Category: music

“The importance of the summer concert season can’t be overstated for artists leaning on touring revenue, as CD sales continue to fall and audiences fragment. The industry is frantically brewing up new mixtures, trying to find something for everyone.”

There’s no doubt that South Florida listeners have benefited from the chance to hear regular performances by one of the world’s greatest orchestras. But questions remain about what the orchestra brings to the community and what it takes away.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music will open its 150th anniversary season next September with a revival of Les Arts Florissants’ 1987 production, a major landmark in the modern revival of French Baroque music. (Other season highlights include include a revival of Einstein on the Beach and the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.)

“Syracuse Symphony’s board of trustees will file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, likely next week.” Interim Executive Director Paul Brooks “said the board realized it couldn’t support a 77-person, $7 million orchestra on a $5 million budget.”

“Responding to longstanding criticism in the music industry that too many categories were diluting the Grammys’ impact, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences said on Wednesday it was reducing the number of prizes to 78, from 109, and instituting several procedural reforms.”

“The project, overseen by [composer] Whitacre, invited choral singers from around the world to submit a video of themselves singing either the soprano, alto, tenor or bass part of Whitacre’s Sleep. The audio was mixed into one track, so all four parts sounded at once as they would in a live concert.” (Last year’s Virtual Choir, the first, involved 185 singers.)

The company plans an “$11 million Opera on the Harbour series for next year, a community choir program, already under way, a plan to record and broadcast five productions a year and a $16m Ring Cycle in Melbourne for 2013. But with the company having posted two successive deficits it is not entirely clear where the funds for expansion will come from.”

“True, when considering professional orchestras and the YouTube version, we’re not comparing apples with apples. Nonetheless, struggling orchestras can–and should–learn valuable lessons from YouTube about what it may require to remain viable and relevant in the 21st Century.”

“German newspapers are reporting that Wim Wenders now won’t be directing the 2013 Bayreuth Ring … The two parties had earlier seemed close to agreement, with set designs already in progress. But the main sticking point was a proposed 3-D film of the production.”