JANUARY 2000

• EARWORMS: Why is it that certain tunes - and bad tunes at that - get stuck in our heads? As a student of Freud's put it: "Whatever secret message it carries, the incidental music accompanying our conscious thinking is never accidental." Feed 01/31/00

• WHERE THE CONTEMPORARY THRIVES: If it's January and it's really cold outside, it must be Winnipeg. It used to be necessary to marvel at the enormous crowds that flock to the Winnipeg Symphony's annual festival of contemporary music in January. But after eight years, one of North America's most successful new music festivals has firmly established itself. Toronto Globe and Mail 01/31/00

• MP3 SMACKDOWN: Copyright Control Services is in the business of stamping out the pirating of music on the internet. In a year, the group says, it has closed down 5,000 internet sites. Wired 01/31/00 

• SAME OLD SAME OLD: Covent Garden's now-famous technical problems with its renovated building have brought renewed focus on some longstanding issues: Ticket prices are scandalously high for a publicly-funded company. And the work being produced is old and recycled. The sniff of revolt is in the air. London Sunday Times 01/30/00  

• MUSICAL EXCAVATION: A new auditorium is being carved out below Carnegie Hall's historic main hall. New York Times 01/30/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

• TRIPLE DOWN: Three new boxed set recordings of the Beethoven Piano Concertos illustrate what's wrong with the classical recording industry. All three are by Alfred Brendel, and the works are not exactly underrepresented in the catalogue. So who thought this was a good idea? Toronto Globe and Mail 01/29/00
• BACK TO FRONT: Okay, so it's a new "Golden Age" of American Opera. But before everyone gets too excited, consider a disturbing trend. Some recent new operas have been invented backwards - with someone other than the composer controlling the composition. A disturbing trend, writes Josh Kosman, and one that makes for unsatisfying opera. San Francisco Chronicle 01/20/00
• FORGET BUENA VISTA: That's not what Cubans are listening to these days. Though it's nice to see old-time Cuban musicians conquer the world's stages with their "heritage" music, these days the island prefers something considerably harder - salsa and "new trova." Daily Mail and Guardian (South Africa) 01/28/00
• CHANGING PRIORITIES: Under the present government, funding for the arts in South Africa has dwindled. Last week the National Symphony Orchestra went out of business. One of the country's top theaters is next if help isn't forthcoming, warns a prominent director. Artstar.com (AFP) 01/28/00
• BETTER MATH THROUGH MUSIC: Researcher (author of the "Mozart Effect" study) predicts a revolution in teaching - why learning music increases other skills he's not quite sure, but he says he can demonstrate it does with new studies underway in Los Angeles schools. Orange County Register 01/26/00 
• RECORDING INDUSTRY estimates it is losing $4.5 billion this year in lost sales because of counterfeit CDs and music downloaded over the internet. Wired 01/27/00
• COMING TO AN INTERNET SITE NEAR YOU: The Emerson String Quartet's David Finckel and his wife, pianist Wu Han, couldn't find a recording company that wanted to work the way they did. So they hired their own studio and began producing recordings on their own. Now they edit themselves and the music is available over the internet. Cleveland Plain Dealer 01/27/00
• FAR FROM PERFECT: It's official - the redo of Covent Garden is a disaster. Technical failures, cancellations, disgruntled unions and artists. Even the audiences have begun to boo. Much was riding on a smooth reopening, but a growing chorus of discontent threatens to become deafening. London Telegraph 01/26/00 
  • And: GET A BETTER SOCIAL MIX: Senior management at the Covent Garden opera house in London have been told to reduce their ticket prices and "get a better social mix, particularly in the stalls, so it doesn't feel so snooty". Meanwhile, latest cancellation due to technical difficulties is jeered by audience. Sydney Morning Herald 01/26/00
  • Previously: CALL TO CLOSE COVENT GARDEN: Musicians' and technicians' unions call for temporary closure of troubled Covent Garden to deal with technical problems. Rebuilt opera house has been plagued with technical equipment failures since reopening last month. The Independent 01/24/00 
  • And: Don't blame Opera House staff, blame those in charge. The Observer 01/24/00
