Category: music

“Members of the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra will talk among themselves in coming weeks to determine whether there’s any way to keep the 100-year-old organization alive beyond next season. At least two of the 70-plus musicians disagree with executive director Dan Linssen’s claim that orchestra can’t survive beyond next season.”

Indianapolis Symphony concertmaster Zach DePue and colleague Nick Kendall, two-thirds of the group Time for Three, were denied boarding on a US Airways Express flight out of Charlotte after flight staff refused to allow them to bring their instruments as carry-ons. Left on the tarmac, they made a video and posted it to YouTube; naturally it went viral.

Richard Morrison of Britain’s The Times: “The first responsibility of all reviewers is of course to tell the truth as they perceive it to their readers, not to avoid bruising the egos of performers. … Sometimes, however, critics – and indeed all journalists, bloggers and tweeters – need a reminder of how much their words can hurt and how carefully they should be used.”

“Ever since 1976, when the orchestra moved into the Mann Center (then known as the Robin Hood Dell West), the two have played well together in Fairmount Park to establish a lively presence for orchestral music. But the post-bankruptcy Philadelphia Orchestra seems less concerned about sharp elbows.”

Alex Ross: “For anyone who has endured clichéd, condescending, uncomprehending, or otherwise aggravating depictions of classical music in American TV ads – the snobs at the symphony, the sopranos screaming under Valkyrie helmets, the badly edited bowdlerizations of the ‘Ode to Joy’ – a new ad for the Apple iPad featuring the conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen may come as a pleasant shock.” (includes video)

That’s what they’re aiming for – with $10 tickets for students and as-many-concerts-as you-want $50 “FanCards” for young adults. Music director Franz Welser-Möst says that Cleveland Orchestra concerts have even become popular for date nights. (includes video)

Tim Page reminds all you millennial types just why Karlheinz Stockhausen was important enough to make the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – and why it’s the composer’s own fault that a generation or two of music geeks has grown up more or less unaware of him.

“A Stradivarius violin forgotten in a closet for decades and formerly owned by a reclusive U.S. heiress to a copper fortune could sell for as much as $10 million in a sealed bid auction next month, according to Christie’s.”

“The first of three fundraisers in which invite-only attendees were encouraged to bring their own marijuana, Friday’s ‘Classically Cannabis’ event also featured a patio on which attendees casually smoked pot from joints, vaporizer pens and glass pipes under umbrellas as a light rain fell.”

“Stern’s goals of ‘how to make the symphony effective for our community’ differed from the board majority who voted to end his contract. Stern’s goal was to make the symphony ‘a world-class orchestra. And we wanted a community orchestra,’ Whitney said.”