JULY 2000

Monday July 31

• MAYBE WATERMARKS? Maybe "people are copying music because they feel somewhat disenfranchised with the options they have at their disposal in the digital space. It's up to the content industry to create value in the digital arena and they've made phenomenal steps in that direction." Salon 07/31/00

• TALES FROM A CLASSICAL MUSIC STORE: Who shops at a classical music store? There are "the Toscanini freaks and the Ricardo Muti-Walks-on-Water squad, who will pay anything - anything - to own a CD of their hero doing the stick-waving equivalent of singing in the shower." Some are "a little less than erudite. Many come in search of 'The Fat Guy' (Luciano Pavarotti), 'The Blind Guy' (Andrea Bocelli) or 'The English Kid' (Charlotte Church, who's Welsh, not English, by the way)." There was one confused man who came in looking for "WOCTAKOBNY" (or Shostakovich - in Cyrillic lettering.) The Baltimore Sun 07/31/00  

Sunday July 30

• ODE TO COPLAND: "Deeper than George Gershwin, more disciplined than Charles Ives, more accessible than Elliott Carter, more prolific than Leonard Bernstein, more varied than Samuel Barber," Aaron Copland was the giant of 20th Century American music. He would have been 100 this year, yet no one seems to be paying attention. Why is that? Chicago Tribune 07/30/00
• CONDUCTOR CULT: Surely Leonard Bernstein is the most-promoted of all dead-conductors. A new Sony project gathers up all of his recordings for another grand compilation.  New York Times 07/30/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• MUTI MYSTERY: Maybe it's not so surprising Riccardo Muti turned down the NY Philharmonic music director job. He's never seemed comfortable in the US. "He came from a world where music directors inhabit Olympian heights. He was visibly uncomfortable with the schmoozing expected of American music directors. He used to wince a lot." Dallas Morning News 07/30/00
  • JUST SAY NO: "The Muti episode must have sent a shudder through these ensembles. By refusing the offer to take over the Philharmonic, Muti sent a clear message that a great orchestra today cannot wave a handsome contract in a maestro's face and expect that he or she will simply sign on the dotted line." Cleveland Plain Dealer 07/30/00
• ALSOP LEAVES: Marin Alsop is leaving as music director of the Colorado Symphony. Replacing her will be difficult - The Colorado, based in Denver has an unusual arrangement where the music director shares artistic decisions with the player. Denver Post 07/30/00

• FOND REMEMBRANCES: Van Cliburn is 66 and making still another comeback, with a concert at Tanglewood. "Mr. Cliburn gives the impression of being utterly content now and not too inclined to excavate the past afresh. He lets on at one point, as if revealing a deep family secret, that he's thinking about performing Bach again, the E minor Partita, maybe, and he floats a program for a scheduled Chopin recital in Boston that is so preposterously long that it sounds like a fantasy of a young pianist in the first flush of success - as if, no matter how stressful the stage may have been all those years, it is still the locus of his imagination." New York Times 07/30/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

  • GRACE UNDER PRESSURE: That he's retained these qualities through some pretty tough times is a remarkable personal achievement almost as great as his win in Moscow more than 40 years ago. Boston Herald 07/30/00

• THE "CONCEPT CAR" PIANO: "At $250,000 (or £170,000), Yamaha's Disklavier Pro 2000 is not merely the most stylistically radical and technologically advanced piano in the world, it is easily the most expensive, too." Yamaha makes it to celebrate 100 years in the biz. The Sunday Times 07/30/00

• WE ARE THE WORLD: "The one discipline you might expect to be free of such internecine squabbling is the big tent of World Music, a generic term used to describe just about anything outside the mainstream. But even here the canvas is being rent, as rival interests - from different continents to distinct countries to particular regions (or, if you're part of Morocco's notoriously fractious Master Musicians of Jajouka, individuals) - fight for the right to partake in what is, following the success of Buena Vista Social Club, a veritable pot of gold." Sunday Times (London) 07/30/00

• LOOKING LIKE A HIGH "C": "Many singers feel it's difficult enough keeping the voice perfectly tuned without having to worry about lifting weights and living on yogurt and Evian water." But increasingly there is pressure to look the part you're playing. The Telegraph (London) 07/30/00

