Category: music

“In 1949, the U.S. Public Health and Services commissioned songs from Woody Guthrie as part of its anti-venereal disease campaign. Guthrie’s ‘V.D. City’ warned people of ‘cold lower dungeons where the victims of syph roll and cry.'”

“It all makes one long for some Netflix-like behemoth — Netclassix? — that could easily stream works from all over to all televisions, tablets, smartphones and computers.”

As most Italian opera houses seem to careen from disaster to disaster, Turin’s Teatro Regio has seemed a rare bright spot, with quality and reputation both soaring even as state funding shrivels – and Noseda’s work as music director gets most of the credit. But now his long-simmering tensions with the house’s boss have boiled over.

Several players in the Vallejo (Cal.) Symphony have publicly chastised the orchestra’s board for its unanimous vote not to renew the contract of David Ramadanoff, who has served as music director for 33 years. The concertmaster says that “maybe more than half” of the musicians will quit after Ramadanoff’s final concert.

“The Metropolitan Opera announced Thursday night that it had reached labor settlements with the last of its unions, including those representing its costume and wardrobe departments, hair and makeup artists, scenic artists and designers, camera operators and others.”

“Addiction problems are widespread among classical musicians, for many reasons,” she says. “There is the lifestyle, the odd hours, working weekends, post-concert socialising. Many players use alcohol and beta-blockers to control their performance anxiety and then, after the ‘high’ of a performance, musicians can struggle to ‘come down’ and therefore drink to relax.”

“With 175 million monthly listeners, SoundCloud is the second biggest streaming music service in the world behind YouTube. Yet it hasn’t paid royalties to the creators and rightsholders of that music … Today, SoundCloud is taking its first step [to change that], albeit in a carefully-controlled way with a select group of invited partners in the US for its new ‘On SoundCloud’ initiative.”

“The artists below are some of our favorite opera innovators, toying with non-linear narratives, unusual instruments and new media, to name a few. Some take inspiration from subject matter we’d never expect to see on an opera stage, from gentrification to bad shroom trips to Milli Vanilli.” Some you may know of – composer David T. Little (Dog Days, the upcoming JFK), “electrodiva” Pamela Z – others, you will. (includes video clips)

At age 43, Barbara Hannigan “is developing a second career, as a conductor, and she seems to be stealing shows around Europe with some regularity.” Simon Rattle is such a fan that he sent her to legendary teacher Jorma Panula, who came out of retirement to coach her.

Justin Davidson: “Can an opera company indefinitely support thousands of practitioners of arcane crafts? Must a costly large-scale art form inevitably be a luxury product, or can technology help it reach a wider public than ever? Do the new rich even have any interest? More immediately, can the company put on good-enough shows to fill its yawning house?”