Category: music

Justin Davidson: “It is the professional institutions, presided over mostly by men and governed by ossified views, that control the process by which promising young musicians become prominent old ones. And a system ostensibly devoted to fostering talent in fact winds up casually squelching it.”

Bruce Kovner, chairman of the school’s board, has funded a set of fellowships – 25 immediately, increasing gradually to 52 by 2018 – that will cover all of a student’s expenses, from tuition, room and board to textbooks and travel expenses.

“Berlin, with its low-priced real estate and openness to experimentation, is well established as a hotbed of the visual arts. Its growing film and fashion industries have also drawn ambitious agenda-setters from all corners of the world, who have found a welcome atmosphere in which to create and mix with other artists. More recently, it has also developed into an important hub for the classical music world.”

“The commissioning program raises interesting questions about what 21st-century opera should sound like, how and where it should be presented, and just where musical theater ends and opera begins. Fewer than half of the original dozen composers chosen for the program, who were drawn from the worlds of classical music, musical theater, pop and jazz, have made it to the workshop phase so far.”

“There is no danger that it will die out, but we are failing to nurture it in important ways. In particular, we are turning into people who listen but do not play a note.”

“The DSO will announce key fund-raising and ticket-sale metrics on Tuesday for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31. The results include $6.3 million in ticket sales — nearly $1 million more than in 2012. In addition, individual donors in 2013 topped 10,000 for the first time in a decade.”

“At the beginning of this year, City Opera held an online auction of old sets, costumes, props — selling its history. And why ever not? It had no future.”

To imply that new music (since “abandoning accessible repertoire” is usually coded language for “presenting new music”) was in any way responsible for the company’s demise seems outrageous.

“The negotiations lasted more than a year and led to a strike that canceled Carnegie Hall’s planned opening night for the first time in the hall’s 122-year history. But after only two days, the dispute between Carnegie’s management and its stagehands was settled on Friday, and the hall announced that it was fully back in business.”