Friday July 28

• GETTING BOOZED FOR BEETHOVEN: "Alcohol and creativity have always staggered along together. We are never surprised when we hear tales of pissed pop stars, inebriated artists, wasted writers. For many, though, it comes as a surprise that classical musicians carry a similar collection of tales and troubles. Set against the rough excess of pop, classical music is seen as a pure and civilising experience." The Guardian (London) 07/28/00

• ROYALTY WITH THAT LATTE? The World Trade Organization has ruled that owners of small stores and bars in the US must pay royalties to musicians if they use music in their businesses. "The EU says artists and composers in its 15 member countries could be losing more than $37 million in copyright payments because of exemptions granted to small establishments in the U.S." CBC 07/27/00

Thursday July 27

• WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH $2 MILLION? Opera Australia just got a big increase in funding from the government and will use it to buy a few more violins for the orchestra. Sydney Morning Herald 07/27/00

• PAVAROTTI has made a $17 million settlement with Italian tax collectors, ending a nasty four-year battle. CBC 07/27/00

• VIOLINIST OSCAR SHUMSKY dies in New York at age 83. New York Times 07/27/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

Wednesday July 16

• HOW TO BE A POP MUSIC STAR: A Seattleite is one of the internet's hottest musicians - he recently almost won a Yahoo award, and his music is consistently one of the Top Ten MP3 downloads. One thing - he's never performed in public and says he knows nothing about the recording industry. "But then again, if you're taking in $10,000 a month without touring, doing promotions or even lifting a finger, who needs a record contract?" Seattle Times 07/26/00

• CLOSED PARK CANCELS NY PHIL: This week's New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park had to be cancelled after public officials closed the park because of a health scare. BBC Music 07/26/00 

Tuesday July 25

• MUSICAL CHAIRS: The Philadelphia Orchestra has been looking for a new music director for three years, with still no one in sight. "My fear is that the search is at an impasse. And now that Riccardo Muti has turned down the New York Philharmonic, I fear that the competition for that small group of star conductors is likely to be even more fierce." Philadelphia music critics debate the choices. Philadelphia Inquirer 07/25/00

• MUSIC OF THE WORLD: As "popular" music has fragmented into myriad genres, styles and sub-categories, the once catch-all category of "world music" has morphed to include almost anything. Faced with the competing problems of categorisation, musical correctness and success, the Womad team - Womad stands for World of Music Arts and Dance - have decided to broaden the definitions." The Guardian 07/25/00

Monday July 24

• PATRONAGE AMERICAN STYLE: American internet investor and opera lover Alberto Vilar has donated $2 million to Milan’s La Scala - the largest private non-European donation in the opera house’s history. “He is now waging a sort of one-man campaign to bring U.S.-style arts patronage to Europe at a time when governments are scaling back their arts spending.” Yahoo! News (Reuters) 07/23/00

  • ALSO TO LA OPERA: Over the past decade, Vilar has given gifts totaling $33 million to New York's Metropolitan Opera. Other donations and pledges worldwide include $5.6 million to restore the Seventh Avenue facade of Carnegie Hall, $6 million to the Salzburg Festival, $10 million to London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and underwriting for major productions by the Kirov (Maryinsky) Opera and Ballet Company." Los Angeles Times 07/24/00

• GLIMMEROPERA: Upstate New York's summer opera company Glimmerglass is celebrating its 25th season. In 1987 it built the 914-seat Busch Opera House, the first new American opera house since the Metropolitan opened at Lincoln Center in 1966. "In 1996, Glimmerglass's artistic director, Paul Kellogg, was also appointed general and artistic director of the New York City Opera (NYCO), and the two companies began sharing productions, a development that financially stabilized Glimmerglass while artistically invigorating the City Opera." Toronto Globe and Mail 07/24/00

Sunday July 23

• FAILURE TO INCITE: Director Graham Vick was disappointed last week when his "Don Giovanni" at Glyndebourne failed to provoke demonstrations of disapproval. He is, after all, in the business of trying to shock. "No, this time the overall reaction was one of provocation fatigue: the seen-that, used-the-T-shirt, thrown-away-the-mug sense of déjà vu that marked the fag end of Peter Jonas's PowerHouse regime at English National Opera in the late 1980s." Sunday Times (London) 07/23/00

