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MUSIC

Minnesota Orchestra Posts A Record Deficit

On Thursday morning, the orchestra released its operating results for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2020. The big news: a deficit of $11.7 million, the largest in its history. Last year’s deficit was $8.8 million, another record-breaker. No one who follows the orchestra has forgotten that the record-breaker before that, for 2012, was $6 million, enough to help...

The Women Who Created The Blues

For popular music fans, "rock created the music publications we read today. R&B created rock. Blues created R&B. And Mamie Smith made the blues a national sensation." - NPR

Elton John Says Brexit Negotiators Screwed Up, And Screwed Over Musicians

Elton John says his tours can absorb the costs and the paperwork, so theoretically Brexit's horribly negotiated touring musician deals (note: what deals?) don't affect him. But, he adds, "I don’t want to live in a world where the only artists who can afford to tour properly are those who have been going for decades and have already sold...

The Guy Who Moves Orchestras For A Living

Guido Frackers is the guy. "So I’ve seen the environment at least one year before. And we have a “bulldozer” who goes in 24 hours before the orchestra arrives to pave the way, to line every hotel up, so when the musicians arrive at the hotel, checking in is basically as quick as it takes them to pick up...

Video Opera And ‘Relevance’: Where They Meet And Where They Miss

"Recent case histories are alternately breakthroughs and models of artistic self-defeat. Which was which?" asks David Patrick Stearns. "The reverse of what I expected." The key: the message and the material have to fit each other. - Classical Voice North America

How Much Do Composers Get Paid For Commissions?

The reality is that many questions surround composer pay. Some people wonder why they’re not being paid more. Some people are surprised by the amounts they have been paid. Some people worry they should have gotten more, but weren’t bold enough to ask for it. Some composers get asked to name their number. Others are told, “this is the...

Was Philadelphia’s Leading Classical Radio Host Just Fired?

Gregg Whiteside, who for 17 years hosted weekday morning programming and the Philadelphia Orchestra concert broadcasts at WRTI, abruptly disappeared from the air last month, with only a brief farewell note about his retirement (as it was termed) several days later on the station's website. The staff had been alerted with a one-sentence memo saying that Whiteside no longer...

You Love Classical Music But Spotify Isn’t Cutting It. Here’s A Comparison Of Streaming Platforms

Two of them, Idagio and Primephonic, have been created specifically for classical music listeners. The other four, Apple Music, Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal, cover all genres. As we’ll see, there are many different aspects to these services: their look and feel on the phone and the desktop, how you search, what audio quality they provide, their different ways of...

The Times’s ‘Five Minutes That Will Make You Love {Piano/Sopranos/String Quartets}’ Series? It’s Working

Says classical music editor Zachary Woolfe (who came up with the idea in the shower), "It has doubled our audience for classical music. It's gratifying that whatever we do, people are willing to explore and be into it." - The New York Times

Portland’s Classical Radio Station Will Be Recording And Releasing Music By Nonwhite And Women Composers

When the staff at All Classical Portland was looking at how to add more diversity to its playlists, they found that the biggest limitation was how little recorded music by composers from historically marginalized communities is actually available. The station's "Recording Inclusivity Initiative" aims to start fixing that. - Current

10 Musicians Under 40 Who Are Changing Classical Music

They have YouTube channels, they expand repertoire, they perform in unconventional places. These are musicians who are building the future of classical music. - USAToday

After The Storming Of The Capitol, Classical Music Feels More Vulnerable Than Ever

Of course, this feeling (and the lack of funding, and alarm about orchestras' survival) started long before the pandemic, and long before the assault on the Capitol Building. But: "The trials of the past year have brought forth many of the qualities we already admired about classical music: its resilience, resistance, persistence and endurance. But permanence? I’m not so sure...

Colorado Symphony Can Breathe Easy For A Few More Months

A $2 million donation means that musicians and staff have salaries and health care through June, despite the fact that there's no revenue coming in from concerts. - Nine News (Denver)

Beaming Music To Potential Extraterrestrial Life

The SETI Institute is ready to take music to Mars, or wherever. While it's a listening project, it's also now a beaming project. A founding astrophysicist and a musician "have devised the 'Earthling Project': a call to people everywhere to upload snippets of song that plans to meld into a collective human chorus. An initial composition will be...

A Lawsuit Over Schenkerian Music Theory And A Huge Debate Over How Music Theory Is Taught

At its best, music theory creates simplified models that help us understand how compositions are conceived and constructed while leaving space for the mystery of artistic intervention. At its worst, it reduces composition to a numbers game, and dismisses enigmatic moments—often the most powerful ones—as irrelevant. - Van

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