Music

“While I was doing the recording, it became really apparent that the cellphone was such a prominent actor in that transaction,” says Christopher Kirkley. When he sat down with an artist, children nearby would pull out their cellphones and do the same. Contrary to Western notions, music from the region has been digitised at a high rate because of the use of cellphones. – New Frame

The world’s oldest opera company (founded in 1669 by Louis XIV) has signed one of the very few living conductors to become a celebrity in popular culture. The 40-year-old Venezuelan, the most famous product of El Sistema, begins a six-year term in his new job on August 1; he will also remain music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for at least five more seasons. – The New York Times

When BPI started recording data like this in the 1990s, rap music only counted for 3.6% of the singles market. In 2020, it was 22%. – BBC

It can be done, but it’s hardly easy or common, even for people with astounding voices. You have to be hitting just the right note with just the right glass: not any old tumbler or champagne flute will do it, and you have to land — at around 100 decibels — on the precise frequency that will set that particular vessel resonating. (video) – Yahoo! (AmazeLab)

The Royal Opera House in London launched a TikTok channel last summer and has since picked up more than 400,000 followers, with some of its quickie videos picking up millions of hits and likes, especially Diana Damrau singing the Queen of the Night’s second aria from The Magic Flute. – The Telegraph (UK)

Pushed by County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., a Democrat, the New Opportunities for Tourism and Entertainment — or NOTE — Act would enable restaurants, bars and other businesses to hold live musical entertainment by amending zoning rules in areas where live music is currently prohibited. But residents and some council members are skeptical of how the county would enforce its noise ordinance, which stipulates a maximum of 65 decibels during the day and 55 decibels at night. – Baltimore Sun

How completely has streaming transformed the music world? The platform rose from 7% of the U.S. market in 2010 to a whopping 83% by the end of 2020 — and recorded-music revenues saw their fifth consecutive year of growth, topping $12.2 billion, per the RIAA. It’s no understatement to say that streaming saved the record- ed-music business, and that global market leader Spotify led the charge toward the stability and growth that the industry is enjoy- ing today. – Variety

The idea that the world’s two most powerful countries can simply “decouple” as their strategic competition grows fiercer — a concept promoted by China hawks — doesn’t match reality. In the case of classical music, as Beethoven in Beijing illustrates, the ties that bind our two countries are historically driven and deeply emotional. – Philadelphia Inquirer

In something of a miracle, the huge fire that ravaged the Paris landmark on April 15, 2019 did almost no serious damage to the 8,000-pipe Grand Organ; the major problem is that lead dust from the melted roof covered and coated every part of the instrument, and cleaning up a neurotoxin is no easy matter. But of the smaller Choir Organ, at the other end of the church, only the metal pipes could be saved. In a Q&A, Notre-Dame titular organist Olivier Latry talks about the progress of the repairs. – Vox Humana

Markus Buehler’s team used laser imaging to create a 3D map of webs made by tropical tent-web spiders (Cyrtophora citricola). They identified each thread’s vibrating frequency through its size and elasticity, then converted those frequencies into ones that can be heard by humans. – New Scientist

Soprano Carolyn Sampson summarizes the texts of the eight songs in the cycle thus: “1. I can’t think of anything but him; 2. He’s wonderful and I am not worthy; 3. OMG – he said he loved me; 4. I am his and have the ring to prove it; 5. Girlfriends: today I leave you for him; 6. I am pregnant with mini-you; 7. I feed my baby and am fulfilled; 8. Your death is the first time you have truly hurt me.” She continues: “Isn’t it faintly ridiculous to stand before an audience and sing these pieces today? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say … well, no, I don’t think it is.” – The Guardian

“A good A.S.L. performance prioritizes dynamics, phrasing and flow. The parameters of sign language — hand shape, movement, location, palm orientation and facial expression — can be combined with elements of visual vernacular, a body of codified gestures, allowing a skilled A.S.L. speaker to engage in the kind of sound painting that composers use to enrich a text.” Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim watches how a couple of pros signed their own cover of the old Gladys Knight and the Pips song “Midnight Train to Georgia.” – The New York Times

