Category: music

“The Protomen are their own worst enemy: as they progress, each act they record becomes that much harder to follow.”

“The music selection on Voyager skews noticeably classical, with the inclusion of seven classical selections out of a total of 27 tracks.”

“In the newly remodeled Orchestra Hall, black is the new orange. An auditorium long known for its sea of 1970s orange now has seats and balconies in a near-black color called ‘thundercloud.’ A glassy new lobby is twice the size of the original. … New white-oak floors are used in the auditorium, and the stage floor and the signature acoustical ‘tumbling dice’ remain in place.”

“Sound recordings weren’t brought under federal copyright protection until 1972, instead being governed through state laws. In recent years, the U.S. Copyright Office has asked for opinions about bringing so-called “oldies” under the law.”

The qualified answer is yes. Turns out many are ready to ditch those MP3s.

“If musician salaries are the problem, the management just saved a whole year of costs by depriving the community of music through the lockout. Isn’t it time for enough to be enough?”

“Citing ill health, the Italian conductor Claudio Abbado has canceled plans to conduct a series of concerts in Japan this fall with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – including one at an inflatable concert hall in Matsushima that was to be dedicated to a region recovering from the 2011 earthquake.”

Tom Service: “A symphony isn’t just a structure, a musical formula, or a set of containers – three or four movements of contrasting speeds and characters – that composers merely had to fill in to qualify as ‘symphonic’ writers. The symphony is really a way of thinking about what music actually is, what it’s really for.”

“Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra on Tuesday said they had given management a counterproposal on a new contract. Management disagreed, calling the communication a ‘vague framework for a proposal that calls for wage increases over three years’.”

The Indian conductor’s performance with the Bavarian State Orchestra at the Shalimar Gardens may have been intended to bring the balm of (Western) classical music to the conflict-torn state, but locals ended up alienated by heavy-handed security, the musicians felt lied to about the nature of the event, and one man had been shot and wounded by police nearby.