In the memo, reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, Kyncl wrote that WMG is looking to reduce costs by about $300 million to “future-proof” the company and “reinvest in the business,” particularly into the music itself. - The Hollywood Reporter
“The (agreement), which continues through the 2027-28 season, extends a long history of harmonious labor relations at the symphony. For more than 30 years, MSO administration has shared its financial information with musicians.” - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
That is to say, the new agreement is retroactive to August 1, 2024, which is when the previous contract expired; the orchestra had been playing under temporary extensions ever since. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
The 43-year-old Hrůša is currently chief conductor of Germany’s Bamberg Symphony; he becomes music director of the Royal Opera House in London this fall. He has been the Czech Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor since 2018; he succeeds Semyon Bychkov as chief in 2028. - AP
Less than a week after founding artistic directors David Finckel and Wu Han announced their 2026 departure, their successors have been revealed. They are longtime Music@Menlo participants Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park; like Finckel and Wu Han, they are a married cellist-pianist couple. - San Francisco Classical Voice
The movie isn’t seen as progressive, but “on TikTok, people … have reinterpreted the ‘Colors of the Wind’ lyrics to comment on an array of contemporary topics they feel strongly about, like immigration, the Middle East, the president and Elon Musk, Black Lives Matter and oil drilling.” - The New York Times
“Five times a year, art is sandwiched by science. It typically takes four to five days to transform T-Mobile Park into one of Seattle’s most versatile concert venues, before the bells and whistles are deconstructed in an overnight sprint.” - Seattle Times
A personalized tour of the Library of Congress “included original manuscripts from composers Béla Bartók, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Johannes Brahms. … But it was American composer George Gershwin's manuscript for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess that moved Sondheim to tears." - CBC
“The celebration, which drew arts and civic leaders for the first of three preview nights, was far grander than the concert on March 26,1965, that opened LACMA’s Leo S. Bing Theatre the night before the doors opened to the museum’s original galleries.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
The police bust of an all-women party she hosted in 1925 was the subject of Ma Rainey’s 1928 record “Prove It on Me Blues.” Rainey and her contralto voice were part of a wider lesbian blues counterculture that included Gladys Bentley, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter. - BBC
The review into the traditional music scene in Wales found traditional music sectors in England, Scotland and Ireland benefited from a "wide range of music industry support structures" that were "largely absent in Wales". - BBC
The ongoing health of this ecosystem depends on working artists’ ability to create art. When musicians can afford to pay rent, put food on the table, make music, and play shows, everyone benefits. When they can’t, the entire economy suffers. Venues close, artists abandon their craft, and Canada’s cultural fabric tears. - The Walrus
Peter Whelan, a keyboard player, bassoonist, singer and conductor who currently directs the much-acclaimed Irish Baroque Orchestra, begins his initial term at Philharmonia Baroque in the 2026-27 season. He succeeds Richard Egarr, who resigned in 2024, and Music Director Emeritus Nicholas McGegan (1985-2020). - San Francisco Classical Voice
The pieces, for solo piano, were jotted down by the composer in the sketchbooks he carried with him everywhere. The recording, by pianist Alexandre Tharaud, is released this Friday (June 27), ahead of the centennial of Satie’s death on July 1. - The Guardian
