Music

Recommendations of the task force, created last spring to examine ways to staunch the BSO’s losses, include obtaining an extra $5.5 million through 2026 from the state government, which last year promised and later withdrew emergency funding of $1.6 million. The BSO also will attempt to increase gifts from private donors by $10 to $15 million over the next three years. The extra cash would be used to create new programs designed to increase the orchestra’s presence statewide and to provide for a 52-week performing season, which has been a demand of — and flashpoint for — the musicians union. – Baltimore Sun

“On Tuesday, [he] apologized to women who had accused him of sexual harassment. … But on Thursday, as some of Europe’s leading opera houses considered canceling future engagements, Mr. Domingo said he wanted to ‘correct the false impression’ his statement had created.” – The New York Times

The continent had been resistant to the accusations of sexual harassment that ended Domingo’s U.S. career, but following the AGMA report, Spain’s Culture Ministry cancelled his invitation to perform in Luisa Fernanda at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela in May, following which Domingo withdrew from La Traviata at the city’s Teatro Real the same month. (Meanwhile, news of the AGMA report has inspired another accuser to come forward publicly.) – Yahoo! (AP)

Because of cultural tradition, each audience brings specific expectations to a performance. Classical listeners, who are steeped in the European performance practices, have been conditioned to want to know as much as possible about the music before a note is sounded. Jazz audiences – who have embraced a more casual, all-American approach to listening – generally sit back and savor the sounds, recognizing standard tunes, enjoying obscure works and realizing that free-flying improvisations may have no title at all. – Chicago Tribune

The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko, with music by Anthony Bolton and a libretto by Kit Hesketh-Harvey based on the book Death of a Dissident by Litvinenko’s widow, premieres this July at Grange Park Opera in England. Reporter Mark Brown talks to Marina Litvinenko, Anthony Bolton, and Grange Park director Wasfi Kani. – The Guardian

“Domingo is, indeed, irreplaceable — because the world no longer has a place for this particular kind of artist, who has done so much to help the field and so much to harm it. And it may well be that without him, the field loses some of its patrons, and some of its funding. It may be, indeed, that the institution of opera fundamentally changes — which is something we should all aspire to if we want this intoxicating, bizarre, glorious art form to continue to be vital, now and in the future.” – The New Beat

“The deal they were working on — which called for the union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, to limit its public statements about the inquiry and for Mr. Domingo to pay the union $500,000 — fell apart on Tuesday after details of the investigation were leaked overnight.” – The New York Times

“Pretty remarkable. His entire brain is stimulated by music. His visual cortex is activated throughout. It seems like his brain is taking that part of the tissue that’s not being stimulated by sight and using it or maybe helping him to perceive music with it. It’s sort of borrowing that part of the brain and rewiring it to help him hear music.” – People

“The investigation, conducted by lawyers hired by the American Guild of Musical Artists, concluded that the accounts from 27 people showed a clear pattern of sexual misconduct and abuse of power by Domingo spanning at least two decades … when he held senior management positions at Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera.” (Domingo has now issued a statement saying “I am truly sorry for the hurt that I caused them.”) – Yahoo! (AP)

In late June and early July, music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in concerts at the Barbican in London, the Philharmonie de Paris, and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in Germany. The singers joining them will be Joyce DiDonato, Christine Goerke, Brandon Jovanovich, and Günther Groissböck. – Playbill

The Earth Harp is a massive stringed instrument that its inventor, William Close, says makes audiences feel like they’re “inside the instrument” during performances. Indeed, because he has to string the instrument across canyons or from a stage to an upper level of a concert hall or from a large piece of ceremonial architecture to the ground, audiences often are inside the sound. – BBC

Is this a city-led marriage made in heaven? One city councillor claims, “If we lose the DIY spaces we lose the next generation of live musicians.” – CBC

Carlo Rozzi, conducting the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff on February 22, stopped Verdi’s Les Vêpres Sicilienes twice – and he wasn’t afraid to go directly to the audience about why. Said a member of the audience, “He got a warm round of applause after he stopped and ticked off the audience member. Both incidents were right at the beginning of the show and all was well after that.” – BBC

They’re different from the quality of movie soundtracks, many of which don’t stand alone, and they’re “a marvelous untapped source of experimental instrumental electronica. … The context of gameplay encourages compositions that are melodically specific, sharp-edged, and hummable.” – Hyperallergic

This is a rather unbelievable story. “When [the two researchers] met, Pentcheva started telling Abel about the Hagia Sophia – how we couldn’t really understand the experience of worshipers there unless we could hear the music the way they did. And as she talked, Abel started to feel a prickling of excitement. They could recreate what that music would sound like. If only they could get in the Hagia Sophia and pop a balloon.” (Note: They did.) – NPR

