The company announced that the Board of Directors chose Jen-Pierre Primiani, who currently serves as Chief Philanthropy Officer, for the position and will begin Nov. 1, 2025. - OperaWire
The researchers calculated each individual's "listening radius"—roughly how far they roamed across genres and artists. They found that people living in larger urban areas also tend to listen to a broader variety of music, expanding their personal musical repertoire. - Phys
The increase in music majors may be related to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It turns out people turned to music in their time at home, and they came back — just a (f)lood of people who had really committed themselves to it and wanted to be serious about continuing it." - The Daily Cal
"The 'Main Title' music from Jaws has inspired generations of commercial and cultural riffs and rip-offs — since filed under a larger surge of Jaws-inspired content termed ‘sharksploitation’ — that have dulled its bite a bit.” - Washington Post (MSN)
“It was a time in French history when you could change your birth status with money. The nouveau riche included industrialists and bankers. You could also move up in society with an education, which was the case for opera architect Charles Garnier.” - NPR
After 18 years, Suzi Gomez-Pizzo, 64, a fast-talking native New Yorker, is retiring this month from the Met. She has garnered a reputation as a calm troubleshooter with a knack for defusing last-minute sartorial snafus. - The New York Times
“Employees continued to picket on the day after Wednesday night’s walkout when, during a Suzanne Vega concert, they protested ‘an unacceptable level of hostility and mismanagement’ by the new leadership. … On Thursday evening, the management team headed by new CEO Joseph Callahan responded by firing some employees involved.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Gatti, currently chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and formerly music director of the Rome Opera and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, is succeeding Zubin Mehta at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, which encompasses both Florence’s famous spring music festival and its opera house. - ANSA (Italy)
“The orchestra has informed subscribers that the contemporary music series will be ‘paused’ for the 2025-26 season. There was no public announcement or acknowledgement. The CSO series presented just two MusicNOW concerts this current season, most recently in March.” - Chicago Classical Review
“I think it’s crazy that 20 years in, we still offer music for free. We’re the only service that doesn’t have a free service. As a company, we look at music as art, and we would never want to give away art for free. - The Hollywood Reporter
“The Metropolitan Opera’s stage door, a plain entrance hidden in the tunnels of Lincoln Center, routinely welcomes star singers, orchestra musicians, stagehands, costumers and ushers. But a different bunch of visitors arrived there on a recent afternoon, carrying stuffed toy rabbits and ‘Frozen’ backpacks.” - The New York Times
Pires, 81 next month, has withdrawn from performances this week and next in three Portuguese cities. She also has concerts scheduled in Monaco on June 22 and The Hague on June 30; so far, those performances are still on, as is a July tour to Japan and Taiwan. - RTP (Portugal) (via Google Translate)
“Giancarlo Guerrero, 56, ended his 16-year tenure in May as music director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, where he put an emphasis on contemporary American music and oversaw more than 20 recordings that earned him six Grammy Awards.” - Chicago Sun-Times
Some fans are disappointed that we may never see the last two rerecordings, though Swift has hinted that she might be willing to release them, in some form, one day. - The New Yorker
Algorithms, which sort the listening public into ever-more-individualized niches, can cut both ways: They can introduce you to new artists, but they can also “rob you of the variety of emotional experience.” A result, is “a hunger for a more authentic view, a more definite emotional experience than commercial country often provides.” - New York Times Magazine
