Category: music

“For starters, let’s decommission our obsession with being geniuses. Three-fourths of the people reading this are geniuses. Who in our world is not a genius? Such a diluted, entry-level position. Such resting on wilted laurels of cleverness. We all took the big leap into pursuing a career in the arts because we were crowned geniuses back wherever we came from. And now it’s the classic scenario: we’re the former high school football stars grateful to be riding the bench in the big leagues.”

“The number of albums bought on vinyl increased by 33%, echoing the UK trend where events like Record Store Day helped double sales of vinyl last year. UK figures released by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) last week showed that music streaming was up 33.7% and now accounts for nearly 10% of consumer revenues from recorded music.”

The 28-year-old has been named the seventh recipient of the $300,000 Gilmore Artist award, for which you can’t apply or even be told that you’re a candidate. Blechacz is in exalted company: his predecessors include Piotr Anderszewski, Leif Ove Andsnes, Ingrid Fliter and Kirill Gerstein.

“Former employees, suppliers and industry watchers say that J&R has closed its classical music section for good, bringing to an end New York’s last brick-and-mortar record store with a dedicated classical section.”

“As with the endless smorgasbord of gummy bears, Froot Loops and other toppings at those frozen-yogurt chains, what starts as a tantalizing abundance of music can suddenly seem overwhelming. That’s one reason why we fall back on the same stuff we’ve been listening to since senior year in high school.”

“Everybody gets so hung up on, ‘Oh my God, there’s electricity involved’,” says Bates. “But really, this is just part of the evolution of the orchestra, which I find to be a limitless medium. It’s like the world’s greatest synthesizer.”

Vancouver Symphony music director Bramwell Tovey, himself a Canadian opera composer, argues that COC general director Alexander Neef is deliberately neglecting a key part of his job as head of the national company.

“The next news to report is rather discouraging, and confirms something widely reported in the press last autumn: female conductors were a rarity last year, and just one of our 100 busiest conductors was a woman.”

“While artists performing others’ songs is as old as pop and rock itself, over the past couple of decades the faithful reinterpretation of earlier groups’ repertoires, looks and quirks, even appropriately-accented onstage chat, has become big business and a process whereby the greats of the past are presented to new generations of fans.”

“There are 240 members in the Academy’s music branch, which includes Mr. Burnett, and if those members come to view ‘Llewyn Davis’ as a tribute to the enduring power of their own craft, the film will be well on its way.”