"With an outstanding $1 million debt and a 'long history of contractual default and related broken promises and commitments,' the Philly Pops is trying to 'force its way back into Verizon Hall,' the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc. alleged in a court filing Tuesday." - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"If the current spending pace continues through the end of the tour, the Eras Tour will have generated an estimated $5 billion in economic impact, more than the gross domestic product of 50 countries." - CBC
That Riccardo Muti became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at all is a miraculous anomaly due to a perfect storm of unexpected events. - New City
The idea, according to founding first violinist and Artistic Director David Harrington, was to commission 50 quartets from a variety of composers, and make those easily accessible, free of charge, to anyone who wanted to tackle them. - San Francisco Chronicle
The 39-year-old Texas native, a former associate conductor at the Detroit Symphony, succeeds Timothy Redmond, who resigned abruptly in the summer of 2021 after just over two years on the job. - Winston-Salem Journal
Anna-Maria Helsing, a Finn who became the BBC Concert Orchestra's principal guest conductor in 2020, will step up to succeed the late Bramwell Tovey as chief conductor as of October 1, with an initial contract term of three years. - The Independent (UK)
Kahchun Wong, a 36-year-old native of Singapore who won the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in 2018 and has since worked as chief conductor of the Nuremburg Symphony and the Japan Philharmonic, will succeed Mark Elder as of September 2024. - The Straits Times (Singapore)
Sydney cemented the idea that grandiose political and architectural ambitions — some would say hubris — can merit the expenditure of much larger sums than bean counters would countenance. Some of these facilities ultimately proved transformative for their cities and nations. - Bloomberg
But the progress with Black musicians is incremental at best. Why is this so difficult? Titus Underwood, the principal oboist at the Nashville Symphony, says, "We must reflect American culture. And American culture is nothing without Black musicians being at the center." - The New York Times
Composers rarely get to be as loved as they are honored. But Saariaho's "music has informed aspects of European, American and Asian music, and she is being well and properly eulogized. ... The adjective most commonly used to describe her music (and her) is luminous." - Los Angeles Times
He's stepping down at the Chicago Symphony, but only sort of - because who is stepping up? "Since his successor has not yet been named, he will be continuing as a kind of shadow music director next season, and possibly longer." - The New York Times
Some AI is OK, but not all AI. "'A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category,' they said, under new 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) Protocols' released Friday." - Seattle Times (AP)
"Standing in the square waiting for this moment, spontaneous kazooing broke out. We kazooed to Rick Astley (Cursed). We kazooed to Pachelbel’s Canon (as a longsuffering wedding cellist, this healed something deep inside me). We kazooed to Billie Eilish." - The Guardian (UK)
"The number of nominees for those categories" — Best New Artist and Album, Song, and Record of the Year — "were suddenly expanded from eight to 10 in November of 2021. … After two years, it became clear that 10 nominees in those major categories was unwieldy, at the very least." - Variety
DiDonato: "I think there’s a lot of power in putting on a legitimate, high-level concert, but challenging the audience to take home something more from it. ... Isn’t ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ lovely? It’s like, yeah, but, what do you do with it when you go home?" - Van
