Category: music

“The opera theatre at the Sydney Opera House will be renamed in honour of the late Dame Joan Sutherland … Despite the announcement, a long-proposed $1 billion renovation of the Opera House, with a particular focus on the opera theatre” – which has notorious design and acoustical problems – “remains stalled.”

“The Minnesota seems headed straight for a very large mine which could sink the musical ship. There is a confluence of events pointing to the 2012-13 season. First, they’re in contract negotiations. Second, they’re being kicked out of the hall. Third, the deficit is looming. Suddenly, and I mean very suddenly, the Minnesota is in desperate waters.”

Rob Deemer: “The need for greater programming of women composers is, of course, strong and obvious enough that nothing I could say could add to the argument. What little I can do to help the issue along I have done in the hopes that with information comes progress.”

In honor of the London Olympics and Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, pop singers and classical musicians use Elizabethan instruments to bring Shakespeare’s sonnets to contemporary recording. “It’s been 400 years in the making,” says one musician.

“In addition to the expected sources, such as merch, concert ticket sales or, in the case of symphony musicians, employment, the Future of Music Coalition found artists make money from teaching, speaking engagements, fan-funding, acting, YouTube partnerships, persona licensing, session musician work and myriad national and international publishing groups.”

As the BBC preps for The Spirit of Schubert – everything ever recorded, March 23-31 – Jessica Duchen can’t wait. “Previously we’ve been treated to days or weeks of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and more – but Schubert is different, so intense, intimate and direct is his idiom and so raw the sensibility it contains.”

South Korean conductor Chung Myung-Whun led the combined forces of the Unhasu orchestra and the Radio France Philharmonic in a joint concert by his musical “families.”

“It is not the headache of four separate helicopters carrying string quartet performers that is keeping Graham Vick awake at night. It is more, he confessed, the strain of 11 flying string and woodwind soloists that is exercising his mind ahead of the first performance of one of the world’s most unusual operas.”

“Research suggests that there may be psychological reasons why some songs are more likely to stick, including memory triggers, emotional states and even stress. Some researchers hope to better understand why this happens and figure out what, if anything, music memory can teach psychologists about how to treat patients dealing with memory loss.”

The theremin, invented by an amateur cellist, turned into a propaganda piece for Lenin – a way to showcase the inventiveness of Russians after the Revolution internationally, and to promote electrification across Russia. Then there was Theremin’s mission in the U.S.: industrial espionage.