Category: music

“It shows the 3904 venues employ 14,806 full-time equivalent positions and generate $651.9m in wages.”

“Unless the symphony works fast to slash salaries, find new sources of cash and ultimately change the way it does business, its very existence is in question. … We’re talking dead: a major city without a symphony orchestra.”

“At the heart of the DSO’s dilemma is a catch-22. The major donors needed to rebuild the orchestra’s endowment won’t pony up their millions if they think the money is going to go straight to the banks rather than support the orchestra.”

Looking through the WikiLeaks cables can be scary. “Put a few classical music keywords in the search box, however, and nuclear-weapon panic gives way to the curious mixture of social chess, pageantry theater and ‘Fawlty Towers’ that is cultural diplomacy.”

“In the words of its director, Juan Antonio Cuellar, ‘Social action is the mission; music is the tool.’ Cuellar describes taking a plane across a remote area of the Andes, driving to the end of the only road, taking a boat to a small town … and finding the children singing songs and working in recorder ensembles exactly as they do in downtown Bogotá.”

“The anniversary events are canonizing — and continuing to commercialize — the moment when, some people say, alternative music fully broke through to the mainstream. Yet many of the dark clubs where Nirvana and bands like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and the Melvins built followings are gone.”

“New York-based Lembit Beecher, 30, will spend stretches of several weeks at a time at the Opera Company, as well as Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theatre Group in New York, observing productions and developing ideas for potential projects.”

“I dream of a future when, like our two Glyndebourne operatic webcasts this summer, you’re able to watch great classical music events live from around the world, for free, as often as possible.”

The heartthrob Brazilian baritone leapt to stardom in the latest Broadway revival of South Pacific. He is finding that his success in Rodgers and Hammerstein, far from causing to lose caste, has boosted his opera career.