“Levit’s career is a stark demonstration of the dissolving boundaries between art and commerce, journalism and public relations, particularly in Germany. … He is a friend to media personalities and politicians. Journalists ask his opinion on climate change, the rise of the far right, books, the ideal body weight. He works with artists and comedians, performs at the Bundestag in Berlin and for the Greens. In England, he’s enraged Brexiteers; in the U.S., he’s ‘The Pianist of the Resistance.'” His media presence has reached the critical mass at which coverage leads inexorably to more coverage.” – Van

The project, called “50 Fanfares”, will encompass chamber works as well as short fanfares and full orchestral scores commissioned from 50 Australian composers and premiered through the 2020, ’21 and ’22 seasons. – Limelight (Australia)

The result, at least in what producers were careful to call a dress rehearsal, is intermittently convincing. The hologram gets some of Houston’s physical tics right, and the lip-syncing — if that’s the right word for it — looks pretty real; detailed visual touches like that rippling fringe aid in the suspension of your disbelief. It certainly helps too that the live band cooks. But… – Los Angeles Times

‘Technology is playing a huge role in shaping the future of how people engage with orchestral music,’ says James Williams, managing director at the RPO. ‘At the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, we see it as an essential role to respond to this change, and to evolve and develop – be it through online content or programme notes that appear live on your phone. Indeed, last year we reached around 17m people worldwide through Spotify alone, and these numbers continue to grow each year.’ – Rhinegold

In the 1970s and ’80s, Abu Obaida Hassan’s singing and skill on the Nubian tambour thrilled Sudanese listeners and even gained attention overseas. Then the imposition of a stern version of Sharia law and the 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir squashed the country’s music scene, and Abu Obaida withdrew from public view. In 2016, a Western record producer went looking for him and found him by sheer dumb luck, and with Bashir now ousted, fans are rediscovering Abu Obaida’s sound. – The Guardian

Victory Hall Opera in Charlottesville is working on a production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites with Deaf performers acting the roles in American Sign Language alongside singers. The first workshops are happening at the end of this month. Reporter Thomas Floyd talks with the leader of Victory Hall Opera and stage director Alek Lev. – The Washington Post

Yuval Sharon: “If there was a straightforward message, there would certainly be simpler and more direct ways to communicate it than by creating this enormous operatic experience. Opera’s power lies in its complexity and its ability to create complication, to help us experience complex visions of the world. It’s something we need more and more desperately and why I think opera has an underestimated political power. Reducibility, along with didacticism, has been something all of us have actively resisted in this process.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

“It seems to me that the only solution commensurate with the scale of the problem is fundamentally changing the way musicians work. We have to stop seeing it as reasonable that we’d play in Barcelona one day, London the next, and New York two days later. And stop seeing it as reasonable that, at a big festival in Barcelona, fifty thousand out of the hundred thousand people there have flown from the U.K. to attend.” – The New Yorker

“What you get in a period orchestra are three things: greater individuality of timbre, more transparency of texture and an increased dynamism once all the instruments are stretched to their absolute maximum capacity of volume and expressivity. If you attempt that with a modern symphony orchestra, there will always be a certain comfort factor, a plushness, which, I feel, doesn’t help the listener to savor all that is most original in the score. It can sound a tad too comfortable.” – The New York Times

Zachary Woolfe: “For someone who’s never grown quite used to my late-night subway journey home after an opera, it was hard to turn down a performance that would take place a few steps from bed.” – The New York Times

A billion dollar industry dependent on one factory in California? That’s physical manufacturing, so perhaps not. The factory, where 75 percent of the world’s blank lacquers were made, burned in early February. “Pressing plants and mastering engineers are assessing the future. Some have expressed fear that the fire will disrupt the global production of new album releases and slow the seemingly endless supply of reissues that major labels churn out.” – Los Angeles Times

Massey claims the separation of ways was a mutual decision and adds that “the job was not what he expected when he came to Louisville a year ago from Florida, where he had been the president and CEO of the Jacksonville Symphony for four years.” – Louisville Courier Journal

The stakes are high. Not only does a musician have an emotional connection to their instrument, but a break, even if it is repaired to pristine condition, can bring down a valuable instrument’s price. It is also highly likely that a musician traveling with an instrument is on their way to their next gig. – The Guardian

Hildur Guðnadóttir is actually three-quarters of the way to an EGOT: she has an Oscar (and a Golden Globe) for her score to The Joker and an Emmy and a Grammy for her music for HBO’s Chernobyl. “But it’s on her own, and in the occasional duo or trio setting, that Guðnadóttir has established her signature sound: a moving fusion of ambient drone and contemporary classical that places an emphasis on her exceptionally controlled tone; she’s capable of conjuring entire worlds out of just a few carefully chosen notes.” – Pitchfork

The news of a planned stock market flotation of Universal comes hot on the heels of a similar announcement by its smaller rival Warner Music Group. – BBC