Category: music

“Falletta’s contract as the BPO’s music director has been extended through the 2015-2016 season. Falletta has been the BPO music director since the 1999-2000 season. She is the longest tenured music director in the orchestra’s history.”

“They may be the toast of the music world but, if they ever want to play the Fete Nationale celebration in their own hometown, Arcade Fire won’t be allowed to do it in English.”

“The move — which comes in the wake of five days of talks during which the two sides found common ground on some key issues but remained divided on a number of others — starts the clock ticking again toward a possible cancellation of the season as early as Thursday night.”

“In a rare case (at least in modern times) of technical innovation born on the opera stage, the Metropolitan Opera said it planned to introduce 3-D projections for its production of ‘Siegfried’ next season, the third installment in its new “Ring” cycle, directed by Robert Lepage.”

“Today, MetroLyrics, co-founded with family friend Alan Juristovski, is the third-biggest music website in the world, behind MySpace and Yahoo! Music, with tens of millions of unique views every month.”

The “staunchly traditional organization with a loyal but conservative following” is one of the most recent – and, perhaps, most staid – classical institutions to experiment with performing for an audience seated informally at tables and consuming beverages. So far, “Late Night Rose” is a hit.

“It makes complete sense to me, singing music of my own time. It almost seems obvious, but in our business I guess it’s not.… If I could really do what I most want, I would be a singer-songwriter. But I don’t have the talent. I can’t write music.”

There were the expected winners (the Chicago Symphony, Cecilia Bartoli, Mitsuko Uchida), the up-and-comer (composer Michael Daugherty), the long-snubbed great artist finally getting his due (Jordi Savall), the giant-killer (the Naxos label, greatly outdoing the majors), and the dark horse (organist Paul Jacobs playing Messiaen.)

“I’d like to see us do six months of performances. It just seems to me that we ought to be doing more than three months if we’re going to be taken seriously, if we’re going to come back all the way. That seems to me to be a more serious opera company. Can we get there? We’ll try.”

“Radiohead’s The King of Limbs, which breaks with the honesty-box tactic of In Rainbows, may provide clues as to how the industry could find salvation in a time of flagging sales.”