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MUSIC

Soprano Patricia Racette Is Next Artistic Director Of Opera Theatre Of St. Louis

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

Trying Out A New Finale For “Don Giovanni” — Mozart’s Requiem

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

2025 Pulitzer Prize For Music Goes To Susie Ibarra For “Sky Islands”

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

How TicketMaster Swallowed Live Music

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

How The LA Fires Decimated The City’s Music Scene

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

Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra Musicians Blame Bad Management For Shutdown

They’re blaming the orchestra’s management for what they call “over a decade of weak and shortsighted leadership.” - Fort Myers News-Press

“Immature”: San Francisco Symphony Management Publicly Slams Musicians Over Contract Negotiations

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 Posts Strong First Quarter Music Earnings

 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 Was Not A Saint, And We’ll Lose Touch With Her Music If We Make Her One

“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 Quartet At 50

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

How The Met Opera Makes The Severed Head For “Salome”

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

Gustavo Dudamel On The Purpose Of Orchestras

"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

The Boston Pops Phenomenon

He came to the job young, quickly became a local celebrity, and is presiding at a time when it has proved impossible for the Pops to maintain the imperious position in American popular culture built by Fiedler from 1930 to his death in 1979, when eulogized as “the maestro of the masses.” - The New York Times

Southwest Florida Symphony Closes Down

The orchestra will remain in business through the end of its fiscal year on June 30. That coincides with the previously announced departure of the orchestra’s longtime CEO, Amy Ginsburg. The 70-musician professional orchestra marked its 64th anniversary this year. - News-Press (Fort Myers, Florida)

Detroit Opera Stages “The Central Park Five” And Braces For Trump Blowback

“(The company’s) leadership team understands the perils of mounting a production that waves a red cape at a pumped-up, reactive presidency. Surprisingly, the opera is partially financed by the National Endowment for the Arts, with some $40,000 of the production’s $1 million cost coming through a (previously-paid) federal grant.” - The New York Times

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