Category: music

“Jazz already has an unfair reputation for being unapproachable, difficult, and humorless: See Keith Jarrett cursing out festival attendees for snapping photos, or Gary Peacock shooing Elvis Costello offstage in disgust. But if jazz has a humor problem, it’s mostly afflicting fans and critics, not practitioners.”

“With a minimum of strife or public posturing, members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra have ratified a new contract with the company that provides the musicians with annual raises of 3 percent a year for the next four years … [and] changes to the musicians’ health coverage that are expected to save the company $300,000 to $400,000 annually.”

“Over the years, many of my friends and colleagues across the U.S. who are freelance musicians and specialize in contemporary music have told me that they dislike schools of any sort and they want nothing to do with them.”

“Less of this stuff is on Spotify than its boosters would have me believe, and there’s only so much I’m willing to spend on a ‘cloud.'”

“The musical director who took Qatar’s fledgling orchestra to the BBC Proms has quit, less than 24 hours after its triumphant debut at the festival in London. The shock departure of Han-Na Chang, the star cellist hired a year ago to transform the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra into a world-class ensemble, came amid reports of clashes with its management.”

“U2 surprise-release of their new album – for free – last night for iTunes’ 500 million customers globally could be read as a band was no longer certain of their place in the paid music market and so chose to hide behind a marketing gimmick of faux benevolence. But, more realistically, it could also mark the last gasp of a major act using iTunes downloads as the main way to get their music to a mass audience.”

“The most cursory glance at the fates that have befallen Vienna’s Generalmusikdirektors reveals how many starry previous incumbents walked out or were pushed, from Karajan to Abbado, from Karl Böhm to Lorin Maazel – as well as Gustav Mahler.”

“For some, age has become a downwards race. “It’s a worrisome trend because it highlights early achievement rather than substance and artistry. I see 16-year-olds who are lamenting the fact that they haven’t performed at Carnegie Hall yet.”

“The trend in newer performing-arts facilities has been to make them more open, more populist, even more playful, as with Frank Gehry’s buildings. I’ll get myself into trouble for saying this, but the Meyerson is an unashamedly elitist building, in both good and bad ways.”