Category: music

“Scotland’s leading youth music organisation may be forced to abandon much of its pioneering educational work after its funding was halved for next year, officials warned.”

“If music is, as they say, the ‘universal language,’ does some of it speak in a distinctively American dialect? With the most American of holidays just around the corner, we figured it was time for a little self-analysis” with conductor Marin Alsop.

“The Seattle Symphony’s brand-new music director, Ludovic Morlot, has just accepted another new appointment, with a major European opera house: La Monnaie, in Brussels, Belgium, where he begins a five-year contract as chief conductor in the fall of 2012.”

Alan Gilbert: “I am making a personal promise that these beloved free concerts will return next summer and continue for many years to come.”

“It is obviously too late to bring back the parks tour for this summer, which is a shame. The Philharmonic originally had plans to present some parks concerts in conjunction with the Mahler memorial program, but this fell by the wayside. But New York music lovers should hold the Philharmonic to its word that the parks concerts will return in 2012.”

“To mark its 80th birthday, Abbey Road has a devised a competition that gives composers of all ages and abilities the opportunity to have a piece recorded at the studio with the London Symphony Orchestra and some of the U.K.’s best singers. The challenge? Compose an anthem scored for choir that has not been previously published or commercially recorded.”

“The best thing about the Tchaikovsky competition isn’t the jaw-dropping musical talent on show in all four disciplines of piano, violin, cello and voice… No: the best thing about the competition in both Moscow and St Petersburg is the audience, one of the most interactive, involved and opinionated groups of music lovers anywhere.”

“As the largest creditor in the [orchestra’s bankruptcy] case,” the musicians’ union “is seeking documentation relating to endowments, grants, donations, bequests, and pledges to help determine whether a pension-fund claim may be satisfied from those assets.”

Anne Midgette: “I am all for teaching as many children as much about music as possible. But this idea, as outlined, is a logical fallacy. For one thing, the audience that’s declining right now is an audience that DID have the benefit of music education: my peers, the people in their 40s and 50s.”

“You have to love any graph that has ‘in percent of evil’ as an axis – part of an amusing dashboard analyzing how ‘evil’ Slayer albums and songs are, based on how often the lyrics reference blood, death, evil, heil, kill, Satan, and war.”