• RELIC OF A PAST REGIME: South Africa's National Symphony closes after running out of money. The orchestra had been lavishly supported by the former white government, but had fallen on hard times in recent years. Corporate support just couldn't make up the budget. South Africa's other orchestras are also suffering. South Africa Daily Mail & Guardian 01/26/00
• BETWEEN PRODUCT AND CONTENT: Trying to understand the future of the recorded music business in the age of Dotcoms. New York Times 01/26/00 (One-time registration required for access)
• A LONG-TERM PROPOSITION: Paavo Jarvi calls his new orchestra "one of the best-kept secrets in America. "We should make it less of a secret," he says. Cincinnati Orchestra faces dwindling audiences. New York Times 01/26/00 (One-time registration required for access)
  • Previously: NEW BATON FOR CINCINNATI: After a year-long search, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra hires Estonian-born American conductor Paavo Jarvi, 37, as its new music director. The CSO's $28 million budget is the seventh-largest in the country. Cincinnati Enquirer 01/25/00
  • Jarvi was rumored to have been considered by two other orchestras. Cincinnati Enquirer 01/25/00 
• NEW BATON FOR CINCINNATI: After a year-long search, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra hires Estonian-born American conductor Paavo Jarvi, 37, as its new music director. The CSO's $28 million budget is the seventh-largest in the country. Cincinnati Enquirer 01/25/00
  • Jarvi was rumored to have been considered by two other orchestras. Cincinnati Enquirer 01/25/00 
• OVERHAULING CLIBURN: After years of criticism charging that  the world's most prestigious piano competition has failed to find the world's most interesting pianists, the Cliburn International changes its rules, reinventing itself. Dallas Morning News 01/25/00
• CALL TO CLOSE COVENT GARDEN: Musicians' and technicians' unions call for temporary closure of troubled Covent Garden to deal with technical problems. Rebuilt opera house has been plagued with technical equipment failures since reopening last month. The Independent 01/24/00 
  • Don't blame Opera House staff, blame those in charge. The Observer 01/24/00
• BOULEZ - THE FINAL TOUR: In his 75th year, Pierre Boulez goes on a conducting tour. Then, he says, from 2001 on, he'll stop conducting. London Telegraph 01/24/00
• BETWEEN OPERA AND MUSICAL: Just where is the line between them? New York Times 01/24/00 (One-time registration required for access)
• COURTING THE STAR CONDUCTOR: Simon Rattle has his pick of orchestras to lead, and almost any of them would be thrilled to have him. He chose Berlin, or rather they chose him, but already the speculation about his future is interesting. New York Times 01/23/00 (One-time registration required for access)
• BERLIN OPERA CRISIS: Four-part series examines a behind-the-scenes crisis in Berlin's opera landscape. Part I examines the Deutsche Oper - Last October, on the day of the important premiere of a new production of Schönberg's "Moses und Aron," fifteen members of the orchestra phoned in "ill," forcing the company to frantically phone around several European cities and fly in replacements literally at the last second. Within days the entire orchestra was out on a full-blown strike, resulting in numerous cancelled performances, including all subsequent presentations of "Moses und Aron." Die Welt 01/23/00
• SING LIKE AN EGYPTIAN: Contemporary opera is suddenly hot, and amid the wave of premieres, other late 20th Century operas are also getting a rehear. Among them Philip Glass's "Akhnaten," revived at Boston Lyric Opera, the work's first production in 11 years. Glass reflects on the piece and the business of modern opera. Boston Globe 01/23/00
• CYBERGRASS VS. GENDER BIAS: The Vienna Philharmonic is one of the world's great orchestras. Also one of the few to retain a distinctive sound that is theirs alone. Trouble is, they don't believe in women musicians in their midst. The international campaign taking on the VPO's sexist discrimination has been fertilized on the internet in a real cyber-grass roots effort that has exerted considerable pressure on the orchestra to change its ways. (be sure to take the musical gender test part way through the story). MSNBC 01/20/00
• MAKE UP YOUR MIND: Reviews for John Harbison's "Great Gatsby" were all over the map. A third loved it. Another third thought it awful, and another regretted that it didn't work, though they wanted it to. "As a whole, the reviews present a more dismaying portrait of the profession of music criticism than they do of 'The Great Gatsby.' The opera was criticized for both being too old-fashioned and traditional, and for being too modern and 'cacophonous' in sound." Boston Globe 01/21/00
  • Harbison undaunted by reviews. Already planning for revivals and subsequent performances. Boston Globe 01/21/00
