A wood researcher in Switzerland “has succeeded in modifying the wood for a violin through treatment with special fungi. This treatment alters the acoustic properties of the instrument, making it sound indistinguishably similar to a Stradivarius.”
Category: music
Madrid’s Teatro Real Faces Strike Threat
Employees at the opera house are protesting the sudden layoff of ten staffers in August, during the summer vacation period. A union spokesman says that labor actions will be taken during each of the Real’s next three productions if management does not meet with the union and take steps to reinstate the laid-off workers.
Nothing But Debt (And Uncertainty) At San Antonio Symphony
“With the start of its new season less than a month away, the San Antonio Symphony has no approved budget, no contract with its musicians and no date set to come up with a new plan. But despite mounting debt” – about $850,000, with the potential to top $1 million soon – “it does have a season planned – at least on paper.”
Music Made By Musicians AND The Audience
“All of these mythologies about ‘crossing the proscenium’ or ‘breaking through the fourth wall’ in performance — it just becomes irrelevant. A performance or interaction is created equally from all sides at once, you know? Whether it’s technology or interface setting the rules of the engagement, you also have everything that the user — the person participating in it — brings to it. It’s really a cooperation between equals.”
Why We Need Outdoor Concert Stage Safety Standards
“I don’t think any show has ever intentionally caused an accident that put somebody in a body bag. But because the industry doesn’t have any standards and practices, because it doesn’t have a catalog of best practices, because it isn’t regulated, any cowboy can do anything.”
Just What Does Orchestral Excellence Cost?
As orchestras all over the country face management proposals with steep pay cuts, musicians wonder what they’re actually worth.
Want To See New Operas? Don’t Look To Peter Gelb’s Met
“The dearth of operas by living composers at the Met, or even later-20th-century works by composers now dead (it took the New York Philharmonic to present the New York premiere of Gyorgy Ligeti’s astonishing “Grand Macabre” in 2010), seems incompatible with Mr. Gelb’s stated mission. He arrived in 2006, vowing to bring the company into the 21st century by drawing on the latest developments in staging and by rejuvenating the repertory. Shouldn’t new and recent works be a major part of this initiative?”
Just Another Day In 1955, When Glenn Gould Was Changing Everything
“Outtakes from these sessions … suggest that in 1955 he used the studio in the opposite way: to maximize risk-taking, to push each of the short pieces that make up Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations to its furthest physical, musical, spiritual extreme.”
How Music Is Shapes By Its Environment
“Music doesn’t just work because of its effect on the senses; every aspect of its sound and construction has an emotional impact, right up to the way it’s distributed, even marketed, and the machines on which it’s consumed.”
Finland’s New Golden Age Of Classical Music
“Buoyed by a rising generation of conducting stars and soloists, and a thriving musical culture that extends into the provinces, Finland is settling into a new golden age for classical music, turning what other countries often regard as a moribund luxury into a vital part of everyday life.”