Bach Theory
After looking at the arguments and evidence, Ross writes, “No one is well served by wild speculation that distorts the historical record – or, for that matter, ascribes a piece of music to a woman on the grounds that it lacks maturity.”
The Granddaddy Of Chinese Classical Composers
Tim Page profiles 91-year-old Chou Wen-Chung, who recalls his reaction, at age 14, on learning of Ravel’s death: “I thought composers were a gift from nature and that music was written by dead people, because every composer I had heard of, Chinese or Western, was dead. And I thought, ‘Could I become a composer? How wonderful!'”
Can The Death Of The Green Bay Symphony Provide A Wake-Up Call For Other Arts Groups?
“The way people consume music has changed, and classical music organizations are working to keep up with it. We have to consider what listeners have in mind when they come to a concert and what they listen to when they’re not at a concert.”
A Grassroots Technologist Of Electronic Music Tells All
Laurie Spiegel: “I was playing music, I was improvising, I was making stuff up, and at a certain point I wanted to learn to write things down so I wouldn’t forget them. So I started trying to teach myself to write stuff down. One of my roommates in the house that I lived in pointed out to me that they call that composing. You make things up and write them down.”
That Time A Singer Found A Spider Living In Her Ear (You Might Want To Remove Your Earbuds Now)
“The singer said she had been bothered by a rustling sound in her ear and went to the doctor, who used a micro-vacuum cleaner to remove the creature.”
Turmoil At West Australia Opera
“The company was recently heavily criticised for proposing a two year embargo on staging Bizet’s Carmen due to its depictions of smoking in an ill-judged attempt to curry favour with their new corporate sponsor, Healthway. Now it has been announced that the company’s Artistic Director Joseph Colaneri and Chorus Master Joseph Nolan will both no longer be working with the company.”
Carnegie Hall To Offer Free Livestream Of Recitals
“Starting next week, Carnegie Hall will go global, partnering with the six-year-old classical-music portal medici.tv to stream [four] concerts … All will be streamed live and remain available for 90 days. And all of them will be free.”
A School Behaves Like An Orchestra, And An Orchestra Behaves Like A School
“Both initiatives underscored the extent to which the difficulties facing classical music in the 21st century are forcing venerable institutions to adapt, if not reinvent themselves.”
Does Going On A World Tour Make A Symphony World Class?
“In Chicago Symphony lore, it was the orchestra’s first-ever overseas tour — a massive six-week, nine-country, 15-venue, 25-concert trip led by music director Georg Solti in 1971 — that vaulted it to world-class status while changing cultural perceptions of Chicago, with the orchestra greeted by a ticker-tape parade upon its return home.”