"The Sarasota Orchestra has announced a $60 million donation toward the planning and construction of its new music center. The donor wants to remain anonymous, and the gift does not include naming rights for the new facility, which the orchestra plans to build on a 31-acre site it purchased in 2023." - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
For the second consecutive season, Los Angeles Opera has cut costs by canceling a planned world premiere. After withdrawing Mason Bates’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay from this season, the company is abandoning the planned February 2026 debut of Mazzoli’s Lincoln in the Bardo. - AP
AI is, obviously, kind of cool. But in their insistence on sameness and comfort, these tools remind us of the value of good old-fashioned music discovery. The process of finding new music is work, and it should be. - LA Review of Books
Was this the political subversion America needed? A protest performance force-fed to no one as influential as the reinstalled aspiring dictator, Donald Trump, who attended the Super Bowl to root for his beloved Kansas City Chiefs? - The New Yorker
"A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday by (the singer,) who sued the University of Michigan over his firing for what the school deemed sexual misconduct. … He was fired in 2020 after an investigation found that he had solicited at least three students and shared a sexually explicit video with one." - AP
Sotheby's said it could not share information about the identity of the buyer. The auction house had expected the instrument to sell for $12 to $18 million. - NPR
The team's first discovery was that classical music has always been more complex than modern pop. However, they also discovered that all of the music genres they analysed have become less complex – that's classical, jazz, hip hop, electronic, rock, and pop. - Music Radar
“The mistake that I’ve seen a lot of jazz stations make is that they’re too close to the music to be broadcasters. When we talk about broadcasting, we talk about casting a wide net and trying to find a lot of people.” - Oregon ArtsWatch
Irish Eurosong winner Emmy says that Laika’s story “is really sad, so I wanted to create a scenario where she doesn’t die, but is having her own party in the sky.” - Irish Times
“Celebrating his new job over pints in a Cologne Irish pub, orchestra members told Brophy that his confident versatility was why they chose him.” - Irish Times
The Joachim-Ma Strad from 1714 “was most notable for having been played for decades by Joseph Joachim, one of the most famous violinists of the 19th century.” The proceeds go to a scholarship program at the New England Conservatory. - NPR
A team of researchers in Mexico worked with 36 pregnant women, playing them "The Swan" from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals and Arpa de oro ("Golden Harp") by Mexican composer Abundio Martínez. The result: the music instantly calmed fetal heartbeats. - Classic FM
That would be the late Pauline Oliveros, great American maverick and pioneer of "deep listening." The company: Long Beach Opera, for which an all-Oliveros season may be risky but is more or less on-brand. Mark Swed talks to LBO's leadership troika about how and why they're doing this. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
If vinyl is supposed to be the best-sounding format, then why are so many modern pressings disappointing right out of the sleeve? Many modern records are pressed on cheap, recycled vinyl, arriving warped, noisy, or even defective right out of the shrink wrap. - Headphonesty
Realize that some of the statistics you’ll see online are nonsense, and vinyl sales are likely much bigger than the announced estimates. Ignore the clickbait headlines. The RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) stated that 43.5 million records were shipped in 2023. This doesn't make any sense. - PS Audio
