Category: music

“Now, as the company tries to win concessions from its unions by the end of this month, the labor talks are laying bare new details of life at the Met, from what performers earn to the Met’s recent box office struggles – which, an analysis of ticket sales showed, led the company to sell as many as a quarter of its seats at a discount at a handful of performances.”

“If today people so often take Mississippi delta blues for heart of the form, it’s in no small measure because the collector-researchers of the ’50s and ’60s, and the blues rockers who followed their lead, taught us to think that way. In fact, those edgy, relatively marginalized, rural guitar players had, for the most part, been little-known artists with limited sales among the black Southern audience, which generally saw blues as dance music. But they presented challenging sounds and images irresistible to the white collector specialists.”

“Businessman Gene Kaufman made an undisclosed offer six months ago to buy ‘the people’s opera’ and salvage the venerable cultural institution. He now says the opera’s board is ‘stuck in neutral’ nine months after filing for bankruptcy and canceling the season, and should relinquish control of the process.”

“YouTube has postponed a controversial plan to block certain record labels from its video platform, following an outcry from the creative community and growing scrutiny from European regulators.”

A change of office space (saving about $400,000 annually), layoffs of 13 staff members (about one-third of the total), pay cuts for remaining employees, and other measures have reduced the upcoming fiscal year’s budget to $10.5 million, down from around $15 million in earlier years.

“What do Beethoven, David Bowie, Green Day, Mozart, *NSYNC, Pete Seeger, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, The Supremes, Rihanna, and many others all have in common? The Andalusian Cadence!” (a/k/a the Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord). David Garland has assembled ore than 50 (short) examples as evidence. (audio)

“Labels like Fool’s Gold, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian have signed on with the two-year-old Drip.fm in an effort to attract fans with exclusive music, a sense of community and an intimate connection with bands and artists. Other younger, digitally savvy musicians are starting their own services to appeal directly to their fans.”

“The Opera America ads taken as a whole tell a story. Is it the story of a groundswell of new works among a vast array of companies that would seem to no longer take their cue from the Met? Is it a story of the end of fear of the new driving programming decisions?”

Philip Smith. “For the past thirty-six years, Smith has presided over orchestral trumpet playing, with a resonant, clarion sound and a reputation for never missing a note.”

“The album is the biggest-selling film soundtrack since Mamma Mia!, and is on course to become the bestselling album of the year.”