The most enthusiasm was reserved for Delta David Gier, who was closing out the South Dakota Symphony’s season with one of the ensemble’s great achievements, for the community and American opera alike. - The New York Times
Patricia Racette, who made her debut at the Met in 1995, is known for her portrayals of Puccini heroines. She has also ventured into other genres, including cabaret, which she said she hoped to bring to St. Louis. She said opera companies should not fear crossover repertoire. - The New York Times
Racette has a long history with the company: she first performed there in 1993 and has returned numerous times since; she made her debut as a stage director there in 2018 with La Traviata, and has directed the company’s young artist programs since 2019. - St. Louis Public Radio
At Berlin's Komische Oper, stage director Kirill Serebrennikov has replaced the opera’s moralizing final sextet with an epilogue: a solo dancer represents the dead lothario's soul as it struggles against, and then accepts, its fate — this as the soloists and chorus perform last rites using Mozart's final work. - The New York Times
It is, says the Pulitzer committee, “a work about ecosystems and biodiversity, that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisational skills of a soloist as a creative tool.” - Avant Music News
When you don’t get what you want, you tend to look for someone to blame. That someone is usually Ticketmaster. The company, which merged with Live Nation in 2010 to form Live Nation Entertainment, sells about 70% of all concert tickets worldwide, and an even greater proportion of the arena and stadium market. - The Guardian
Three months on, the city’s own music community is still coming to terms with a fresh, complex lived reality. Not just the notable performing artists whose homes were destroyed – such as hip-hop producer Madlib or the rock-pop band Dawes – but the thousands of music workers who call LA home. - The Guardian
Just days after musicians leafleted the audience at Michael Tilson Thomas’s last-ever concerts, management released an open letter pointing out that the orchestra is facing down years of large deficits and charging that musicians’ attitude during negotiations has been “counterproductive and even immature at times.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
UMG’s research suggests that approximately 20% of current music streaming subscribers would be willing to pay up to double the current standard price for enhanced offerings. - Music Business Worldwide
“Alice Coltrane, despite having been one of John’s pianists, is maneuvered into the margins by subgenre euphemisms like ‘spiritual jazz,’ by which many mean, music for hippies and poets, while mainstream jazz is for men who read Esquire and smoke performative cigars on business trips.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
The Takacs thing. “They have always been one of the world’s pre-eminent string quartets, and they have a unique approach to the repertoire,” said John Gilhooly, the director of Wigmore Hall in London. “Whatever they have, they have it in abundance.” - The New York Times
It has to look like Peter Mattei, who’s singing John the Baptist, so they start by making a mold of his head. Then they have to get the mold off him. “We typically ask them to ... start making funny faces so that silicone starts releasing,” says (ahem) head master Tera Willis. - Vulture
"Music is about relationships—how we come to understand one another, how we communicate and connect with those who are different from us, and how we build mutual trust and empathy over time." - Playbill
