Music

According to folk singer Martin Carthy, the football chant can be considered one of the last embodiments of the oral folk tradition. – The Conversation

“A conversation with him can easily pinball from contemporary politics to ancient Egypt. But what he’s most eager to talk about now is ZIM Music — his latest structural model in a lifelong pursuit to locate clarity within chaos.” – NPR

The Greenroom app lets any user host or participate in live rooms, as well as record live conversations. – Variety

“It’s difficult because I am very happy here. And this orchestra has made me a better conductor. But I can’t just think of myself. I also have to think of the orchestra and its future. I’m convinced that when things are calmer at the end of this pandemic, it will be the time for the orchestra to open a new chapter of its history, which means a new direction and a new face.” – The Cincinnati Enquirer

“Philadelphia Orchestra president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky will become leader of the new parent company upon finalization of the deal, and Kimmel president and CEO Anne Ewers” — who initiated and championed the deal — “will retire. … While pressures brought on by the pandemic sparked talks toward the move, the benefits of the new structure are independent from the pandemic shutdown and abrupt disappearance of ticket revenue, leaders say.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, attracts an average of 30 million visitors a day, and its users watched more than one trillion minutes of content last year, according to the company. – The New York Times

The tentative return of gigs could not have come soon enough for jazz performers. A 2008 study on the economics of the genre found that 49% of jazz musicians’ income came from live performances. – The Guardian

“It was still a gritty city, before gentrification really took over. Artists could afford to live in the city – they didn’t have to scramble to make rent, so they could concentrate on their work. You could afford to experiment.” – The Guardian

Sparks from a malfunctioning fan appear to have ignited sawdust at the factory of Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Lake City, Iowa on Tuesday afternoon, starting a fire that consumed almost everything but part of the exterior walls. Among the instruments Dobson is best known for are the organs at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and Merton College, Oxford; the now-incinerated instrument under construction had been for the historic St. James’, King Street in Sydney. – Des Moines Register

“Opera Australia has posted a $7.1 million trading deficit for the year ended December 2020, or almost $6.5 million after bequests are included. … The company received $11.4 million in ‘absolutely critical’ JobKeeper subsidies in 2020. ‘If we hadn’t had that $11.4 million, we would have been potentially looking at a $20 million trading loss, and that would have meant us having to take more drastic action,’ says [outgoing CEO Rory] Jeffes.” – Limelight (Australia)

Whether you’re singing along with “Messiah” or rocking with Metallica, the common auditory input of the rhythm and melody, plus the visual input of musicians and conductor, causes our brains to “entrain” or synchronize to this shared sensory awareness. – San Francisco Chronicle

Among audiences, the government survey data showed that more men than women report attending jazz concerts, and that the gap is larger for jazz than for rock. – The Conversation

“Composers from that same time period, say, the ’30s to the ’60s — the likes of Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Elliott Carter, George Perle, Harold Shapero, Roger Sessions, and others neglected for decades by America’s musical institutions — have been experiencing an uptick in interest of late, particularly at summer festivals and in recording projects.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

“If I had it to do all over again, I would not have tried so hard to move the BSO out of the Ivory Tower. Sometimes you have to say, ‘OK, this is not where people want to go. Try to enjoy the orchestra and community as much as you can.’ … I didn’t have problems with any one individual. It’s more about an ethos and a philosophy of how you want to exist in a community. I had pushed as hard as I could push.” – The Baltimore Sun

It’s taken Australia’s oldest orchestra five years to find a successor to Andrew Davis, whose tenure ended in 2019, but they’ve now settled on this Spanish-born, London-based flutist-turned-conductor. Martín is also chief conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, and he recently extended his contract as the LACO’s music director to 2027. – Limelight (Australia)

The problem is that, as one wag put it a few years after the composer’s demise, “Now that Josquin is dead, he is putting out more works than when he was still alive” — the height of his fame, in the decades after 1500, coincided with the birth of music printing and the utter lack of copyright law, and many publishers found they could juice sales by slapping the great man’s name on other people’s music. Alex Ross spent much of this spring sitting in on Zoom seminars with two of the world’s top Josquin scholars, Joshua Rifkin and Jesse Rodin, watching students wrestle with determining whether a given work was genuine Josquin or not. – The New Yorker

While the report’s tone and conclusions are unambiguous — in just one telling example, across 70 major and independent music companies, just 13.9% of top executives across were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, 4.2% were Black, and 13.9% were women — its wording is polite. – Variety

This means that groups and single artists who were still trying to pay back debt – and thus were not eligible for royalties – can now start earning money from streaming. – BBC

After a planned protest in one of the school’s buildings, the students “were barred from the Diamond building, and the school told them that it was investigating an incident that included reported violations ‘pertaining to community safety.’ On Thursday, about 20 students continued their tuition protest on the sidewalk outside, waving placards and accusing the school of using heavy-handed tactics to quell dissent.” – The New York Times

The Pulitzer citation describes Stride as “a musical journey full of surprise, with powerful brass and rhythmic motifs that incorporate Black music traditions from the US and the Caribbean into a Western orchestral fabric.” – NewMusicBox

“When she took the position in 2007, she was the first female music director of a top-tier American orchestra. She was, it seemed certain then, the avatar of a new generation of women on important podiums. … But when she departs this summer, the field will go back to the way it was before she came: 25 major orchestras … with no female music directors. Alsop and her Baltimore appointment are often referred to as trailblazing, but so far she remains alone on this particular trail.” – The New York Times

Last summer, back home in Wales after completing his 16-year term in Raleigh, he suffered what turned out to be a three-day stroke that severely impaired the use of his right arm and leg. After a month’s hospitalization and six months of physical therapy, though he can’t hold a baton, he is back working with the Orchestre national de Bretagne, his ensemble in Rennes, France. “The irony of my situation is that I can conduct Beethoven symphonies but I can’t get out of bed. I can’t tie my shoelaces.” – BBC

With now over 60,000 students having taken online practical and theoretical exams, it became a sink-or-swim moment testing RCM’s ability to keep anxious students engaged and motivated. –Ludwig Van

Percussionist Sam Wilson of Riot Ensemble writes about Georg Friedrich Haas’s Solstices, in which he has the hardest job: “A pianist can feel where their keys are even if the music is extremely complex; a violinist has a constant physical connection with their instrument; a trumpet player always knows where the valves are. For me, holding up four sticks to hit a vibraphone in the dark was a challenge. … This required some serious focus and some particularly motivational pep talks into the mirror. What Haas was asking surpasses muscle-memory. I needed to discover how to manage absolute physical reproduction; how high up you hold your sticks, exactly where you’ve planted your feet, and quite how sweaty your hands are on any occasion.” – The Guardian

With no dance floors or concert halls to fill, many listeners turned toward gentler, unobtrusive music to help quiet their restless minds. In response, artists who might not have publicly ventured into this sometimes esotericterrain now feel emboldened to do so. – The New York Times