Category: music

“How can classical music die if it keeps showing up on ‘The Simpsons’?”

“With sales dying fast and records about to fade from our lives, perhaps it’s fitting that EMI fades out too. Records are what the company did but records are finished. And a nice place in history isn’t a bad place to be.”

“EMI’s labels include Blue Note, Capitol, Parlophone and Virgin Records. Labels included under the Universal umbrella are Def Jam, Motown, Decca, Island Records, Interscope Records and Polydor Records.”

“It’s called the YouTube boom. The number of registered songwriters in Britain has topped 83,000. That’s a 62% increase in just five years… But Britain’s Performing Rights Society (PRS), which collects royalties on behalf of songwriters and musicians, says there is a crisis brewing. The number of young performers breaking through in terms of album sales is down by 30% compared to 2009, it says.”

“Norwegian Air Shuttle, known simply as ‘Norwegian’, had cited ‘security risks’ when it announced that from November 1 cellos would no longer be allowed into its cabins, even when booked into seats as passengers.” Cellist Truls Mørk led the opposition, which was strong enough to make the airline reconsider.

The 93-year-old McPartland, who launched her NPR music/interview program in 1979, will pass the microphone to Chicago jazz pianist Jon Weber in January. The series will be renamed Piano Jazz Rising Stars.

“Labels are essentially suppliers, and Google wants to be a distributor. The labels want a high price. Google wants a low price. They have oppositional aims. That’s just capitalism.”

“Pierre Ruhe, former classical music critic for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, has taken the job of artistic administrator of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Ruhe left the AJC in 2009 along with the theater, book and art critics, and launched ArtsCriticATL.com, a web site focusing on the local Atlanta arts scene. “

“In a motion filed last week in the association’s Chapter 11 case, orchestra management says the American Federation of Musicians and Employers Pension Fund is seeking financial information from 16 philanthropists ‘only in a continued effort to embarrass and harass the [association] and their donors’.”

David Patrick Stearns (before coming around): “I was feeling personally betrayed whenever one of my favorite musicians came out with a Liszt anniversary-year recording. I nearly wept upon seeing Pierre Boulez’s granite-chiseled face appear on the cover of a Liszt piano concerto album with Daniel Barenboim … Yes, Boulez – the high-minded composer/conductor who has no time for Brahms and once thought Verdi was stupid. And now … Liszt?”