“Music didn’t acquire the property of repetitiveness because it’s less sophisticated than speech, and the 347 times that iTunes says you have listened to your favourite album isn’t evidence of some pathological compulsion – it’s just a crucial part of how music works its magic.”
“This talented orchestra and Vänskä, who resigned as a show of support for his players, have almost come to represent a blue-collar crew who took on the elite in the city. But now with deadlines looming and the newfound attention the orchestra is receiving, there’s also a new pressure on the board to act.”
Blair Tindall’s memoir turned into an Amazon.com series. “Amazon Studios has settled on four series orders among the 10 pilots the company announced last month were under consideration, according to sources close to the deals.”
“The THX Deep Note was played in front of 4,000 movie theater audiences a day, or around once every 20 seconds. Yet despite its distinctive crescendo, the THX Deep Note wasn’t actually composed so much as it was programmed, which makes it a fascinating success story of early computer audio design.”
“Seattle’s music scene is a critical part of our city’s cultural draw and the quality of life in our city,” said Mayor Ed Murray. “We want to better serve local music venues’ needs and the musicians that play there.”
“Plans by the European Union to raise a levy on the sale of iPads and tablets to help young musicians benefit from downloads have been blocked by the British government.”
“Were there no female musicians playing instruments or do we just not know about them? The truth is that there were plenty of capable and talented ladies, but social expectations for the household matriarch did not include frequenting dance halls at night and touring around the country for weeks in a bus full of men.”
“Vänskä might be asked to take a limited role as a principal guest conductor, leading perhaps eight to 10 concerts a season, but without administrative duties, two sources within the orchestra’s board of directors said Monday.” The same sources say that the board voted strongly in support of controversial CEO Michael Henson.
“Members of Save Our Symphony Minnesota have made it clear they’re not going away now that the lockout has ended. More importantly, they’ve made it clear to the board that they want Henson gone and Vänskä back … But understand, many of the board members are corporate heavyweights. Most corporate heavyweights don’t react well to […]
“I heard drama; I saw drama, great swaying, soaring playing full of determination and vigour, its pace never letting up. (I’m stunned how still the rest of the audience appeared to manage to sit. My head had gone a bit I think.)” Soccer writer Neil Atkinson visits the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.
In addition to the cash award, the prize, given by Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, will do four residencies at the school over the next two years and have a work performed by the Chicago Symphony.
Gustavo Dudamel had to stop the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of John Corigliano’s First Symphony on Friday night when an inebriated latecomer decided – very loudly and a bit violently – that he shouldn’t have to wait for a break in the music to enter the auditorium.
“In the 1940s, the Jazz Record Center became the default clubhouse for a cabal of distinctive gentlemen: exiles, recluses, characters so outsize in their eccentricities that they felt invented, except better. Here there was not a sense—as with the archetypal Outsider—that a choice had been made. Here, the earliest collectors of 78 rpm records found […]
Partly by doing outreach at places like Ikea. Yes, Ikea flash mob Beethoven 9.
It’s called “Milk Music,” and you can only listen to it if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone.
“Even teachers who know very little about traditional music could assign interesting fiddle tunes to their students as a break between scales and etudes. It would be a moment in the middle of a practice session to reflect on just how much musical tradition exists in America. It would be a moment to recognize that […]
“A number of rocks, when struck, made ‘distinctive (if muted) sounds.’ They judged that enough made sounds such that once, they all would have rung, and furthermore saw marks on the rocks that might—upon further forensic testing—prove to be strike marks.”
“Bach’s restless, radical new style fits within history — with the upheaval of the Seven Years’ War, the shifting of nations and the Enlightenment, which encouraged individualism.”
“He is putting songs on smartphones in Africa, reviving moribund American record labels and making Lorde into a Grammy-winning global sensation. Above all, he wants to forge new partnerships with his industry’s erstwhile adversaries — the technology firms that have upended the way people get their music.”
“Participants across the board were better at identifying the more accomplished groups by watching them, not by listening to them. In fact, even when music and video were combined in clips, it was actually harder for participants to identify the top groups than by video alone.”
“While people’s strategies for ridding themselves of unwanted aural guests fell into one of two broad categories—distraction or coping—the most successful way to remove an earworm, they found, was to deal with it head on, by intentionally listening to the song or singing it out loud, no matter how embarrassing the song.”
“Black MIDI,” a subculture of electronic music remixing that mutated into existence in Japan five years ago, is an aesthetic snapshot of the early 21st century if there ever was one. It’s digital, viral, and truly “multimedia”–because it’s music, data visualization, and software demonstration at once.
“I had trouble enjoying myself. My brother did too. This by no means is to suggest that the orchestra itself was poor. Perhaps me and my bro are just uncultured, southern swine. More likely it was just not for us (and by extension a lot of people in my age range). I enjoy symphony music. […]
“Everything in Ravel’s music is held at a distance, as it was in his life. Just think what iron discipline and self-denial it must have taken, to keep the messy intimacies of life at bay. There’s a similar denial in the music. You always know where the music’s heading; there’s no sense of discovery or […]
For a start, it’s because his approach to writing opera was, as he wrote, “Put aside intelligibility, put aside urgency of plot. Put in embellishment. Put in Maria Callas and Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday.” Mark Swed explains.
While she did just make her last opera appearance, she says, “One door closes and another door opens but as to retiring, I’ve never ever had that word in my vocabulary. Only thing is that other people have got it in their vocabulary because they can’t think of anything else to say.”
“Stephen Jay Carlton, the former executive director of the Los Altos-based Peninsula Symphony, is facing felony charges for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit organization, prosecutors said Wednesday.”
“Opera Wilmington is now formally incorporated and is applying for federal non-profit status … Plans now call for the company to mount a production of Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, in English, July 25-27 … with a cast of student and local singers.”
Music is power. In his 2010 book on noise and silence, George Prochnik asked a series of provocative questions that began with this one: “Is it really true that all our reactions to sound are dictated by simple equations: loud, low sounds equal something powerful, so be scared or be prepared to mate; soft, little […]
That’s Turin’s Teatro Regio, “where performances increased to 110 in 2012 from 85 in 2005, even with a reduction in staff. Its orchestra and chorus have also just announced an ambitious North American tour.” And there’s one individual who seems to deserve a lot of the credit.