“To repair its relationships in the music world, Pandora has created a division to work with labels and artist managers, opened its vast databanks, and begun experimenting with artist promotions.”
“The program, which is being financed through a bequest from the Rudel estate, will give some Mannes conducting students residencies with the Buffalo Philharmonic, which Mr. Rudel once led.”
“Zimmermann doesn’t own the violin. He rents it through an arrangement, struck with a now-defunct German bank, WestLB AG. That contract is set to expire Sunday night.”
“We’d been very meticulous in the look and the detail of the film in its period accuracy, but the music, the score, should somehow be a voice that comes from a different place. It should somehow be an expression of the essence of Turner’s painting in some way.”
London’s mayor: “We have heard the clarion call from Sir Simon Rattle and many others who wish to see a brand-new and world-class centre for music in London.”
Ronald O. Perelman, billionaire business titan and a self-described ‘frustrated musician,’ … [has] succeeded Sanford I. Weill, who has served as chairman for nearly a quarter-century. … Mr. Perelman, 72, said that he was not much of a classical music enthusiast and would push for the hall to stage more of the pop performances it was known for decades ago.
Violinist Daniel Hope looks at the composers who fled the Nazis and settled in Los Angeles – and supported themselves by creating a style of music that defined an industry.
“It overruns the boundaries separating art from pop, mainstream from underground, primeval past from hi-tech present. … It is as though, in a reversal of tectonic drift, isolated land masses of taste were re-forming as a supercontinent.”
The two companies, which developed and premiered Muhly’s recent Two Boys, will work with the composer on an adaptation of Marnie, Winston Graham’s 1961 novel (made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock) about a woman blackmailed into marrying one of her bosses after she gets caught embezzling.
“‘Our audience is segmenting. There isn’t such a thing as a classical music audience. There are dozens of classical music audiences,’ said Chad Smith, the Phil’s vice president of artistic planning. ‘We want to be seen as relevant to what’s happening in our world. L.A. is the most contemporary city. You miss a beat and you are forgotten.'”
“The National Symphony Orchestra announced this morning that Christoph Eschenbach will become Conductor Laureate of the orchestra in the 2017-18 season. In other words, his contract, after what will have been seven seasons as music director of the orchestra and of the Kennedy Center, is not being renewed.”
When Darío Lopérfido took over last week at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the very first change he made in the house’s program was to cancel the contract of Katharina Wagner – great-granddaughter of the composer and director of the Bayreuth Festival – to direct Parsifal in December. His stated reason: “I wanted something artistically stronger.” (in Spanish)
Enormously, breathtakingly bad. The Teatro Colón, once the peer of almost any opera company in the world, has gone through years of badly-targeted staff cuts, unfinished renovation and construction, labor unrest (justified and not), and disastrous political interference. Now a new general director faces the fearsome challenges of cleaning up. (in English)
“It’s curious that the Royal Opera’s new venture into smaller spaces has coincided with an unprecedented new approach to translation. No attention has been drawn to this shift in policy, which has slipped through as part of a wider attempt at accessibility, at reinventing opera for the youthful audience of the Camden Roundhouse (with the recent Orfeo, also in English) and the more theatrically-inclined audience at the Globe.”
“Of course, I miss a lot of the musicians in Montreal. What happened there, you know, I made one mistake: I never answered the attacks from the union. One has to understand the context. When they signed the contract, I was completely on the side of these people. I even was wearing a shirt to help them to get more money, and I was quite close to the premier ministre, and so on.”
“Whatever you think of the radical relativism of postmodern cultural theory—and I detest it—the fact is that the coming of postmodernism has proved to be both liberating and stimulating to musicians of all kinds.”
Now the station features 22 hours of locally hosted or produced programs on weekdays. And while it kept popular national shows such as “From the Top,” “Concierto” and the live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, KMFA has dropped Classical 24 entirely, even from the convenient overnight slot.
John and Helen Meyer can fix just about any acoustical problem in a space – from a dead auditorium to a restaurant full of deafening chatter. Their Constellation system “undertakes a process akin to the Photoshopping of an image, with undesirable elements removed.”
When his current contract expires in 2017, the Dutch maestro will be 76. He will continue to take guest-conducting work.
“Following these guidelines is how you will avoid glimpsing voodoo dolls of yourself with pins in them on the musicians’ stands.”
“YOLA was modeled after El Sistema, the Venezuelan program that supports more than 100 orchestras and has taught hundreds of thousands of students. The Phil’s leaders launched the program in part to help persuade Dudamel to sign on as conductor. Eight years later, it has become central to the L.A. Phil’s community outreach efforts — and a model for similar programs nationwide.”
“If the Recording Academy feels that certain awards they give are not worthy of exposure on network television (which ultimately are the awards that wind up getting reported on in most of the media outlets and therefore the ones that most people are aware actually of), why give the awards in the first place?”
Suzanne Weaver’s departure follows the news that Thom Collins, the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, which opened in a Herzog & de Meuron-designed waterfront building in December 2013, is to leave the institution for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia after five years. Meanwhile, the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach has been without a director for nearly a year following the departure last April of Cathy Leff.
“The trip marks a striking return to the limelight for an orchestra that only a year ago was emerging from the longest lockout in American orchestral history, with serious questions about its future. It is all the more fitting since the Minnesota Orchestra’s first-ever international performances were in Cuba in 1929 and 1930.”
A team of scientists worked on it. “Answering the musician’s simple question turned into a seven-year project in which the team examined the acoustic dynamics of stringed instruments through time, from the oud, lute, and medieval fiddles to the guitar and ultimately the violin — a period spanning from the 10th century to the 18th century.”
“If the chart is to be a true barometer of what music is most popular in the UK, it can no longer look solely at purchases – it must also take into account individual listens. Downloads were fully integrated into the singles chart in 2007, but that part of the market has started to plateau while streaming has surged forward. At the start of 2014, the OCC was tracking an average of 192m streams per week; at the start of this year, that had jumped to 360m per week.”
“No one is doubting that ENO is capable of extraordinary artistic work, but we have serious concerns about their governance and business model and we expect them to improve or they could face the removal of our funding.”
“Music venue Wigmore Hall is to undergo a £2 million refurbishment that will see the creation of new rehearsal spaces and enable the building to stream and broadcast its work.”
“[Bass clarinetist David] Howard, 59, practices yoga to strengthen his lungs. Timpanist Joseph Pereira stretches damp calfskins across drums and fashions mallets out of wine corks and felt. Thomas Hooten … runs trumpet scales late into the night. And Christopher Hanulik, who calls his 25-pound bass ‘the beast,’ guards against strained ligaments and tendinitis: ‘I’ve got to be nimble, my muscles quick.'”
A native of Québec, Marie-Hélène Bernard has been executive director and CEO of Boston’s early-music Handel and Haydn Society since 2007. Earlier, she worked for the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Canton (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra.