UMG’s research suggests that approximately 20% of current music streaming subscribers would be willing to pay up to double the current standard price for enhanced offerings. - Music Business Worldwide
“Alice Coltrane, despite having been one of John’s pianists, is maneuvered into the margins by subgenre euphemisms like ‘spiritual jazz,’ by which many mean, music for hippies and poets, while mainstream jazz is for men who read Esquire and smoke performative cigars on business trips.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
The Takacs thing. “They have always been one of the world’s pre-eminent string quartets, and they have a unique approach to the repertoire,” said John Gilhooly, the director of Wigmore Hall in London. “Whatever they have, they have it in abundance.” - The New York Times
It has to look like Peter Mattei, who’s singing John the Baptist, so they start by making a mold of his head. Then they have to get the mold off him. “We typically ask them to ... start making funny faces so that silicone starts releasing,” says (ahem) head master Tera Willis. - Vulture
"Music is about relationships—how we come to understand one another, how we communicate and connect with those who are different from us, and how we build mutual trust and empathy over time." - Playbill
He came to the job young, quickly became a local celebrity, and is presiding at a time when it has proved impossible for the Pops to maintain the imperious position in American popular culture built by Fiedler from 1930 to his death in 1979, when eulogized as “the maestro of the masses.” - The New York Times
The orchestra will remain in business through the end of its fiscal year on June 30. That coincides with the previously announced departure of the orchestra’s longtime CEO, Amy Ginsburg. The 70-musician professional orchestra marked its 64th anniversary this year. - News-Press (Fort Myers, Florida)
“(The company’s) leadership team understands the perils of mounting a production that waves a red cape at a pumped-up, reactive presidency. Surprisingly, the opera is partially financed by the National Endowment for the Arts, with some $40,000 of the production’s $1 million cost coming through a (previously-paid) federal grant.” - The New York Times
At these 80th-birthday concerts for Michael Tilson Thomas, who has suffered a recurrence of an aggressive brain cancer, the musicians distributed leaflets to the audience demanding “a fair contract” and accusing SFS management of budget cuts which “jeopardize the world-renowned status Michael helped build.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
"I don't judge people in any way about how much they know about music. In fact, when I'm writing, I think, "Well, let's pretend that no one in the room has ever heard classical music. Will this speak to them?" - NPR
The consensus is that AI is an extremely potent technology and already very, very good at creating content, however, you are somehow a villain if you use it. - Entrepreneur
You didn’t know that a cover of The Sound of Silence was the most popular hard rock song of the last decade, did you? “It’s the long-distance runner of hard rock songs. It’s accruing its popularity week by week.” - Slate
"You can’t start orchestrating much before the rehearsals begin because things haven’t settled. Until you get into rehearsals, you may not know what key a number is in or how much intro you need. So we have a lot of time pressure, put it that way.” - American Theatre
“Everything feels so precarious, … and suddenly there’s these songs that put you in dialogue with people going back over hundreds of years. That’s a really beautiful antidote to the precarity and uncertainty.” - The New York Times
When asked whether the fact that the last two Proms festivals in Britain have each featured only eight female conductors — compared with well over 40 males — meant progress had stalled, Alsop replied: “Stalled, that could define the quest for gender equality throughout history.” - The Times
