“At 11 a.m. on the first day of the year, critics automatically scan the Musikvereinsaal stage to see how many women have been permitted to join the main event. In January 2012, there were just two, an apparent act of defiance against public punition.”
Category: music
UK CD Sales Dropped 20 Percent In 2012
“Figures showed CD album sales declined nearly 20% to 69.4m copies, although digital album sales rose by 14.8% to 30.5m.”
Gustavo Dudamel’s Epic Year
“However much the 31-year-old Venezuelan is now a well-established fixture on the classical music scene, not only hasn’t he slowed down, but Dudamel has just completed what may be the single most audaciously ambitious year ever attempted by a conductor.”
Minnesota Orchestra, SPCO To Meet With Deadlocked Musicians This Week
“The management of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the musicians union have agreed to meet with a federal mediator Wednesday and Thursday. Meanwhile, musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra have accepted an invitation to meet with management this week.”
Does It Matter If Pianists Perform With Scores?
“Somehow the idea persists that for a pianist to use a score in a performance suggests a lack of mastery or sufficient preparation.”
Researchers: Music Helps Fight Alzheimer’s
“Music therapy can help Parkinson’s patients walk and people with Alzheimer’s remember, with song lyrics surfacing in the brain even among people who have lost the ability to recognize their own relatives.”
The Problem With Cult-ifying Mozart
“Once we invest music with supernal qualities, once we maintain (there are learned papers to this effect) that Mozart can ease childbirth pains and stimulate brain cells in laboratory rats, it ceases to be music at all and becomes a part of humdrum mundanity, along with unemployment statistics and the football results. Sooner or later, you will read that Mozart can cure cancer.”
The Good News About Classical Music In 2012
“It was a pretty good year. Classical music kept on going…”
Biggest 2012 Pop Music Trend? Change
“The most reliable movement in pop this year was the basic mistrust of the old model.”
Musicians Versus Airlines
“Since 9/11, and with it the advent of Transportation Security Administration agents, and then the Great Recession — which caused airlines to cut corners and withhold services as well as niceties — musicians traveling with oversized string instruments have stood among the most aggrieved fliers.”