Last week, when minister Nathi Mthethwa presented plans for the Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra, with an annual budget of 30 million rand (about $17.6 million), comparing the new band to a national sports team, he did not get the ovation he'd hoped for. - Sunday Times (South Africa)
Indeed, they were often required to keep watch at city gates and were sometimes required to show skill at swordsmanship. This isn't just because musicians could raise a loud alarm when necessary. In fact, European cities often made their paid musicians a point of civic pride and ceremony. - Ted Gioia
Every other summer since 2004, composer Delf Maria Hohmann has been visiting the vessels docked in the harbor at St. John's to learn about their horns' sounds — which he then mixes-and-matches into a composition called a "Harbour Symphony." - Yahoo! (Canadian Press)
"I think opera went through a sticky time, with all that Darmstadt stuff where people were deliberately writing music that people couldn’t understand, as a badge of honour, really, and I don’t think composers are trying to do that now. It doesn't mean they're always successful, but I do think a healthy contemporary element is pretty essential to any...
The Metropolitan Opera has been on a downward trajectory for fifty years. For the first thirty or so of those, the descent was gradual, uneven, and in most respects reflective of the encroaching decadence of the artform in general. For the last twenty, the rate of decline has accelerated, and in the last few has gone into a new,...
"In December 2012, “Gangnam Style” became the first music video to earn more than a billion views on the platform. That momentum continued to 2014, when the song exceeded YouTube’s 2,147,483,647-view limit." - Los Angeles Times
Outwardly and proudly sexist tradition, that is, as the Boys' Choir of St. John's College becomes simply "The Choir of St. John's College" — and as girls take their official places in the ranks. - The New York Times
"Francesca Zambello, the artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival, came up with a novel idea. 'I just said, ‘Let’s do a Rossini comedy that doesn’t exist yet.’'" Hence Tenor Overboard. - The New York Times
The singer, who became famous at 11, says, "It was a double-edged sword, but being a major-label artist, I felt like a commodity, a thing to be sold." - The Guardian (UK)
Former leader Yo-Yo Ma "saw the classical footing he brought to Silkroad as 'a starting point,' and classical music itself as 'a form of literacy.' In Giddens, who studied opera at Oberlin Conservatory, he sees a similar capability: the ability to employ difference as a binding agent." - Washington Post
"Rainer Eudeikis, currently the principal cellist with the Atlanta Symphony, ... will succeed the late Michael Grebanier, who led the cello section from 1977 until his death in 2019." - San Francisco Chronicle
Hire engineer/producer Da-Hong Seetoo, whose dad "fostered a second career for his son by letting him tinker with a 1947 General Electric tube radio and a reel-to-reel Telefunken tape recorder, with which he could preserve the sounds of borrowed classical music LPs." - San Francisco Classical Voice
The American soprano was going to make her Arena di Verona debut as Violetta in La Traviata — until a furor arose over Netrebko's photos of herself in dark makeup and her Aïda costume and Arena di Verona management defended the makeup as part of a historical staging. - Classic FM (UK)
Scammers ruin everything, including violin skills: "At its most basic, it’s someone who is busking with a violin, apparently playing, while they’re actually faking it — the music comes from a hidden recording." - Ludwig Van
