Her project, called Rising Sun Music, "is a series of newly recorded works written by black composers — including many works that have never been recorded before — performed by Downes with guest artists. She plans to release one song per week to streaming platforms, with a new theme every month, beginning February 5." - Smithsonian Magazine
Spano, 59, is best known for his 20 seasons as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a position he’s leaving in June. Since 2011 he has also been music director of the prestigious Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. Before Atlanta, he quickly rose to national attention as music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in New York,...
By emptying stages and dancefloors, the pandemic has generated an urgent need to reimagine the live music experience - both for artists and the audience stuck at home. So, how is Covid reshaping the creative thinking behind live music performances, and what lasting impact could there be? - BBC
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...
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 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...
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...
"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
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...
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...
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...
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
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
They have YouTube channels, they expand repertoire, they perform in unconventional places. These are musicians who are building the future of classical music. - USAToday
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...