• BACH BIRTHDAY BASHES: "Friday is the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. The classical music business treats big, round-number anniversaries of births and deaths as pretty much equivalent. And because Bach is Bach and because this anniversary coincides with the year 2000, it is likely to be the biggest classical music anniversary that any of us will live to experience. Indeed, the celebration has long begun." Los Angeles Times 07/23/00

  • ODE TO BACH: "He has been, in popular estimation, both the great avatar of conservative polyphony and one of the foundational geniuses of modernity. Those he influenced make the strangest of bedfellows: Mendelssohn and Schoenberg, Mozart and Chopin, Glenn Gould and Keith Jarrett." Washington Post 07/23/00

• ENSHRINING A CONDUCTOR: Is the larger world ready to appreciate the late great Sergiu Celibidache? "Little did anybody at that time know to what extent Celibidache lacked a cordial relationship with the real world. At one point, he wanted to fire the entire Berlin Philharmonic. He demanded extravagant amounts of rehearsal time, declined to perform with American orchestras until a 1984 engagement with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and, most curious of all, refused to record." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/23/00

• CARUSO 80 YEARS LATER: "The Italian tenor died nearly 80 years ago. But the music that fills the Enrico Caruso Museum in a small New York City house endures around the world, too - and still stirs controversy." Chicago Sun-Times 07/23/00

• THE SOUND OF MUSIC LEAVING TOWN: The movie-score recording business is down considerably in Los Angeles. "The slump may, in part, reflect a general reduction in orchestral scores, replaced by pop and rock songs, especially in films aimed at the huge teen audience. In part, it may also be a result of the cutbacks in studio production overall. But...the downturn also indicates that production companies are increasingly heading to London, Seattle, Prague, even Moscow to record scores less expensively." Los Angeles Times 07/23/00

Friday July 21

• PRICE OF PERFECTION: Four years ago pianist Keith Jarrett was struck with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome so severe it all but ended his career. He could barely get out of bed. Now he's back and talking about it. "Nobody gets CFS who isn't always trying to do three or four things at a time. If you're a couch potato, I don't think you'd be likely to get this. So if you're doing something new that's almost an athletic event, and then inside it is this intellectual and emotional component that requires all your abilities every time you do it, and you're starting from zero every time... well, it's almost a perfect disease for me to have gotten." The Guardian 07/21/00

• THE WAGNER CASE (AGAIN): "The notion that artists don't have to be as beautiful as the works they create is a commonplace now - except in the case of Wagner. But those who seek to exonerate Wagner by differentiating between the composer and the pamphleteer have another problem: the argument that anti-semitism underpins not only his philosophy, but his music." The Guardian 07/21/00

Thursday July 20

• THE INTERNET FOR FAME AND FORTUNE: “As the recording industry and commercial artists try to stamp out the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music in the form of computer files known as MP3's, tens of thousands of aspiring rock stars are happily using the technology to give their music away - and more than a few are beginning to see some payoff.” New York Times 07/20/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• WORLD WIDE WAIT: A reporter tries out EMI’s new download scheme (the record company began selling its music over the internet Tuesday) and comes away wringing his hands. “The results of this sampling of the new, legitimate download frontier aren't really surprising. Although EMI took steps to work out the kinks ahead of time, it's clear that the kinks, especially on the backend, are substantial.” Inside.com 07/19/00

• SHEET MUSIC ON CD-ROM: Publisher Theodore Presser, which has been selling music for almost 250 years, says it will begin issuing scores on CD-ROM. The first 15 CD-ROMs include the complete piano solos of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Mozart, Schumann. By the end of 2002, the company plans to sell a series of 110 disks - cost: about $15 each. Chicago Tribune 07/20/00

• CONDUCTOR-HUNTING: Now that Ricardo Muti has turned down the job as music director of the New York Philharmonic, speculation turns to other candidates, with Pittsburgh's Mariss Jansons a leading candidate. Or might it be Christoph Eschenbach? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/20/00

