Category: music

The music director (and son of Sophia Lauren), decamping for his family in Switzerland, led the organization for 11 seasons.

“‘I think all opera companies suffer because of a certain level of misunderstanding about what we present, because a lot of people don’t know what we do,’ says Pickard. ‘And if this is the start of a greater understanding, and therefore a greater interest, which will lead to more people attending live performances, then that’s good for everyone.'”

“One of the best-known facts about music in Afghanistan, at least in the West, is that it wasn’t. The Taliban banned it when they took power in 1996, beating musicians, burning instruments and destroying cassette tapes in the name of their severe and extreme vision of Islam. But with the Taliban’s fall, musical life revived, if slowly, in the shattered country.”

“Recordings change the performing environment. Once anyone can hear the best performers, and once those performers are conscious that they’re making recordings for the ages — not just live performances to be heard tonight and preserved only in memories — those recordings become the standard that influences all.” How can we retrain young musicians to save their individuality?

“A loss of donor funding means that the [Amman Symphony Orchestra] and the Amman Arab Music Ensemble (AAME) will close down at the end of the 2012 concert season if they do not raise enough financial support from both public and private institutions.”

A new two-hander play in New York recounts the story of the gifted, revered (by those in the know) and maddeningly prickly Erica Morini – and the fabled Stradivarius stolen from her apartment while she was in a hospital, dying.

“Of course, music is universal now, but so are mobile phones, and we know that mobile phones aren’t evolved adaptations. When we think about music, it’s important to remember that an awful lot of features that we take for granted in Western music–like harmony and 12-bar blues structure, to say nothing of pianos or synthesizers, simply didn’t exist 1,000 years ago.”

“New York City Opera will return to its roots at New York City Center in March after a 48-year absence, splitting the 2012-13 season between its former home and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”

“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs in Russia for the first time since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union on Wednesday, hoping to show Russian audiences a different side of American cultural with its rendition of Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich.”

“If you want to know what the cool kids will be listening to next month, here are two hints: 1) Head to Atlanta. 2) It’s probably hip hop. That’s according to a recently posted arXiv paper mapping the geographic flow of music on the social-networking music site Last.fm.)” Also at the top: Montreal, Chicago and Toronto.