Category: music

“With funding from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage,” the city’s William Way LGBT Community Center “coordinated at least five venues to host dozens of musicians from around the country to take part in OutBeat,” scheduled for mid-September.

“They’ve probably never shared a stage together, and they are a strange match even by the odd-pairings standards of entertainment awards. Peter Sellars, the innovative Los Angeles-based director of opera and theater, and rock pioneer Chuck Berry were named the dual recipients of the annual Polar Music Prize, one of the highest honors in the field of music.”

“[The furor over his remarks last fall] is an example of misquotation and actually quite a grotesque distortion from what I was saying. … I do understand that people who read it as it was reported were upset and even offended, but what I was actually saying was totally different. I was never against women conductors at all.”

“The American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents solo singers, chorus singers and stage management personnel at the opera, filed the claim with the National Labor Relations Board on March 26, accusing the opera company of failing to honor year-long contracts with 35 singers.” The union now promises to work with the new board to put up a 2015 season.

“Now 88 years old, sharp as a tack and still the motivating force behind Opera San Jose, which she founded 30 years ago, [Irene] Dalis … is retiring. On June 30, she will let go of ‘my baby,’ … ceding her position as general director to Larry Hancock, her hand-groomed successor.”

“Since Eurovision adopted its current voting system, where dozens of countries assign between one and 12 points to the competition’s entries via telephone voting, only 14 songs out of thousands have received the most dreaded rating of all: ‘Nul points’. … Its rarity is partly because of the competition’s scale: with so many countries voting, and so many geographical allegiances at play, your song has to be truly putrid to fail to collect one point from anyone.” (includes video hall of shame)

“Despite how much our world has changed, it’s surprising how many of the conversations we were having back in 1999 are still going on today, though sadly not everyone involved with those conversations is still with us today.”

“Mortar attacks have become daily occurrence in the Syrian capital of some two million, often killing more people than this attack. But the strike last month against the opera house resonated much more loudly through the Damascus community. It was a direct hit against the Assad family’s cherished creation.”

This Saturday, Britain’s seven nationally funded companies are joining forces to take viewers inside the processes of making opera – from creating a set for The Magic Flute and a costume for Don Giovanni to preparing for the evening’s performance of Julian Anderson’s new opera The Thebans to composer Errolyn Wallen composing an aria on the spot to a text suggested via Twitter.