“Swift’s initial post alleges that Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta were essentially holding access to her older music hostage, telling her that if she wants to be able to perform the music at the AMAs, as well as use it in a three-years-in-the-making Netflix documentary, she would have to promise not to re-record the music and cease speaking poorly about them in public. Big Machine has denied her allegations.” – Variety
Category: music
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra Tours For Seven Weeks A Year, And Pulls In $60 Million
It’s a holiday miracle: People willing to part with their money for a classical music-prog rock mashup, especially at the holidays. But how did we get to this elaborate two-band tour setup that begins in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and extends around the entire continental U.S.? The founder, Paul O’Neill. “In the early ‘90s, O’Neill began to plot a holiday-themed live spectacle that combined progressive rock, heavy metal and classical music with elaborate stage productions” ever more elaborate by the year. – Billboard
Music For The Birds
Or actually, from the birds. Composer Diane Moser: “My goal was to become a member of their band, so to speak. I listened deeply to their singing, and carefully infiltrated their ensemble.” – New Music Box
Michael Kaiser’s Prescription For Saving The Baltimore Symphony
“I do not believe in board retreats,” Kaiser said. “I believe we make a mistake by trying to engage everyone equally in developing a quality plan. Good plans are not written by committees. Good plans are vetted by committees. – Baltimore Sun
Idagio Launches Free Classical Music Service
The Berlin-based startup says the free tier will prominently feature its ‘Mood Player,’ which generates a playlist based on a person’s selected mood, as well as playlists curated by staff or well-known artists, including Lang Lang. There are also radio stations specific to composers and artists. – Billboard
Detroit Symphony To Give Free Instrument And Lessons To Any Detroit Child Who Wants Them
“Detroit Harmony, as the project is called, represents a bid to dramatically expand music education throughout the city, one that hopefully will generate demand for an entirely new workforce of music teachers and craftsmen to repair and refurbish used instruments. … [The program] will be open to any K-12 student in public, private and charter schools throughout the city.” – The Detroit News
Root Of All Music: The Marginalized Fringe
Ted Gioia argues that that is music’s basic pattern throughout history – for symphonic music, church music, operas, chamber music, atonalism, you name it. No matter how disciplined, codified and venerated the music may be now, it always started on the fringe, rooted in sex, blood and altered states. – Art & Seek
Why Curtis Institute May Have Been Ripe For Abuse
“The stakes are so high to land some kind of a career, and the stature of a teacher is incredibly intimidating even if your teacher is respectful and kind. You are going to feel vulnerable because you want to play music after you graduate so badly, and most of the teachers at Curtis are celebrities.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
Joshua Bell Extends As Music Director Of Academy Of St. Martin In The Fields To 2023
“Bell is only the second holder of the music director role at the Academy, succeeding the Academy’s founder Sir Neville Marriner, who held the post from the orchestra’s formation in 1958 until 2011 … The violinist first collaborated with the orchestra in 1998, when he was 21 years old, in a recording of Bruch and Mendelssohn concertos, with Marriner conducting.” – The Strad
A “Decade Of Reckoning” For Classical Music
Anne Midgette: “The music isn’t the problem, it’s the way we’re offering it.” Big, inflexible institutions take away the “oxygen and funds” from the smaller organizations, she argues, which typically have a stronger vision and take more risks. Audiences, she adds, prove time and again there’s no lack of interest. “I think the only reason orchestras are struggling is that not everybody wants to go and sit in a concert hall and have that experience. It’s not that people don’t want to hear Beethoven.” – NPR