The Italian maestro, who is also chief conductor of the Danish National Symphony and is now winding up his term as music director of the Zurich Opera House, has been named chief conductor of the NHK Symphony, widely considered to be Japan’s leading orchestra, beginning with the 2022-23 season. – Dallas Morning News

Senior figures from Spotify, Apple and other streaming services have commended the virtues of streaming, and few in the world of music would dispute that the platforms saved the music industry. Music streaming in the UK now brings in more than £1bn a year in revenue. But the fact remains that artists can be paid as little as 13% of the income generated, receiving as little as £0.002 to about £0.0038 per stream on Spotify and about £0.0059 on Apple Music. – The Guardian

“Someone on our team said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we could bring together musicians around the U.S. who are not working, for some project?’ It morphed into involving Fabio Luisi, who’s been really bummed out about the Met, which has had such a hard year. He thought about Mahler 1, and bringing in about half the Met Orchestra. – Dallas Morning News

Afro-Brazilian musician Luedji Luna: “It’s been a sad year for artists and for the three of us: What we love doing most is performing with each other.” But it hasn’t been all terrible. “When the pandemic started, we all reacted differently. Xenia is more of a meditative person, so she wasn’t online much. Larissa started to produce beats. And I became a mom.” – The New York Times

And she has the duet series to prove it. Lin, who commissioned duets before adding interviews to her presentation of new work: “In the beginning I just wanted to have these duos written. Then I decided, you know, part of the reason people are afraid of new music is they don’t understand it. What happens if people get to know the composers a little bit?” – Boston Globe

The business side of music can be vicious for its musicians, and when a label owned by a man you loathe gets to profit off your music? Well. “The debut this week of the now 31-year-old Swift’s full rerecording of that album she made at 18, under the title Fearless (Taylor’s Version), is a reminder of how inextricably blurred the creative and the commercial always are in pop music. Rerecording the albums is a business strategy that, by its self-consciously meta-narrative nature, can’t help but also become a piece of conceptual art.” – Slate

“[A] now-21-year-old Temple [University] student said that Mikhail Yanovitsky, 56, hugged, kissed, and fondled her while she practiced piano in a classroom at Temple’s Rock Hall in February 2020, then forced her to touch him sexually over his clothing while he spoke of ‘eroticism.'” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

“What David Lang wrote in 1989 was not wrong: no senators took to the floor to tear up scores by Philip Glass or John Cage. New music was ultimately collateral damage in the Culture Wars, not directly targeted by congressional Republicans but still subject to the same devastating public funding cuts that the controversies over Serrano and Mapplethorpe inaugurated. But the controversies over NYSCA’s funding of new-music organizations—relatively tame in comparison to what unfolded on the floor of the senate—tapped into the same partisan rhetoric as the more famous ones that played out on the national stage, and did in fact conscript American composers into the battles of the Culture Wars.” – NewMusicBox

“At the end of February, Grimes sold 10 pieces of digital artwork as NFTs for $6m, while Deadmau5 has offered bundles including music and collaborative artwork. The Weeknd generated $2.2m by selling digital artworks with clips of a new track. … Despite the clear traceability, there remains enormous uncertainty about just how the rights and ownership of the original creators – from songwriters and producers to session musicians – apply in an NFT sale that includes music.” – The Guardian

It turns out that there is more to the question than appears on the surface, and multiple psychological studies have supported the idea that musical preferences are actually linked to our cognitive styles, or the way we think about, and react to, the world around us. – The Hill

“Born in 1778, in Biała Podlaska, Poland, [George Polgreen] Bridgetower started playing the violin at an early age. His father John Frederick Bridgetower (probably of West Indian descent) was a servant of Joseph Haydn’s patron: the Hungarian Prince Esterházy. And the young Bridgetower was tutored by Haydn himself. … Later, Bridgetower went on to give the first public performance of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 (‘Kreutzer’), which the composer originally dedicated to him. The pair later fell out and Beethoven re-dedicated the work to the violin virtuoso Rudolphe Kreutzer, who never played it.” – The Strad