Category: music

NPR is running a reader/listener poll to answer this burning question. Among the top nominees so far are Shostakovich (wrote an opera edgy enough to get banned by Stalin), Liszt (major heartthrob, played pianos so hard they broke), and Gesualdo (killed his cheatin’ wife and wrote “the most dissonant music within three centuries on either side”).

Over the past six months, British opera has taken three or four giant strides into the 21st century.

“The folded symphony has $327,000 worth of stuff and $4 million in liabilities. M&T Bank, the biggest secured creditor, is likely to get everything, leaving nothing for the hundreds of unpaid vendors and staff and people who bought concert tickets they could not use.”

“The Detroit Symphony Orchestra raised more than $3 million during a strike-shortened season in April and May while its overall number of donors increased to 4,800, a 27% jump over last year. The DSO also drew about 450 more patrons per concert compared to a typical night before the strike.”

“She’s pretty, stylish and oozes star quality. But Japan’s latest pop sensation is not quite what she seems – in fact, she doesn’t actually exist. It turns out that Aimi Eguchi, the newest member of the Japanese band AKB48, is a virtual composite of six other band members.”

“The Detroit Symphony Orchestra raised more than $3 million during a strike-shortened season in April and May while its overall number of donors increased to 4,800, a 27% jump over last year. The DSO also drew about 450 more patrons per concert compared to a typical night before the strike.”

“[The] Philadelphia Orchestra Association is claiming $16 million in assets and $700,000 in liabilities in a recent filing attached to its chapter 11 petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.” Those figures include neither the orchestra’s endowment nor unpaid obligations to the musicians’ pension fund.

Since the fall of the Communist regime in Romania, scholar/conductor Kurt Philippi has been finding and transcribing thousands of pages of sheet music in the archives of the historic Lutheran churches that once served Transylvania’s German community.

“The Philadelphia Orchestra Association Wednesday announced an aid package worth a potential $45 million – a substantial start to its $160 million drive to help the orchestra emerge from bankruptcy and become stable. The funding includes only $11.2 million in outright gifts and pledges. The rest is being dangled.”

“The 75-year-old Swiss conductor left for North Korea on Monday with violinist Chantal Juillet for a five-day stay … The musicians will discuss prospects of creating an ensemble made up of young artists from the two Koreas.”