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MUSIC

Hollywood Bowl LA Phil Season Opens On A Down Note

One of the highlights of this season has fallen victim to a baffling Venezuela travel ban. Gustavo Dudamel can no longer bring his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August. That now means that Dudamel will spend only a single week at the Bowl during his penultimate summer as L.A. Phil music director. - Los Angeles Times

Restaurants Consider Ditching Recorded Music Because Of Higher Licensing Fees

The National Restaurant Assn. said its members pay an average of $4,500 per year to license music, or 0.5% of the average U.S. small restaurant’s total annual sales. “This may not seem like a large amount, but for an industry that runs on an average pre-tax margin of 3%-5%, this cost is significant." - Los Angeles Times

La Scala To Ticket-Buyers: No Flip Flops! (We Mean It!!)

The venue is stepping up the enforcement of its dress code this summer, reminding patrons via signs in the foyer to dress “in keeping with the decorum of the theater.” The underdressed will not be allowed inside, according to its policy, which is also printed on tickets, nor will they be reimbursed. - The New York Times

As The Kennedy Center Loses Subscribers, What Will This Mean For The National Symphony Orchestra?

It’s not great: Subscriptions are down 36 percent. But “complicating things for a number of NSO supporters … is the energy surrounding the orchestra itself, which remains infectiously high, ascendant and alive with promise, especially following last season’s extension of music director Gianandrea Noseda’s contract.” - Washington Post (MSN)

Music Law Is Not Keeping Up With Technology

Musicians dealing not only with tiny streaming payments but now software-created “musicians” that steal even that limited option say they need some legal support. - CBC

Two Longtime Jazz Hosts In San Francisco Say They Were Forced Off The Air

The tale is a wild, sad one, and what’s at fault? The California’s public employees’ retirement system. - San Francisco Chronicle

How Is Winnipeg’s Music Festival Thriving While Other Events Are In Deep Trouble?

“Rising fees for performers, a punishing U.S. exchange rate, reduced consumer spending and higher insurance charges have combined to pose existential threats to Canadian non-profit music festivals.” But Winnipeg is hopping. - CBC

The Multitude Of Ways Trump Is Preventing Musicians From Other Countries Getting To The US

It’s not pretty. Yet organizers persist. Why? "When you’re in the same room as the artist, when you feel the music move through your body, when you see the emotion on their face and hear their story — that creates a bond. … It counters propaganda. It softens xenophobia.” - Seattle Times

Gilberto Gil, Giant Of Brazilian Music, Has Retired From Live Performance

“I’ll always have my guitar, my inseparable companion,” said the 83-year-old. “But my relationship with it will be more open, freer. It’s simpler when you don’t have as many commitments. I’ll have much more time to, eventually, get back to composing and maybe recording albums.” - The New York Times

How The Grateful Dead Made Live Music Sound Great At Concerts

Phil Spector had famously created a figurative wall of sound by layering instruments and orchestral sweeps. But the Dead’s wall was essentially a behemoth sound system, a hulking electrical mess of amps, speakers, wires—like the menacing heavy-metal rig in Mad Max: Fury Road, but far larger, louder, and, perhaps, more ludicrous. - The Atlantic

The Company Making Big Operas Work In A Small Theater

Des Moines Metro Opera performs in a house with only 476 seats, yet it has a track record of successfully staging such large-scale works as Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, Strauss’s Elektra and Britten’s Peter Grimes. Audiences are thrilled with the results. - The New York Times

Barcelona’s Opera House Names Jonathan Nott Its Next Music Director

The 62-year-old Briton — currently music director of the Tokyo Symphony and Geneva’s Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and formerly at the helm of the Bamberg Symphony, the orchestra and opera company in Lucerne, and Paris’s Ensemble Intercontemporain — succeeds Josep Pons at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2026. - Moto Perpetuo

Music Industry Projections For The Next Seven Years

After something of a boom year in 2023, revenue growth slowed to 4.3% in 2024. In fact, 2024 continued an oscillating growth pattern we have seen all decade, with strong growth years followed by weaker ones. - Music Industry Blog

Universal Music VP On Copyright, Creativity, And AI

The UMG executive emphasized that “tech collaboration with the creative community, respecting the value of artists’ work and harnessing their innovation has produced enormous cultural and economic benefit.” - Music Business Worldwide

Curtis Institute Of Music’s Newest Building Severely Damaged In Fire

Known informally as the Art Alliance building, the mansion on Rittenhouse Square was one of the University of the Arts properties auctioned off last year following the school’s bankruptcy; Curtis finalized its purchase in January. A pre-dawn fire blazed throughout the three-story building, the extent of damage is still unclear. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

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