• THE BOSTON CONDUCTOR SURVIVOR CHALLENGE: Who will replace Seiji Ozawa as Boston Symphony music director? "It's Episode One of WGBH-TV's new reality show, ``Symphony Survivor.'' Ten conductors, armed with nothing more than the white-tie-and-tails on their backs, their batons and their cell phones, are about to be locked inside Symphony Hall for nine weeks." Boston Herald 07/20/00

Wednesday July 19

• LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF: The New York Philharmonic and Ricardo Muti say that Muti won't be taking over as music director of the orchestra. Muti had been offered the job but concluded he didn't have the time to devote to leading the large American orchestra. New York Times 07/19/00 (one-time registration required for entry 

• EVIDENTLY A BAD SCORE: Soprano Monserrat Caballe surprised her audience in Bucharest by ripping up the score belonging to the conductor accompanying her, after the orchestra twice fell out of step with her. The conductor later claimed a misprint in the score. Chicago Sun-Times (AP) 07/19/00

Tuesday July 18

• FEEL THE BEAT: Does anyone not respond to music in some basic way? "Some scientists have recently proposed that music may have been an evolutionary adaptation, like upright walking or spoken language, that arose early in human history and helped the species survive. The 'music gene' would have arisen tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, and conferred an evolutionary advantage on those who possessed it." Toronto Globe and Mail 07/18/00

• LIVING A HIGH "C" LIFE: Placido Domingo miscalculated when he took on directing the Washington and Los Angeles opera companies. He thought he'd be about finished singing by now. But at age 60 the voice still works, and the conducting, directing and singing are easily three full time jobs. What next? The Telegraph (London) 07/18/00 

Monday July 17

• HARD NOT TO COMPARE: Leon Fleisher's recording of Brahms' D-minor Piano Concerto with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra is one of the 20th Century's best. But 35 years ago Fleisher injured his right hand and was relegated to performing left-hand works only. But he's been on the mend in recent years and this weekend took a crack at the Brahms again with the Chicago Symphony. It was a mixed pleasure... Chicago Tribune 07/17/00  

• WATCHING THE PAINT DRY: Louis Andriessen's opera "Vermeer", getting its US premiere at the Lincoln Centre Festival is a long sit. "For all its visual beauty and technical slickness, this 100-minute opera (which ended its run on Saturday) is a dramatically neutral, philosophically and emotionally barren exercise in poststructuralist contemplation." Toronto Globe and Mail 07/15/00

  • LUMINOUS, BUT A MILD DISAPPOINTMENT: "Based upon a simple, deft theatrical idea, it has a text nearly as luminous as Vermeer's paintings, which the work venerates, and it has compelling, appropriately incandescent music. In the usual sense of an opera as music first, text second and stage possibilities last, it is unerring - immediate, subtle, probing, inherently operatic and gorgeously crafted. But as a radical intertwining of operatic elements into the kind of entirely new theatrical experience that 'Rosa' was, it is a mild disappointment." Los Angeles Times 07/17/00

Sunday July 16

• MAKING OVER THE MAKEOVER: London's Royal Opera House has finished its first season after a £200 million makeover. Was it worth it? Well, "the ROH is, first of all, seen as the home of the toffs and fat cats, whose lush, velvet pleasures are paid for by the sweat of the working man. Second, it is technically incompetent, with shows routinely being cancelled. And third, it is a gilded cage full of bitching queens and grandes dames, all of whom regularly flounce out of meetings and lock themselves, sobbing, in the loo." The Sunday Times (London) 07/16/00

• FAILURE TO TRANSMIT: Recent performances by the New York Philharmonic of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd" left audiences cheering. Yet despite a lot of trying, concert organizers were unable to get a recording or public television broadcast out of the deal. Why? "The recording not happening can be chalked up to the general crisis in the industry." New York Times 07/16/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• PAY-PER LISTEN: This week EMI begins selling music over the internet. As battles over copyright rage, the giant recording company decides to try offering its recordings in downloadable format. BBC 07/16/00 

• CANADIAN BARITONE Louis Quilico dies at age 75 after complications from surgery. CBC 07/16/00

