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MUSIC

Race And Classical Music — Challenging A Reckoning

Heather MacDonald's Part 2: "The biggest victim in the racial attack on classical music is the music itself. Once the poison of identity politics is injected into a field, it can never recover its prelapsarian innocence." - City Journal

How The Met Became Cooler Than MoMA This Summer

Live music, of course: "By activating these spaces in ways that shed the Met’s stuffiness, the museum is broadening what performance can be." - Hyperallergic

Live Music Venues Try To Adapt To Delta Variant, New Rules

While the music promoter Live Nation said that artists or bands themselves could set masking and vaccination requirements, some venues in places like L.A. are requiring proof of vaccination along with the county's mask mandate. - Los Angeles Times

Spotify Knows More About Us Than Even Facebook

And if you don't want the company to track literally everything you do, there are a few ways around it. - Wired

“Hyperpop” And Defying Categorization

If mainstream pop is designed to make people feel as if they’re on common ground with all of humanity, this music made listeners feel like they were in on a very specific joke. - The New Yorker

El Sistema Has A Labor Problem

"Too often, those who fund our programs are, in effect, asking our team members to do more with less. There is a combined scarcity/charity mindset that permeates the entirety of our programs, forcing teachers and staff to make difficult choices about their livelihoods and quality of life." - Ensemble News

Bringing India’s Folk Musicians Back Into The Mainstream — And Getting Them Paid

"Seventy percent of India's musicians practice folk, but they earn only 2% of the industry's revenues. … Many listeners today only hear the genre through movies, or adapted by indie bands," something the nonprofit Anahad Foundation is working to change. - The Christian Science Monitor

No, Say Musicians, UK Government Has Not Solved Post-Brexit Touring Problem

"We knew all this in January," says the CEO of the musicians' trade body. "The idea that the government has done something fantastic or that it has won some concessions is not correct. The announcement is not new information to the music industry." - The Guardian

UK May Finally Have Solved Musicians’ Post-Brexit Touring Problem

"The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said it had negotiated with 19 EU member state countries to allow British musicians and performers to conduct short tours visa-free." The only major markets not included so far are Spain, Portugal, and Greece. - The Guardian (PA Media)

Why Composer Jake Heggie Writes His Operas Entirely By Hand

"Making a mess is central to creativity and certainly to composition. … (With music software,) I think that sometimes young composers can be misled. Because it looks perfect on the screen and it looks perfect when it's printed out, and it's not done." (podcast with transcription) - Slate

Baltimore Symphony Fires Principal Flutist Emily Skala

CEO Peter Kjome said in a statement, "Ms. Skala has had discipline imposed upon her over these past few months; unfortunately, she has repeated the conduct for which she had been previously disciplined, and dismissal was the necessary and appropriate reaction to this behavior." - The Baltimore Sun

Maybe We Should Give Saint-Saëns A Little More Respect

In the face of (the) modernist revolution, Saint-Saëns (kept) churning out tasteful, perfectly formed, self-consciously harmonious music. - The Guardian

Want A Job In The Pittsburgh Symphony? Here’s How It Works…

At the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, there are currently 13 openings in the violin, viola, bass, flute and percussion sections, a high number of openings for the roughly 100-member ensemble. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Is Classical Music’s Racial Reckoning A Death Sentence?

"The campaign against classical music is worth examining in some detail, for it reveals the logic that has been turned against nearly every aspect of Western culture over the last year. - City Journal

Music Is Taking A Bigger Role At The Olympics

The games are moving beyond the John Williams fanfares and national anthems, writes Michael Andor Brodeur. "And not just as background, but as a means of making the ultimate athletic test of human achievement more human." - The Washington Post on MSN

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