• THREE-CORNERED HAT: Placido Domingo's role with the Los Angeles Opera expands - singer, conductor and director. Los Angeles Times 01/21/00
• TEMIRKANOV'S DEBUT: The Baltimore Symphony's new music director of an aristocrat. "If his tenure builds on the strengths of this performance, the Temirkanov years could be legendary." Washington Post 01/21/00
  • Previously: GETTING TO KNOW YOU: The Baltimore Symphony gets to know Yuri Temirkanov, its new music director. He's definitely not a timebeater. Baltimore Sun 01/20/00
• MODERN CLASSIC: "Six years after its premiere, John Adams' Violin Concerto is already a repertory staple -- which is to say that interpretations vary as widely as those of the Beethoven or Sibelius concertos..." San Francisco Chronicle 01/21/00
  • About time we heard this. San Francisco Examiner 01/21/00
• MUSIC'S WTO: An international consortium of 150 recording companies meets in Seattle this week to discuss how to make money from music over the internet. "[The record companies] have made it clear," says Kevin Unangst, group product manager for Microsoft's streaming media division, "that to bring their content online for digital distribution, they need copyright protection." Seattle Weekly 01/20/00
• CONDUCTING NEWBIE: The Detroit Symphony's appointment of Itzhak Perlman as principal guest conductor is a bit of a stretch. Perlman as conductor is so new, he admits that much of what it takes to be a conductor is still a mystery to him. "A jaundiced eye might look upon this whole venture as pure marketing -- had the DSO not recently rid itself entirely of a cumulative deficit that once hit $8 million, or if classical subscriptions were not on a steady climb." Detroit News 01/20/00
  • Previously: MAESTRO PERLMAN: Star violinist Itzhak Perlman will become principal guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony beginning with the 2001-2002 season. Detroit News 01/19/00
• PROBLEMS with technology continue to plague the newly rebuilt Covent Garden in London. Wednesday the house's ninth performance was cancelled since the opera house reopened in December, due to software problems controlling scenery in a production of Harrison Birtwistle's opera "Gawain." BBC 01/20/00
• WHY DOESN'T OPERA WORK ON TV? Ed Sullivan tried putting on the Met in the early days of television and his ratings bombed. Writes one critic of a more recent small-screen encounter: "I'm in favor of real writers' getting television money for something other than sitcoms about pimples, and real composers' getting television money for something other than jingles about deodorants, and public television's investing in more than three tenors. It can't be that spectacle doesn't work on a smaller scale -- what else is pro football, not to mention pro wrestling? Isn't opera just premature music video?" New York Magazine 01/19/00
• SEND A PIANA TO HAVANA: A New Yorker campaigns to gather up boatloads of pianos and ship them to Cuba. In 1993 he was having a drink at the Tropicoco Resort in Havana and heard a hotel pianist try to tinkle out "Strangers in the Night." He found out how awful all the pianos in Cuba, the most musical of islands, were—ravaged by the salty air and the comegen, the deadly tropical termite that "likes to mate inside piano wood from cold climates like Germany." From that moment on, Benjamin Treuhaft vowed he would improve the piano situation, and formed his not-for-profit group. Village Voice 01/19/00
• OF CONCERT HALLS AND ORCHESTRAS: Cleveland's redo of Severance Hall has one critic reflecting on a concert hall's contribution to the success of an orchestra. New York Observer 01/19/00
• REVISIONIST SHOSTAKOVICH: Dismissing the famous dissident memoir supposedly dictated by Dmitri Shostakovich, and discounting testimony of friends and family, American musicologist Laurel Fay's new biography of the composer claims he was an obedient Soviet citizen. Why? Because, she claims, no document signed by Shostakovich exists confirming his dissent from the Communist regime. London Telegraph 01/19/00
• FILLED BEYOND OVERFLOWING: Cleveland's newly refurbished Severance Hall had an open-house performance day, and for the first time in the life of the 69-year-old hall, a sign briefly went up on an exterior door saying "Full to Capacity," which is miles beyond "Standing Room Only." Cleveland Plain Dealer 01/18/00
• AN OVERBEARING GUEST: London's Royal Philharmonic traveled to San Francisco this week. But the music was so hyped up on steroids, so loud and overbearing, it was like an overenthusiastic dinner guest you couldn't wait to leave. San Francisco Chronicle 01/18/00