Friday July 15

• CRAFT OF THE PERFECT ASSISTANT: No matter what he has done in the rest of his career as a musician, Robert Craft will always be known as the man who was Igor Stravinsky's assistant. Is that okay with him? Absolutely. "He [Stravinsky] started composing the music he did, with the techniques he was using, because I was able to teach him these things." The Telegraph (London) 07/14/00

• THE MAD CONDUCTOR: A French orchestra conductor has been charged with allegedly indoctrinating members of a doomsday cult, many of whom died in a bizarre group killing five years ago. New Jersey Online (AP) 07/14/00

• FOLLOW THE STARS: Britain has produced a couple of generations of excellent cellists. Why? Some attribute it to Jacqueline du Pre, whose charismatic presence inspired many to take up the instrument.  "That's how it works - there were masses of people who took up the flute when James Galway sprang to fame. You may find that there will be young violinists who took up the violin when Nigel Kennedy's "Four Seasons" came out." The Guardian (London) 07/14/00

• ANYONE SELLING TICKETS? A former usher at La Scala is investigated. Why? The man amassed a £3 million fortune that he says he earned through shrewd investments. Others say he had a thriving bribe business going, finding seats for people even for performances that were sold out; also that he worked a loan sharking operation out of the opera house. BBC Music 07/14/00
• UNTANGLING THE AURALS: Some of the more complicated scores of the 20th Century are difficult to understand by just hearing them. Now an attempt to add multi-media to untangle the aurals. "When you look at a string quartet score you can see what each instrument is playing. That allows you to look at the structure of the piece in more detail. We're trying to create a modern score, a score that can communicate very quickly to people what's happening in the piece." New York Times 07/14/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 
• DON'T CRY FOR THE RECORD COMPANIES: Roger McGuinn has made 25 recordings in his career as a musician. But aside from modest advances, he told a US Senate committee holding hearings on the digital recording business, he's never made money off his albums. ''They [the recording companies] are not the poor victim in all this; they've made a killing. For years, the labels had all the power, and the artists were pawns. The artists were cattle." Boston Globe 07/14/00
  • MY BROTHER THE PIRATE: "We were both heavy users of cassettes, the Napster of their day, and it turned us, not into habitual music thieves, but into devoted collectors of hundreds of LPs and then CDs. He [my brother] would have gladly paid a reasonable fee - $1, say - to download a song like 'Summer Breeze,' but he would never spend $15 on a full Seals & Crofts CD. And having Napster would not stop him from buying a CD by an artist he was more passionate about." Chicago Tribune 07/14/00

Thursday July 14

• CRAFT OF THE PERFECT ASSISTANT: No matter what he has done in the rest of his career as a musician, Robert Craft will always be known as the man who was Igor Stravinsky's assistant. Is that okay with him? Absolutely. "He [Stravinsky] started composing the music he did, with the techniques he was using, because I was able to teach him these things." The Telegraph (London) 07/14/00

• UNTANGLING THE AURALS: Some of the more complicated scores of the 20th Century are difficult to understand by just hearing them. Now an attempt to add multi-media to untangle the aurals. "When you look at a string quartet score you can see what each instrument is playing. That allows you to look at the structure of the piece in more detail. We're trying to create a modern score, a score that can communicate very quickly to people what's happening in the piece." New York Times 07/14/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 

• FOLLOW THE STARS: Britain has produced a couple of generations of excellent cellists. Why? Some attribute it to Jacqueline du Pre, whose charismatic presence inspired many to take up the instrument.  "That's how it works - there were masses of people who took up the flute when James Galway sprang to fame. You may find that there will be young violinists who took up the violin when Nigel Kennedy's "Four Seasons" came out." The Guardian (London) 07/14/00

• ANYONE SELLING TICKETS? A former usher at La Scala is investigated. Why? The man amassed a £3 million fortune that he says he earned through shrewd investments. Others say he had a thriving bribe business going, finding seats for people even for performances that were sold out; also that he worked a loan sharking operation out of the opera house. BBC Music 07/14/00 

• THE MAD CONDUCTOR: A French orchestra conductor has been charged with allegedly indoctrinating members of a doomsday cult, many of whom died in a bizarre group killing five years ago. New Jersey Online (AP) 07/14/00

