Category: music

“Total spending on music will fall by £190m, or 16%, in the UK this year it predicted, compared to 2.6% globally.”

“Digital music will increase its share of global recorded music spending to 39 percent for all of 2012. The main growth driver here will be online streaming, which Strategy Analytics forecasts will grow 40 percent this year to $1.1 billion – almost five times the rate of download revenue.”

“The arm of the Royal Opera House dedicated to commissioning and producing contemporary opera and dance is to close.”

“Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians have offered to cut their compensation by 11 percent to help balanced the organization’s annual budget, but there is a catch: They want the ASO staff to take an equal cut.”

“The leader and public face of the 32-year-old company for eight years, [Dennis] Hanthorn was widely credited for achieving marked improvement in its artistry and helping it survive financial challenges that were in play even before the recession hit.” No announcement was made until a journalist found out about Hanthorn’s departure.

“The São Paulo Symphony has a more single-minded goal: it is aiming to be one of the great orchestras of the world, which is why so much is riding on its Proms debut tonight, under new chief conductor Marin Alsop. For the first time in its 58-year history, the orchestra will command a global stage.”

Defining or categorizing this music is basically impossible. Progression magazine, a glossy quarterly journal that’s been around for 20 years, has identified at least 19 sub-genres, including “neo-progressive,” “neo-classical progressive,” and “rock in opposition”– that one coined by Chris Culter, a drummer for Henry Cow, to describe music you can’t describe.

“According to [executive director] Simon Woods, this year will be “at or a hair’s breadth away from breaking even,” the first time in years. Donations toward the $24 million annual budget will hit a new high of $9.5 million. Ticket sales, already a remarkably high percentage of income (45 percent), are up 2 percent.”

“From the circle, the change was immediately apparent. Acoustic consultants Marshall Day and Lawrence Kirkegaard have managed a minor engineering miracle. Old Hamer Hall was the acoustic equivalent of a neglected Renaissance painting, its colour and detail obscured under grimy varnish. New Hamer Hall restores clarity and vitality to the symphonic sound.”

It was exactly 300 years ago next month when ‘the Orpheus of our era” moved permanently to the British capital. Richard Wigmore recounts how Handel came to settle there, and why the employer he abandoned in Germany perhaps didn’t mind so much.