Category: music

“The New York Philharmonic has yet again canceled a proposed trip to Cuba, and this time it may be for keeps. … ‘I think the Philharmonic may go to Cuba some day but certainly not in the foreseeable future,’ [a spokesman] said.”

“Pountney, who has directed many productions for the company, will take up his new post in September. He is currently intendant of Austria’s Bregenz Festival and will continue in the role until his current contract ends in 2013. … In the past, Pountney has worked as director of productions for both Scottish Opera and English National Opera.”

At one station, an aria from Bizet’s “Carmen” serenaded commuters waiting to board. “There’s no one that just hangs around,” said one passenger to the Associated Press. Before the music “they wouldn’t get on the train, that’s how you’d know they were [loitering].”

“No wonder the Billboard Rock Songs chart is populated by such acts as Cage the Elephant, Shinedown, Foster the People, Avenged Sevenfold, Young the Giant, Stone Sour and Alter Bridge. Unfathomable band names are nothing new (Procol Harum, anyone?), but in the olden days they felt more like a matter of choice than necessity.”

“I would argue that all jazz is fusion. It’s the fusing of the Delta blues and of ragtime and of brass bands that make New Orleans music jazz. It’s the fusion of improvisation from Chicago with society orchestras in New York that creates the big band. All of jazz is a fusion. And today, jazz is a world music.”

Settling the strike is only the first mountain in a series of treacherous peaks that the financially crippled DSO has to scale on its way to a viable future. With $54 million in real estate debt, $9 million in projected deficits in the next three years, a rapidly shrinking endowment, subscription numbers as bloody as the end of a slasher movie and relationships between musicians and management as hostile as “The War of the Roses,” the DSO’s margin for error remains razor thin.

“Classical composers have for centuries made music sponsored by rich and powerful people, and most labels have departments dedicated to brand partnerships. Decades ago most bands would have seen corporate sponsorship as detrimental to their credibility. Not so any more. But what do the fans say?”

“Clear evidence of American society’s increasing narcissism can be found in our best-selling popular songs. That’s the conclusion of a study just published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Compared to a quarter-century ago, ‘Popular music lyrics now include more words related to a focus on the self,” reports a team of researchers’.”

“In launching its Cloud Player, Amazon has cocked a snoot both at its rivals and at the music business. The more one looks at it, the more exquisite the competitive dilemmas of its opponents now seem.”

“There are reasons why the music industry will either push Amazon for new licenses or take the legal route, and their names rhyme with Schmapple and Croogle.”