Music

“We are living in a time when production has mostly superseded content in every area you can think of. It’s very archaic to be holding on to what is the actual content and how to keep it meaningful.” – Washington Post

In the 1950s and ’60s, especially, session musicians could make or break a hit. And session musicians were in high demand, as producers like Phil Spector became obsessed with production techniques such as the Wall of Sound, forcing as many musicians as possible into a studio and having each of them contribute a small part to a larger, bombastic sound. As a result, session musicians became highly valued: Each had to play their role well, but they also had to find a way to click with every other session musician in the room. – Pacific Standard

The little Bach-bot “promises to take any two-bar melody you type in and turn it into a Bach, or Bachlike, chorale in four parts, played by charming little music-box figures of bewigged 18th-century musicians.” Yet, writes Anne Midgette, “it may only add to the doodle’s charm that what it actually proves is the opposite of what it sets out to do.” – The Washington Post

“Matthew Feargrieve, 42, was accused at Westminster Magistrates Court of repeatedly punching Ulrich Engler on the shoulder in the performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the world-famous [Royal Opera House]. It is understood the dispute began because Mr Engler allegedly grabbed a coat belonging to Mr Feargrieve’s wife from an empty seat and threw it on her lap.” – The Telegraph (UK)

Oh yes, he traveled by subway during his years (1908-11) as director of the New York Philharmonic. (He’d have taken one of the BMT lines to conduct at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the now-gone Ninth Avenue El to get home on the Upper West Side.) “Yet claiming Mahler as a New Yorker … is complicated,” writes David Patrick Stearns. “Connect the dots one way, New York was Mahler’s nightmare and possibly his undoing. Connect the dots another way, and Mahler himself was a nightmare no matter where he was.” – WQXR (New York City)

Christina Scheppelmann, who’s currently the artistic head of one of the top opera houses in Europe, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, will become general director of Seattle Opera in August, succeeding Aidan Lang, who announced last fall that he would be leaving at the end of this season to become general director of the Welsh National Opera. – Seattle Times

He’s Daniel Beckley, who most recently was vice president and general manager of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.  Beckley succeeds Frank Byrne, who’s retiring this year after a 19-year tenure. 

“The youthful musical director of the Louisville Orchestra, who has built a national reputation as a creative and innovative force on the music scene, has signed an ‘unprecedented’ five-year contract to helm one of Louisville’s cornerstone institutions through the 2024-25 season.” – Louisville Courier Journal

We do not easily fit into the capitalistic system. And this is a good thing. The best things in life — education, medical care, love, nurturance —also do not fit neatly into economic life. – Jacobin

“Do we share musicality with other animals on account of the ‘common physiological nature of [our] nervous systems,’ as Darwin suspected? To understand the evolution of music and musicality, we have to establish what the components of music are and how they demonstrate their presence in animals and humans.” Music cognition researcher Henkjan Honing takes on the challenge. – Nautilus

As negotiations over a new contract drag on and concerts get cancelled, members of Chicago’s acting community have joined musicians on the picket line, both candidates for mayor in the city’s runoff election have come out in the strikers’ favor, and the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has issued a statement of support. – Chicago Tribune

There are no further meetings between the sides scheduled at this time. CSO President Jeff Alexander said that after no progress was made after lengthy sessions on Friday and Saturday, both sides agreed it would be “good to take a pause” in negotiations. On a small note of optimism, Alexander said that “there is room for movement” on the salary element of the contract. The CSOA is currently offering a 5% increase over a three-year contract while the union seeks a 12% increase over the same period. – Chicago Classical Review

“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies.” Boing Boing

Last fall, Swiss researchers exposed nine wheels of Emmentaler in an aging cellar to various types of music: classical (Mozart’s Magic Flute), rock (Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”), techno (Vril’s “UV”), hip-hop (A Tribe Called Quest’s “Jazz (We’ve Got)”) ambient music (Yello’s “Monolith”), and, as controls, steady high, medium and low tones and silence. All were on nonstop loops, with mini-transducers transmitting the sounds directly into the cheese wheels. After six months, the wheels were taken out and taste-tested — and here are the results. (So why was the classical music used Mozart instead of Mahler, Monteverdi, Stravinsky, or Steve Reich?) – Smithsonian Magazine

“The Teatro alla Scala in Milan on Monday decided to return more than three million euros in funding to Saudi Arabia, amid growing criticism that Italy’s premier temple of music should not accept money from a country with a jarring human rights record. Mayor Giuseppe Sala said the theater’s board of directors had deliberated over the issue and ‘unanimously decided to return the money.'” – The New York Times

Every way possible. In this video, the folks at Wired dig into research and find out things like “why the prefrontal cortex shuts down during improvisation. ‘It’s not just something that happens in clubs and jazz bars. … It’s actually maybe the most fundamental form of what it means to be human.'”- Wired

The scheme is slated to cost nearly £300 million and is London’s volley in an intercontinental game of high culture one-upmanship, which in recent years has produced Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and Jean Nouvel’s Philharmonie in Paris. This arms race for cultural dominion has, in London however, reached new levels of absurdity with the decision to build the new 2,000 seat concert hall less than 300 metres from an existing 2,000 seat concert hall. – dezeen

Says Alexander Neef, general director of Canadian Opera Company, about Christine Goerke, “People can’t get over the sheer power of the voice — and I don’t mean only the volume. … It’s not only that she hits all the notes and she hits them powerfully. It’s that there’s always an element of storytelling that really allows her to connect with the audience.” – The New York Times

“Keith C. Elder, whose career as a performing arts administrator has included stints with such prestigious organizations as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Eastman School of Music, has been named the new executive director of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.” – Tulsa World

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says that if Spotify pays this cut it has to “artificially inflate” its prices “well above the price of Apple Music.” But if it doesn’t pay, Apple applies “a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions” that make Spotify an inferior experience. Ek also notes that Apple “routinely blocks our experience-enhancing upgrades,” including locking Spotify and other competitors out of Apple services like Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch. – The Verge

For instance, on the simplest task, if someone was generally not prone to boredom, they tended to perform better when listening to the most complex form of music than with either simple music or complete silence, albeit when the volume of the music was relatively low.  If the volunteer was prone to boredom however, the opposite was the case, and silence was the best condition. – Forbes

“They’re moving us to a swamp, with no opportunity to grow our vision,” said Sami Scott, who helped organize a petition drive against the orchestra’s proposal. That petition has accumulated 300-plus signatures. – Sarasota Herald Tribune

While music directors usually stay silent about orchestras’ labor-management disputes, Muti said to the assembled media, “I am here with my musicians. … We try to get a better situation for their life, their pension, their work. Some people, they want to read my position with the musicians as against the board. This is not true. I would just like them to listen more carefully to the musicians, who represent one of the great orchestras of the world.” – Chicago Tribune