• CROSSOVER: Composer Michael Kamen's "New Moon in the Old Moon's Arms" had its premiere with Washington's National Symphony this week. Kamen says he's trying to demolish barriers between rock and classical music. After all, he says, "They have music in common, the same 12 bloody notes." Washington Post 01/14/00
  • Same 12 notes? A review: "Last night, the National Symphony Orchestra offered nothing but weeds and garbage, music that doesn't belong in a concert hall, music that adds nothing to our understanding of the sentiments it strives to depict, music that has little use of any kind. It was two hours of despair and perhaps the worst single evening at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall this season." Washington Post 01/14/00
• WELCOME TO LA: The orchestra is facing its largest deficit ever, it's just laid off some staff to save money, the music director is on a year-long sabbatical, and transition from previous longtime managerial leadership has been, to put it kindly, rocky at best. These are among the challenges waiting for Deborah Borda as she took over running the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week. Los Angeles Times 01/14/00
• GOVERNMENT ISSUE: Singapore government buys $600,000 Guadignini violin to promote young Singaporean violinists. Violin is loaned for three years to those chosen, with a possible three-year renewal. Singapore Straits Times 01/13/00
• TECH PROBLEMS PLAGUE NEW COVENT GARDEN: Tuesday's much-anticipated opening night staging of Birtwistle's "Gawain," was interrupted 20 minutes into the performance when a stage manager came out to announce that a number of pieces of equipment were not working properly, and request a 30-minute recess to try and wrestle it back to order. "What was striking was the brazenness with which the young stage manager interrupted the singers and orchestra and the matter-of-factness with which he announced that Covent Garden's much-vaunted new technology had failed yet again." BBC Music Magazine 01/13/00
• STILL STRUGGLING TO LIKE "GATSBY": Bernard Holland wants so much to like John Harbison's "Great Gatsby" at the Met, you almost feel sorry for him. It has everything going for it, he writes. So why does it seem so small? New York Times 01/12/00 (one-time registration required for access)
• INTERNET GUITAR: Log in and tune up. New internet site offers interactive group guitar lessons over the internet. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/12/00 
• MY AILIN' WALLET: Overall recorded music sales went up 6.1 percent last year. But country music sales fell 4.5 percent. "We're no longer the fad of the moment." Cleveland Plain Dealer (AP) 01/11/00
• BETTER AND BETTER: Cleveland's Severance Hall has long had a reputation for good acoustics. So after an extensive $37 million renovation, it was with some trepidation listeners approached. No need to worry though - what was good has been made even better. New York Times 01/10/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
  • Heaping praise. Cleveland Plain Dealer 01/10/00
• CARNEGIE SEASON: America's concert hall announces next year's season - 140 events, with 22 visiting national and international orchestras. New York Times 01/11/00 (one-time registration required for access)
• YES, YES, YES: Redo of Covent Garden hits all the right notes  for an American critic. San Francisco Examiner 01/10/00
• SUBSTITUTE TEACHER: As music education has been hacked from school curricula, arts groups have taken on the chore of teaching. But is it really a good substitute? Orange County Register 01/09/00
• CHINESE OPERA: Surprise - Western opera has found big success in China. The new middle classes love it and the President is a fan. London Telegraph 01/09/00
• THE SOUND OF MUSIC: "One could dismiss the term "sound art" as just a vaguely glorified name for weird music. And yet "sound art" has served as a useful historical euphemism, a safe harbor for works too outré for the ever-conservative classical music world." Kyle Gann explains. New York Times 01/09/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• PAIN AT THE PIANO: From beginners to pros - a study of surviving musicianship. New survival guide to be published in April offers help. Los Angeles Times 01/07/00
• THE FAN IN CHARGE: Ex-Mobil exec named to run Washington Opera has always been a big fan. Now he'll also call the shots. New York Times 01/06/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 
  • Previously: EX MOBIL EXEC TO RUN OPERA: Appointment of ex Mobil treasurer brings some serious for-profit expertise to the non-profit Washington DC opera company at a time of potential expansion. Washington Post 12/30/99

