What has surprised me, looking back to 1976 (when I started writing for a tiny magazine that sadly went out of business this year) is how much of the classical music landscape has survived, despite the economic pressures that you don’t need reminding about. - BBC Music
Hard as it may be to believe today, Graceland was not an instant hit when it came out, and Simon received criticism for what’s now called cultural appropriation and for violating sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa. Now its influence is widespread enough that it can be hard to perceive these decades later. - The Guardian
Founder Martin Ludlow, a former City Councilman, hoped that his star-studded multi-day event could ultimately become a peer to the great jazz fests in New Orleans and Montreal. Instead it came out looking more like Fyre Festival, and some say Ludlow was very much the wrong person to organize it. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
The Swedish maestro, who was hospitalized in May after partially collapsing and being taken from the stage during a San Francisco Symphony concert, has now withdrawn from his September appearances at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. He recently cancelled October dates in London and Tokyo as well. - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
In a new paper in Nature Machine Intelligence, three University of Cambridge researchers used AI to help better define the musical tics of 20 of the most celebrated jazz pianists of all time. - Scientific American
Canadian baritone Philippe Sly, currently starring in the Salzburg Festival’s production of Messiaen’s six-hour opera St. François d’Assise, is staying at the Kapuzinerkloster, a monastery across the Salzach River from the venue, eating with them in the refectory and attending every prayer service he’s available for. - The New York Times
“This crisis largely seems unconcerned with serious musical issues, such as the quality of the playing and the choice of repertoire.” Lloyd Schwartz reminds us that those issues are what really matter here — and that they don’t militate in Andris Nelsons’s favor. - WBUR (Boston)
In one British McDonald’s, a hot spot for fighting and generally antisocial behavior, “measures were brought in including a playlist of classical music in the evenings.” - BBC (Yahoo)
A Nick Jonas concert “reminded me of an obscure phrase coined by a 19th-century sociologist – Émile Durkheim’s ‘collective effervescence.’ … Individuals who are normally preoccupied with their personal concerns get swept up into a kind of electric, communal intensity.” - The Guardian (UK)
Soprano Asmik Gregorian: “This feels very strange and empty. … It was planned by Markus Hinterhäuser, and we are all here because of him. It feels a bit like a boat without a captain.” - The New York Times
The oldest known brass instruments in existence are two smallish trumpets found inside the tomb of the boy pharaoh in 1922. Seventeen years later, for a live BBC broadcast from Cairo, a modern musician played one. Bad idea. - CNN
BMG is the first significant rightsholder to ink a licensing deal with Suno since Warner Music Group announced an alliance with the AI company nine months ago. - MusicBusinessWorldwide
Scores are more available than ever: in multiple published editions, online in public domain collections, in libraries and elsewhere. But a manuscript, music written in a composer’s hand, has the almost magical power to make even the most distant giants feel near and alive. - The New York Times
They reveal that even as expenses ticked downward, donations fell 25 percent short of expectations last year, and that this year’s ticket revenue is on pace to earn about half of what the orchestra budgeted. - Washington Post
