Category: music

“A Halifax promoter is wondering why no one is calling for resignations at Summerside City Hall over the concert that never happened. Taxpayers shelled out $1.3 million for a concert that didn’t take place. And now the city is suing to get its money back.”

“Composers in residence aren’t uncommon in symphony orchestras or unknown in opera companies. Yet the shape and form of a two-composer-in-residence program being announced Thursday by the Opera Company of Philadelphia has enough working parts to be what general director David B. Devan calls a ‘landmark investment in the future of opera’.”

The orchestra “performed a three-hour recital in Cadogan Hall in London last week … [for] more than 100 different varieties of plants and bulbs.” The concert was a promotional event presented by the home shopping network QVC.

“A decade after it was shelved by his label, David Bowie’s 23rd studio album has been leaked on the internet. Toy, conceived as a reimagining of Bowie’s early work, appeared on file-sharing websites this week, with Bowie’s reps refusing to comment.”

“[The] mystique surrounding conductors is so strong that it remains tantamount to heresy to suggest that [James] Levine’s conducting, in particular, is ever anything less than breathtaking. … But the conductor retains an ineffable sense of authority, of connection to something greater than mere mortals, in part because what he or she does is so difficult to define, yet so evident in its results.”

“When people talk about last year’s SXSW, they think back to Bill Murray taking an impromptu turn as a bartender at a hipster bar on Austin’s east side. And when they look back on this year’s SXSW, they’ll remember getting maced at the surprise Death From Above 1979 reunion show.”

“Have you ever wanted hear what Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro would sound like if processed through a European gumball factory and then pumped full of helium? We didn’t think so. And yet, try averting your eyes from the music video above, in which Mozart’s masterpiece is mercilessly tickled to death, Europop-style.”

“The cancellations by the 67-year-old Mr. Levine — the latest of numerous withdrawals over the past five years — are sure to raise speculation that he will further reduce his role at the Met.”

“Not surprisingly, it was also a multimedia extravaganza. Digital imagery was projected inside and outside the Opera House. Trippy psychedelic colours emblazoned the walls of the Concert Hall during Grainger’s Arrival Platform Humlet, and whirling geometric shapes for the contrapuntal intricacies of Bach’s Toccata for organ, BWV 540.”

“Three recent, overlapping festivals offered a portrait of a new New York School, high on amped-up minimalism, percussion-heavy beats, shimmering textures, loops, drones, and washes of electronic color. These composers in their thirties worry less about categories, narrative, and originality than about atmosphere, energy, and sound.”