Category: music

“An artist can’t remain “downtown” forever; downtown culture continually reinvents itself. If you had to locate it now, it would probably be centered somewhere closer to Brooklyn than to the East Village. At a certain point a downtown artist either enters the canon — goes uptown — or enters obscurity.”

“This year’s SXSW included live performances, official and peripheral, by at least 2,000 acts, and visitors from Taiwan, Australia, Colombia, Sweden and France. Bands work hard at SXSW, playing for all the audiences they can.”

“No doubt there’s always been a divide between the Lady Gagas and Arcade Fires of the world, yet even in a year in which both can compete for a major Grammy Award the varying trajectories of the music biz seem as apparent as ever.”

“Representatives for the DSO musicians and management have continued to communicate during the past two weeks, but there have been no face-to-face meetings since mid-February, when management suspended the rest of the season in the wake of the musicians’ rejection of its final offer.”

“As unpaid downloading of overcompressed MP3 files recorded at obnoxiously loud volume continues apace, CD sales keep falling: They were down another 16 per cent in Canada in 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan. And now, the once-rapid rise of paid downloads is slowing, without ever having fully made up for those CD losses.”

“Rebecca Black’s pop song called Friday has been viewed on YouTube more than 16 million times. It has trended on Twitter and been the subject of huge online comment and discussion. Mainly because it’s been derided by millions of people for what they say are its awful lyrics.”

“The human voice is perhaps the most versatile instrument of all, as a new version of John Cage’s Song Books aims to prove, writes Christopher Fox.”

“It was announced today that Copenhagen-born Kasper Holten will replace Elaine Padmore as director of opera at the Royal Opera House after the 2010/11 season.” The 37-year-old head of the Royal Danish Opera “is hot property in opera-land just now,” notably for his 2005 Ring cycle.

“Musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra have agreed to delay a pay raise for players as talks over a new labor contract continue.” The increase – from $124,800 in base salary to $131,000 – will be postponed from March 21 to May 21.

“OperaUpClose’s version of La Boheme was named best new opera at the prestigious Laurence Olivier Awards on Sunday. Members of the chorus were not paid and have contacted actors’ union Equity.”