• DEAD MAN SINGING: Used to be that opera was a stroll through the long-ago past. Not anymore. This is a Golden Era for new American opera. Latest to announce - composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally's "Dead Man Walking," based on Helen Prejean's book, for San Francisco production next fall. San Francisco Chronicle 01/06/00

• GRAMMY NOMINEES ANNOUNCED: Santana gets 10 nominations, Pierre Boulez nominated for six.  42nd Grammies Official Site 01/04/00

  • Classical Grammys handicapped Los Angeles Times 01/05/00
  • Votes following money again Los Angeles Times 01/05/00
  • New York Times account 01/05/00 (one-time registration required for access)
  • Boston Globe account 01/05/00
  • Washington Post account 01/00/05
  • San Francisco Examiner 01/05/00
  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analysis 01/05/00
  • Dallas Morning News 01/05/00
  • Cleveland Plain Dealer complains 01/06/00
• CLASSICAL REBIRTH: Classical music has "entered the third Christian millennium more bewildered than most art forms, having long since lost its bearings. Yet the very anarchy of millennial mayhem may subtly assist its arrival at an epochal self-recognition. For the more diffuse society becomes, the more it reflects the eclectic state of musical creation." London Telegraph 01/05/00
• AMERICAN CONDUCTORS aren't the only ones to have difficulty making their careers at home. One of Scotland's best and brightest young conductors is likely to find most of his jobs out-of-country. The Scotsman 01/04/00 
• A PAIN IN THE... He stabbed Christa Ludwig, slugged Roberta Knie and flung Carol Vaness across the stage. Jon Vickers was a great tenor, but truly "one of the most obnoxious characters in the annals of 20th-century opera" claims a new biography. National Post 01/04/00
• SURVIVAL GUIDE: Orchestra stand-mate giving you grief? Practicing a drag? New survival guide for the young musician attempts to soothe the way. Baltimore Sun 01/04/00
• TICKET TO FIGHT: Perhaps no Best-of-Century list inflames the controversies and passions as does naming the best popular music. Have these youngsters no sense of history? The Independent 01/02/00
  • New York Times critics pick the 25 most important pop recordings of the 20th Century. New York Times 01/03/00 (One-time registration required for entry)
• CULTURAL CUBA: Cuban filmmaker, artist and writer Agustin Blazquez reflects on cultural exchange with Cuba: "In recent months, the US has participated in what is called "people-to-people cultural exchanges" in what I see as a naive effort to reach out to the citizens of Cuba. Naive because these events ignore the interlace with politics -- and because ordinary Cubans are forbidden to participate." The Idler 01/03/00
  • CLASSICAL CUBA: Critical reflections on classical music colonialism - the Milwaukee Symphony's visit to Havana. New York Times 01/02/00 (One-time registration required for entry)
• SEVERANCE PAY: This week Cleveland's Severance Hall reopens after a redo. Makeover for the home of the Cleveland Orchestra includes acoustic and comfort upgrades. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/02/99
  • Every aspect of the new hall considered. Cleveland Plain Dealer 01/02/99