Wednesday July 12

• SMARTING IN PHILLY: For awhile it looked like conductor Simon Rattle might be the Philadelphia Orchestra's new music director. But then Rattle went ahead and agreed to take on the Berlin Philharmonic. The conductor's recorded debut with that orchestra is a hint at what might have been. Philadelphia Inquirer 07/12/00

  • STILL HOPING IN BOSTON: The Boston Symphony - needing to replace music director Seiji Ozawa - had resigned itself to being an also-ran in the Rattle sweepstakes. But now news that Rattle's marriage with Berlin might be on the rocks even before it begins, has the Bostonians hopeful again. Boston Herald 07/12/00

• BACH ONLINE: J.S. Bach's complete oeuvre, including manuscripts and digitized scores, will soon be stored online in a digital library accessible over the Internet (at www.bachdigital.org). The project is a collaboration among IBM, the Berlin State Library, and other libraries across Germany. Nandotimes (Agence France-Presse) 07/11/00

• JAZZ ENTERS THE MUSEUM? Jazz is suddenly getting a lot of attention in the institutional world. "But what exactly is being honored: a music of unceasing innovation and achievement, or an archive parsed into its historical components? If jazz in the 21st century is to become what classical music became in the 20th century, an art of reconnaissance and interpretation, then last month's 2000 JVC Jazz Festival may be remembered as a key transitional event." Village Voice 07/11/00

• PETERSON PRIZE: Pianist Oscar Peterson has become the first Canadian recipient of the International Music Council UNESCO Music Prize. "The prize is given every year to a musician or musical institution that has contributed to the development and enrichment of music and has served peace and understanding around the world." CBC 07/13/00

Tuesday July 11

• TIRED OF OTHER EUROPEAN FESTIVALS? St. Petersburg's White Nights Festival is the brainchild of Valery Gergiev, artistic director of the Kirov, based in the Mariinsky Theatre. The festival "provides an intensive dose of music and opera against the crumbling backdrop of Russia’s intellectual capital, at a fraction of the cost of rival events further to the west. Alongside War and Peace, one of this year’s highlights is Prokofiev’s opera 'Semyon Kotko', a four-hour epic with a difficult history that combines some challenging music with a heavy dose of Soviet-era ideology." Culturekiosque 07/10/00

• BEYOND BOSSA NOVA: When people think of Brazilian music, bossa nova, samba, and the strains of Carnival come to mind, while Brazil's classical composers (namely Heitor Villa-Lobos, Lorenzo Fernandez, Camargo Guarnieri) are often overlooked. "Why has it taken so long for them to gain any recognition abroad? Brazil, now officially 500 years old, is a relatively young nation and came late to classical music. The Guardian 07/11/00

• A DIVA'S DUDS: More than 400 personal items once belonging to opera diva Maria Callas will be auctioned in Paris in December. The auction itself will also be open to Internet bidders using the site www.leftbid.com. New York Times07/11/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• CROSSOVER JAZZ: The classical music world has found countless ways to commemorate this year's 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach's death. "But musicians from the other side of the musical tracks, including Dave Brubeck and Jacques Loussier, have been gate-crashing the party as well. A sign of our enlightened times, or another case of dumbing down?" The Times (London) 07/11/00

• SURPRISING MOVE: Recently knighted conductor Andrew Davis - chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the past 11 years and musical director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera for the last 12 - will step down from both posts in September to move to the Chicago Lyric Opera. It's certainly a plum job, but so were the two he's walking away from and his English following is far from pleased with his decision. "Rarely can one musician's career have been woven so deeply into this country's musical life." The Telegraph (London) 07/11/00

Monday July 10

• FIGHTING THE SAME OLD: It seems the more conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt likes a piece of music, the less he's inclined to perform it. He's a sworn enemy of routine. This and his thoughts on Bach, Bruckner and Beethoven. The Independent (London) 07/10/00

• BEHIND THE BUBBLE: At a cost of $360 million, Beijing's Grand National Opera House, now under construction, figured to be controversial. Its bubble shape and the fact it wasn't designed by a Chinese architect makes for a triple whammy. But the real battle here is for the soul of the capital - protests erupt as old Beijing is cleared away to make room for the new. Washington Post 07/09/00  

