Category: music

“Like many grand ideas, this one started out when many were drunk. … The solution to the mystery involves a guy with a bagpipe, a rollicking New Year’s Eve party and a teenager looking to make a splash on his college admissions.”

“Over the past decade, Julio Cesar Rivera Davalos has spent more than $100,000 of his savings, put his consulting business on hold and endured blistering personal attacks to advance a lonely cause: changing Peru’s epic downer of a national anthem.”

“When the ratings system changed a couple of years ago, that affected every classical station in America. That’s why WQXR in New York had to go public, WCRV in Boston, WTMI in Miami, King in Seattle — all those stations have been annihilated by the new ratings system, and by the way that business is conducted in modern radio.”

“The founder of the celebrated Newport jazz and folk festivals is taking them nonprofit in an effort to make sure the events he’s been producing for six decades live on after he is gone.”

“Video monitors, editing suites, plasma screens and control panels abound and attest to the building’s superior high-tech capabilities, but it all comes together most impressively in the main performance hall, a steep theater in the round–everyone is within 13 rows of the stage–with four satellite stages perched around the edges and 10 fixed and moveable robotic HD cameras.”

“Music fans are at risk of losing thousands of pounds worth of digital music because their household insurer does not protect downloaded material.”

“Here’s a fun game: what was the most performed work of classical music throughout the world last year? Who was the busiest conductor? Which was the most performed opera? And who was the most overpaid diva? At last, answers to all of those questions and more (apart, alas, from the last one) are revealed today by Bachtrack, the classical music listing site.”

“The Polish pianist died in 1849 at the age of 39 as a result of a lung disease which has recently been attributed to cystic fibrosis. But the Spanish doctors say he probably also suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.”

“Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang denied Monday that he sought to insult the United States with the choice of a song he played at a White House state dinner last week, despite the claims of some mainland Chinese and conservatives in the U.S.”

“In each of the past two years, the rate of increase in digital revenue has approximately halved. If that trend continues, digital sales could top out at less than $5 billion this year, about a third of the overall music market but many billions of dollars short of the amount needed to replace long-gone sales of compact discs.”