Category: music

“San Antonio Symphony musicians and management have agreed to start the 2011-12 performance season while continuing to negotiate a contract, the two sides said Tuesday.”

“The Vancouver Opera posted a significant budget shortfall this past season, joining two other Vancouver major arts organizations facing financial difficulties. The 53-year-old organization had a $1.4-million loss on its $9.2-million operating budget for the fiscal year that ended in June.”

“The Los Angeles Philharmonic, building on its symbiotic relationship with Venezuela’s El Sistema national youth music training program, is partnering with Bard College in upstate New York and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., to launch a joint musical education initiative.”

“High-flying conductor under question Mark Gorenstein is threatening to go to the law after his orchestra forced him out. Alexander Avdeyev, culture minister, sacked him on Thursday evening” from his post at the Svetlanov State Symphony following an uprising by musicians who refused to rehearse with Gorenstein.

“We’re experiencing a kind of Arab Spring among orchestra musicians,” says journalist Norman Lebrecht, after ensembles in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro openly rebelled against their maestros. Lebrecht, critic Anne Midgette and League of American Orchestras president Jesse Rosen discuss the issue.

“A recent study of popular song lyrics done at the State University of New York in Albany shows not only that messages about sexual relationships dominate the songs at the top of the charts, but also that songs about sex sell better than other songs.”

Classical New England works to reinvigorate the classical music radio format.

“After the recent seasons of artistic drift, the BSO can no longer postpone the transformation begun but not completed under Levine. It must reignite its evolution, signal its new trajectory to the city and the world, and ensure that these interim seasons become not a waiting game with pleasant concerts but a time of real growth, artistic ferment, and creative energy.”

“The Louisville Orchestra’s management rejected a contract proposal from its musicians Monday night, according to a news release from the musicians, who earlier in the day apparently rebuffed management’s latest contract offer.”

The “direct to fan” connection has existed in various forms since the earliest days of the Web. But musicians and managers say that only in recent years, with the rise of companies like Topspin and its competitors — among them Bandcamp, FanBridge and ReverbNation — have the tools become sophisticated enough to run all aspects of a band’s online business.