• THE LARGEST CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL IN  THE WORLD: The Ottawa Chamber Music Festival presents 98 concerts in two weeks with some of the world's best chamber music groups and attracts 45,000 people. What's the secret? Toronto Globe and Mail 07/10/00

• THE SINGERS OF SUMMER: "Only if you've ignored the growth of opera over the past 15 years would you be so foolish to think that opera isn't as popular, American and indissolubly linked to summer as baseball. In fact, opera is booming, in no small part because of the experience offered by adventurous summer companies like Glimmerglass." Washington Post 07/10/00

• ODE TO MALE: Iran holds it first big music festival, but a proposed performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is scrubbed. "We will not perform the Ninth, because it calls for women's voices and that is banned under Islamic law." BBC Music 07/10/00

Sunday July 9

• SERIAL KILLER: When the history of post-war American music is written, which history will it be? "A widely held belief asserts that during these years a band of rigorous, cutting-edge composers, mostly based in prestigious East Coast universities, seized the intellectual high ground and bullied their colleagues and students into accepting serial procedures as the only valid form of modernism. Yet another, quite opposite take on that period holds that the 12-tone composers never wielded much influence, that they themselves were the beleaguered minority group marginalized by the majority of composers, who continued to write music that was essentially tonal and far more popular." New York Times 07/09/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• HAS AMERICA LOST ITS EDGE? Sure there's lots of new opera these days. But American composers look back to the familiar if they want a production. "There's a general notion [in Europe] that we've fallen so far behind in innovations. They say there's nothing happening in America anymore. I jump to the defense of our artists. But it's true that the primary institutions in the U.S. have been reluctant to embrace innovators. . . . Without a doubt, there's been a chilling effect." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/09/00

• PONDERING THE POPS: Nothing new about crossover music. But "it is increasingly difficult to define what, exactly, an orchestral pops concert should be. And many, if not most, of the classical pops concerts I've heard in the past few years have epitomized a sort of weird potpourri - a little of this, a little of that, and nothing very specific at all." Washington Post 07/09/00

Friday July 7

• MORE THAN MARCHING MUSIC: Well known as the composer of “Stars and Stripes Forever" and dozens of other first-rate American marches, John Philip Sousa has not received much acclaim to date for the composing he did for the theater. Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, new York, opens its 25th-anniversary season this weekend with "The Glass Blowers," Sousa's last completed and most elaborate operetta. New York Times 07/07/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• NOT EVERYONE CAN WRITE AN OPERA: Even with Franz Schubert's great successes writing for the voice, his 11 attempts at opera never got him very far. One is being staged in Garsington now. What's it like? "Schubert was one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, yet there are only two arias in two-and-a-half hours of music. The whole opera has been conceived in terms of vast blocks of end-to-end ensemble: which are incredibly rich in their musical development, but at the same time make the opera a total nightmare to stage." The Guardian 07/07/00

  • ON THE OTHER HAND... Composer John Duffy and New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte have written an opera about Muhammed Ali. "Ali was poetic and prophetic," said Duffy, who before becoming an acclaimed composer was an amateur boxer. Sonicnet 07/07/00

Thursday July 6

• COMPETING RIGHTS: The hottest issue in the music business right now is how to protect recordings from being pirated. Music rights organization BMI announces a new international pact to track royalties, but ASCAP has its own international deal. Why don't they work together? Wired 07/06/00

• OLDER BUT LESS CLASSICAL: "Ten years ago shoppers over age 35 purchased just 29 percent of records, according to the RIAA. By 1999 that number had jumped to 44 percent, good for $6 billion worth of music sales. Yet despite this unique chance to market to a wave of music-buying adults who, according to one recent survey, buy an average of 20 CDs each every year, sales indicators suggest these 30-, 40- and even 50-something parents remain cool to jazz and classical." Salon 07/06/00

Wednesday July 5

• THE LIE OF THE BIG FIVE: Traditionally America's Big Five orchestras - Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago - were thought to be the best. Maybe they're best ion budget, writes Norman Lebrecht, but "money cannot buy artistic excellence. The Big Five, as a musical indicator, amounts to a big lie. Let's hear no more of it." The Telegraph (London) 07/05/00

