Category: music

“There’s a remarkable symphony orchestra in the Congo, 200 musicians defying the poverty of their war-torn country and creating some of the most moving music we have ever heard. Bob Simon reports.”

“It’s a little known chapter in the career of Canadian music legend Oscar Peterson — he played a series of private concerts and recorded some of his best work for a small German jazz label in the 1960s in the Black Forest.”

“Obscure knowledge was once a kind of currency. To get it, you had to be in the loop. You had to know the right people to learn about the right bands. You had to know the right record stores to hear those bands. The right record stores, like the right comic and book and video stores, were manned by knowledge guardians who scared the bejeezus out of us, so the act of going in to these stores felt kind of intrepid.”

“Such masterpieces provide a firm challenge to the contemporary conceit that the modern world is always improving. The growing popularity of hearing the Bach Passions leading up to the Easter season in our ‘post-religious’ culture is an intriguing and exciting one.”

The baritone singer has retired from performing, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost what even he calls his big mouth. “Believing in God? Well, you know, too many bad things happen in the world for that to be possible. I believe that man is a faulty design. Human beings have truly misunderstood that sentence in the Bible, the one about man subduing the world. But I do believe in art.”

“The amount of time users spend listening also grew — to more than 1 billion hours last month, from 567 million hours in March 2011. Each Pandora listener spent more time on average with the service as well, about 19.6 hours in March compared with 17.7 hours a year ago.”

“In a recently approved plan covering 2012 to 2015, the company aims for more performances in varied sites, bigger names on stage, international coproductions with other companies, and a deeper reach into the city and its neighborhoods.” Says general director David Devan, “Going forward, we’re thinking about product lines rather than single operas.”

“Having developed on the margins, electronic dance music — high-energy waves of mechanized sound that, at its best, creates a communal experience for a sea of strangers — is dominated by a network of independent promoters. Their success has attracted a clutch of potential investors from inside and outside the music world. The insiders include Live Nation and A.E.G. Live, the two biggest corporate promoters.”

“A former York Symphony Orchestra employee admitted in court Wednesday to stealing more than $200,000 from the symphony to cover her gambling addiction. Phyllis A. Shoff, 56, of New Cumberland, will serve 9 to 23 months in York County Prison, followed by 10 years’ probation for theft and access-device fraud.”

The letter accuses the organisation – which is tasked with promoting new music and which was formed in 2008 following the merger of the British Music Information Centre, the Contemporary Music Network, Sonic Arts Network and the Society for Promotion of New Music – of alienating “virtually the entire contemporary music sector”. It calls for the “reinstatement of the core functions of the founder organisations without delay”.