Classical fans have long complained about how poorly iTunes and Apple Music fit the genre. So, in 2021, Apple purchased Primephonic — which designed its database especially for classical — and closed it, saying they'd integrate it with Apple's software and relaunch it. The result, Apple Music Classical, arrives March 28. - Ars Technica
While technology is making composing more accessible to more artists, there's another important shift going on: scoring Indigenous stories with Indigenous music — rather than a cliché of rattles and drums. - CBC
"The company said it pays out nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music back to the industry. ... These rights holders include record labels, publishers, independent distributors, performance rights organizations and collecting societies ... (but) rarely the artist or songwriter." - Variety
"(He) has canceled a piano recital at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo due to the effects of a serious neurological condition. … Barenboim was diagnosed last year with the condition, which forced him to step down in January as music director at the Berlin State Opera after three decades." - AP
The BBC, as the biggest commissioner of music and one of the biggest employers of musicians in the country, has a vital part to play in the British cultural landscape and a duty to future proof what we deliver for the public. - BBC
Fiction or not, the sort of backstage backstabbing depicted in “Tár” is, alas, very real. We conductors do not generally like our colleagues, and we delight in denigrating one another — that is, until one of us dies. - The New York Times
The BBC Singers, the UK's only full-time professional vocal ensemble, will cease operations this summer, and the Corporation is offering voluntary buyouts to reduce headcount by a fifth in the BBC Symphony in London, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. - The Guardian
Reputedly the grand pedagogue Dorothy DeLay had her piano tuned to 443Hz, maintaining that it would make her pupils’ violins sound more brilliant; there is even the case of a US concertmaster insisting that his orchestra tune to precisely 440.5Hz. - The Strad
While nobody expects Tár to be a documentary, it gets so much wrong that either it’s deliberately distorting reality for the sake of the plot or nobody bothered to do the research. - San Francisco Classical Voice
Brian Katz, co-chief of the acoustics team for the medieval cathedral's reconstruction, has created a computer model — of which we can hear samples here — not only of how Notre-Dame sounded before the fire, but of how any changes might affect, and perhaps improve, the acoustics. - The New York Times Magazine
"The 47-year-old British conductor has a ... new post at the The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia orchestra, starting in the fall of 2024. He takes over from Antonio Pappano, who is leaving to become chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra." - AP
Even as Universal Music’s chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge lauded the sustained growth of streaming and technology’s ability to connect artists with their fans, he used the company’s fourth quarter investor call on Thursday to advocate for a new economic model. - New York Post
Then her mom posted it to TikTok, asking musicians to perform it. So far? "In the following days, musicians played the score on a violin, clarinet, guitar, harp, trumpet, flute, saxophone, cello and viola." And now it's at 6 million views plus. - Washington Post
Volker Bertelmann: "When I saw the film the first time, I was thinking I need an instrument from that time. And then my studio - there was the harmonium of my grand-grandmother that I refurbished a year before, and it was just, like, sitting there waiting for a job." - NPR
The ensemble had been playing since 1974 in the north-central Massachusetts towns of Lancaster and Fitchburg under the name Thayer Symphony Orchestra; it re-christened itself the New England Symphony in 2016. Now it's moving a bit south to Worcester, with the name Worcester Symphony Orchestra. - Telegram and Gazette (Worcester, Mass.)
