ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

MUSIC

Promising Young African-American Conductor Lands Two Major European Posts

Ryan Bancroft, a 32-year-old Californian, led his first concert as chief conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Proms this past summer, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic has just appointed him to succeed Sakari Oramo as chief conductor as of 2023-24. - BBC Music Magazine

Genre-Bending Opera Wins $100,000 Grawemeyer Award

The work — a subversive blurring of genre, time and politics reflecting on how little has changed over the centuries, yet how much change is possible — jolted the generally conservative Vienna State Opera. - The New York Times

How Stories Are Adapted For Opera

“Opera’s superpower is subtext,” says composer Missy Mazzoli, “and being able to say more than one thing at once.” - Van

The Sound Of Our Times Is Music Drenched In Myth

Myth is everywhere on Broadway and in opera right now, including a collaboration between 88-year-old composer Wayne Shorter and the younger composer/performer/lyricist Esmerelda Spalding. Why now? "In uncertain times, myths give us something sturdy to lean on, a narrative handrail to grip." - Washington Post

The Cellist Who Wants To Provide Free Classical Music To Everyone

But the musicians have to earn a living wage too, he insists. - Baltimore Sun

The New York City Kids Who Wrote A History Of Black Composer Florence Price

A middle-school class at NY's Special School discovered there was no Price biography aimed at children - so "this beautiful book emerged that they wrote together, 45 of them together." - NPR

What’s The Future For Musicians Who Work On Streaming Shows?

In terms of payment, it's a huge mess - thanks to the failure to win residuals from reruns in the 1960s, plus streamers' legendary anti-union stances: "A growing number of producers are not hiring union musicians in order to avoid any kind of future payments." - Variety

How John Coltrane Became A Literal Saint

A church founder says hearing Coltrane turned him into "born-again believer in that anointed sound that leaped down from the tone of heaven out of the very mind of God, stepped from the very wall of creation.” - The New York Times

Mezzo Jamie Barton Intends To Dismantle The Patriarchy, Or At Least Its Standard Opera Repertory

"I've spent a lot of years doing roles where I'm the third person in a love triangle, … and the lead soprano almost always has to kill herself, and those stories are 1,000% created by the patriarchy, and I'm not interested in them anymore." - The Guardian

Why Orchestra Percussion Sections Aren’t Diverse

At minimum, percussion students need a room to practice in — usually in a large single family home and not an apartment — over $10,000 for instruments, and $6,500 per year for lessons. And this is to say nothing of other crucial training opportunities, which come at an additional cost. - I Care if You Listen

A Playwright-Turned-Librettist Considers Opera’s Centuries-Long Penchant For Adapting Pre-Existing Properties

Adaptations from well-known sources go right from the beginnings of opera as a distinct genre circa 1600 (Peri's Euridice and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo) to the remarkable flowering of new opera (especially chamber opera) in the US today. And there are good reasons for that. - Van

One Of Canada’s Top Contemporary Groups Calls It Quits

“We have been here for 35 years. We have made 300 creations, several international tours, 11 Canadian tours, and 70 concerts across the country. Before, the word “fatigue” was not even a reality for me, but time does its work.” - Ludwig Van

The Korean Who May Be The Most-Listened-To Living Composer In The World Right Now

Korea accounts for 20 percent of worldwide classical music sales, with a much younger audience base than in the West. The K-pop juggernaut needs no elucidation. Koreans have embraced Western music and elaborated on it. - 3 Quarks Daily

San Francisco Opera Is About To Turn 100 Years Old

When it comes to established and continuously active opera companies in North America, there is the Metropolitan, founded in 1883 ... and then San Francisco Opera. - San Francisco Classical Voice

Tenor Juan Diego Flórez Gets His First Artistic Directorship

As of January 1, shortly before his 49th birthday, the Peruvian will take the reins at the event where his international career was launched: the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy. He succeeds his longtime mentor and manager, former tenor Ernesto Palacio, now the festival's superintendent. - OperaWire

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');