• TWO PARAGRAPHS ON THE DRESS - ONLY ONE ON THE MUSIC: Musical prodigies face a range of issues beyond music. No one pays attention only to how they play - you have to look and act the part. Sonicnet 07/05/00

• BRITAIN'S OPERA HOPE: The hip new opera in London last season was - of all things - a piece about soccer. Mark-Anthony Turnage, the "Silver Tassie's" composer, "has emerged as one of the great hopes of English classical music - a natural extension of an extraoridnary line that runs through such fertile counties as Elgar, Walton, Bridge, Britten and Tippitt." Sequenza 21 07/03/00

• THE REAL STRAVINSKY: For a good part of the 20th Century Igor Stravinsky was considered the greatest composer of the era. But "by the time of his death in 1971 the plaudits of the mass media were out of sync with the opinions of musical tastemakers in Europe and America; these dismissed him as a diehard reactionary who had waited too long to acknowledge the historical inevitability of atonality. But the tastemakers were wrong, and with the restoration of tonality and the demise of the atonal avant-garde, Stravinsky’s music has once again returned to the limelight." Commentary 07/00

Tuesday July 4

• DOING THE CONTINENTAL SWING: Recent European jazz albums suggest that the innovation in jazz is coming from the Old World and not from America. "Almost without anybody noticing, European jazz, regarded for years by the Americans with the same kind of tolerant smile they reserve for Japanese baseball, seems poised to step to the forefront." The Times (London) 07/04/00

Monday July 3

• FASTER LOUDER STRONGER: The Sydney International Piano Competition opens. But criticism is rife, and charges of scandal abound. "No one, of course, will ever hear of any of the SIPCA prizewinners. They all seem to have had rather too close connections with various members of the jury, which in any case is mostly comprised of lacklustre teachers who ... wouldn't recognise good and original artistry if it jumped up and bit them." The Age (Melbourne) 07/03/00

  • CONTROVERSIES ALL AROUND: Resignations from the competition's executive and controversy about not using an Australian piano, mar the competition - and yes, all three Australian pianists competing made the quarter finals. Sydney Morning Herald 07/03/00

• WHAT MAKES A GOOD CABARET SINGER? The fourth annual Sydney Cabaret Convention has certainly demonstrated there are a multitude of performers out there who can manage cabaret as a technical feat. But there is a lot more to it than technique and tamed facility. Like all live performance, cabaret should be extraordinary. And at this convention, you got seven minutes (two songs and a bit of chat) to prove your worth. Sydney Morning Herald 07/03/00

• BANDING TOGETHER: Last year’s amalgamation of the National Opera, based in Wellington, and Auckland’s Opera New Zealand was only the latest attempt to create a sustainable opera company in New Zealand. Costs and staff were cut, and now a production of "Aida" is the first big test. New Zealand Herald 07/03/00 

• TANGO TROUBLE: Composer Astor Piazzolla's distinctive tango music has become a world-wide phenomenon. But "while his music won an enthusiastic following in Europe, the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, Piazzolla was not widely appreciated in his native Argentina until a decade before he died in 1992. Instead, his tampering with a native form as sacrosanct as the tango earned an intensity of contempt from the music's old guard that may be difficult to fathom in this country, where disagreements over style and genre exercise only a handful of artists and critics." The New Republic 07/03/00

Sunday July 2

• WORLD POLITICS: "World music grows ever more popular. There is hardly a country on earth that has not had its indigenous music marketed to Western record-buyers. But, for some of the artists, acclaim, and the wealth it generates, can spell trouble. So it proved on my trip to North Africa, a visit that had promised a glimpse into the origins of music itself, but that ended up shining a light on musicians embroiled in a violent struggle over the rather less than spiritual matters of copyright, brand ownership, and, above all, money." The Telegraph (London) 07/01/00

• EARLY FEUD: Earlier this spring Pinchas Zukerman was quoted in a Toronto newspaper as saying he "hates" early music; that early music is "disgusting ... and complete rubbish, and [so are] the people who play it." Do Zukerman's comments suggest "an emerging trend of negative public statements by modern conductors who are very suspicious of early music practices and performances and of period instruments?" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/02/00