Category: music

David Bulteel, a director of London firm Investec PLC, on its sponsorship of Opera Holland Park: “We like to be aware of how many new clients it brings in, and how much money they might generate. There are softer issues, however, and softer benefits, and you can’t measure those in pound signs. … The staff members love the fact that they can take clients, and it really helps them build relationships.”

“It is extremely unfair to put professional musicians into a situation where they are emotionally blackmailed into working for no fee and are asked to give their services to a good cause. This is particularly unjust when others associated with the event, such as venue staff, lawyers and caterers, are being paid.”

“As the concert opened with the overture to ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ Pacheco clicked on her iPhone and began following tweets posted by the Pacific Symphony (actually hired-hand Jonathan Beard, an L.A. composer) and the marquee guest performers, the sibling pianist group 5 Browns (when they weren’t onstage).”

“My songline didn’t have much to do with ancient creation myths: you might more conventionally call it a pile of CDs. But the way the music seemed to imprint itself on the landscape made for some spine-tingling moments.”

Syracuse University has big plans to help revive the bankrupt Symphony — but the plans are so secret that even many musicians haven’t heard of them.

The American Music Preservation Project hopes to discover new musicians in the cricks, hollers and byways of the U.S. – and to update the work of Alan Lomax in the process.

“The music staff of the New York City Opera continues to dwindle. Kevin Murphy, a widely respected vocal coach, said on Thursday that he would leave his position as the company’s director of music administration to take a faculty post at … Indiana University.”

“While classical music performances in nontraditional spaces are nothing new — the Kronos Quartet played weekly concerts in a Mill Valley restaurant as far back as 1978 — such events have proliferated in the last decade. Lately, it has been hard to go anywhere in the Bay Area without stumbling across a wind ensemble essaying John Adams in an art gallery or a string quartet playing Beethoven in a wine bar.”

“Part of the drop was blamed on the fact that acts including The Rolling Stones and Take That did not tour last year. And some major artists, such as Kings of Leon and Rod Stewart, opted to play in arenas instead of stadia as a result of the the economic downturn.”

“The score and the music are both inextricable components of the final artwork, and it makes no more sense to say that one or the other must stand on its own than to say that a novel’s plot must stand on its own irrespective of the characters or language.”