Category: music

Many high achievers in almost every profession studied music seriously as kids. What’s the link – and what happens to the music-inspired drive when school music programs get cut across the country?

“Shortly after Gergiev walked on stage to conduct a program of three Stravinsky ballets, several protesters from the group Queer Nation began to shout from the upper balconies, “Gergiev, your silence is killing Russian gays!” Gergiev kept his back to the audience and waited for the commotion to stop.”

Speaking in court Thursday, the opera company’s lawyer, Kenneth Rosen, referred to the interested parties as a “potential partner” or a “potential merger candidate.”

“After going without increases this season and for the previous one, which is retroactively included in the four-year deal, Pacific Symphony musicians will get a 2% bump for the 2014-15 season that begins next September, and two 1.5% increases during the 2015-16 season.”

“Last year 6.5 million music fans from overseas attended a festival or gig, with ticket, transport and accommodation sales generating £2.2 billion and creating 24,000 jobs.”

“With the din diminished, up went the smart phones as audience member after audience member took videos of the show they were watching. In an attempt to stop this, ushers flashed red laser beams at the offending fans until they set their phones down. The scene resembled a crime drama when the assassin has the victim dialed in with a laser beam to the chest.”

The founder and director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and one of the most respected maestros now working, Fischer has lately been developing an impressive sideline in directing operas. Now he’s composed one, based on one of Europe’s last “blood libel” trials, in which a Jewish man was accused of using the blood of a murdered Christian to make matzo.

“Have we somehow slipped into an alternate universe only Hollywood could conjure up, where surfers and sun worshipers are so dazed by the latest Santa Ana that they now accept Beethoven as one of the Beach Boys? No, there is no bubble. And, no, classical music is not in crisis.”

“The good news I bring you is that the bad news that permeates so many discussions of the future is largely false. Unfortunately though, such false messages can be self-fulfilling, and we must not allow our resolve to be repelled by an assault of damaging words.”

“Conductor and composer Bruno Mantovani lit a firestorm last Friday when Radio France posted an interview with him in which he ran through a veritable laundry list of putative reasons why women couldn’t succeed as conductors, ranging from infant-bearing to child-rearing to our innate lack of brawn and stamina.”