Category: music

The musicians of the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Seville wore green ribbons to signal their unhappiness with an ongoing stalemate in the selection of their chief conductor. The city’s politicians voted to renew the contract of Pedro Halffter, who has held the post for ten years (and whom the musicians are said to oppose), but his re-engagement was vetoed by the regional government of Andalusia. (in Spanish)

“Each of the musicians were set up with a music stand and an iPhone, while the conductor stationed himself in Bryant Park with nearly a dozen MacBooks to receive all the different video streams.”

“Although the two sides appear to be at an impasse on the size of the orchestra, the musicians claim to have made “significant progress” on health care. The players have suggested a health-care plan that will save the WAC about 25 percent — more than $250,000 a year — over the plan that management canceled on Oct. 1.”

Reports this week said that conductor Michael Tilson Thomas stopped a New World Symphony performance in Miami last Friday and asked a mother and her fidgeting child in the front row to leave. But MTT has come forward to say that that’s not quite the way things went down. (Social media posts from other audience members have backed him up.) (includes audio)

“When an album released solely within a physical framework holds its own against major label competitors with digital backing (one thinks of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett again), what does it say about the state of music sales in 2014?”

“Jazz fans are hip; editors and writers at these publications are revanchist, in love with a non-existent, prelapsarian golden-age that is different for each.”

“The opera is not anti-Semitic, nor does it glorify terrorism. … The most specious arguments against Klinghoffer elide the terrorists’ bigotry with the attitudes of the creators. By the same logic, one could call Steven Spielberg an anti-Semite because the commandant in Schindler’s List compares Jewish women to a virus.”

“Clearly, last summer’s war in Gaza and the rise of brutal ISIS in Iraq and Syria ambushed the Met production, in the planning for years. … The larger picture, though, shows what happens when an artistic vocabulary is scrutinized out of context by hostile parties.”

“Directed by Daniel Fish, “The Source” seeks to create a nuanced portrait of Pfc. Manning while engaging with troves of military documents. The work’s text comes from primary-source material: Manning’s chat logs and the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs that were eventually published by WikiLeaks.”

Links to reviews of fourteen major critics who reviewed the Metropolitan Opera production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” this week.