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MUSIC

The First Opera Written For And Produced In Virtual Reality

"What is most radical about Current, Rising is not the technology but how the creative process has been flipped. Rather than the composer setting the librettist's words to music and leaving the music to be interpreted by directors, designers and musicians, it was Annette Mees, head of Covent Garden's Audio Labs, and who initially developed the idea of...

Britain’s Reopening, But A Quarter Of Its Summer Rock Festivals Are Cancelled. Why? Insurance.

"According to the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), which has been tracking festivals taking place in Britain this year, 26% of all festivals with a capacity of more than 5,000 people have been cancelled by their organisers. The AIF has projected that more than three-quarters of the remaining festivals could be called off imminently if action regarding cancellation insurance...

How A John Denver Song Inspired A Generation Of Asian Immigrants

Over the past half century, Denver’s Appalachian anthem has also lodged in the hearts of many families in Asia, thousands of miles away from the Blue Ridge Mountains. In a 2009 paper, the sociologists Grant Blank and Heidi Netz Rupke published an informal survey of college classrooms in Western China that found that “Country Roads” was the most popular...

Backstage Union Warns That Met Opera Will Not Reopen In 2021

In a statement issued by its president, IATSE Local One stressed that the current situation is a lockout rather than a strike and that the Metropolitan Opera, rather than giving its craftspeople work, has outsourced fabrication of sets, costumes and the like for three future productions to the West Coast and the UK. - OperaWire

Music Is The Universal Language? Let’s Reconsider

In the past two years, the debate over whether music is universal, or even whether that debate has merit, has raged like a battle of the bands among scientists. The stage has expanded from musicology to evolutionary biology to cultural anthropology. - Nautilus

Head Or Heart? How You Listen To Music

When you listen to music, do you tend to analyze and think critically about what you are hearing (head)? Or is music listening pretty much an emotional experience for you—something that can tingle your spine or make you cry (heart)? - NightingaleSonata

Music Festivals In The UK Say They’ll Have To Cancel Without Government Help

The main problem is an inability to get coronavirus cancellation insurance (perhaps understandable at this point). - BBC

The Grammys Overhaul Again, Eliminating Secret Committees

The scandal-plagued Recording Academy is making the change after decades of complaints. Instituted in 1989, "the committees’ work began to be seen as evidence of a problematic system in which insiders rewarded their friends and punished their enemies. More recently, a number of high-profile Black artists — among them Drake, Frank Ocean and Sean 'Diddy' Combs — have suggested...

The NY Phil Goes Traveling, In A Shipping Container

Last year it was a Ford F-250 pickup truck that saved the day, and the audiences around the city. "Bandwagon 2 will trade in the pickup truck for a 20-foot shipping container atop a semi truck, which will visit four parks around New York City for weekend-long residencies through May. ... Tricked out with a foldout stage, video wall...

The West’s First Superstar Composer (His 500th Anniversary Is This Year)

Josquin des Prez was, in his day and for more than a century after his death in 1521, the most influential and most revered composer in Europe. He demanded, and got, the highest salary; he was the first to have an entire volume of printed music devoted to his work alone; he was the first composer about whom anecdotes...

Germany Takes Care Of Its Opera Houses, Even Through COVID — But There’s A Problem

"'What we learned in the crisis was that the public purse was very much willing to keep alive in Germany,' says Dieter Haselbach, a German cultural sociologist and consultant. 'But in the long run the state-funded system covers a structural crisis which is an oversupply of theaters and opera houses, with competition from digital performances.'" - The...

Is Music Universal Or Not? Depends On What You Mean

Kevin Berger: "In the past two years, the debate over whether music is universal, or even whether that debate has merit, has raged like a battle of the bands among scientists. The stage has expanded from musicology to evolutionary biology to cultural anthropology. … My recent adventures in the fields of music research have instilled in me … a...

Back From The Brink Of Collapse, Australia’s Leading Professional Vocal Ensemble Is Hard At Work

Just two years ago, out of cash, The Song Company entered liquidation bankruptcy; it was rescued by a donor a month later. Then came 2020 and the pandemic, with Australia undergoing unusually strict lockdowns. Those measures worked, and with the country reopening, the ensemble has reorganized itself, started a professional apprenticeship for young singers, and is doing both mainstage...

The Birth Of The Paid Claque (Annals Of Opera History)

Back in the early 19th century, "the directors of the Paris Opera saw no reason to leave the success of their performances up to the whims of an unpredictable audience. To guarantee acclaim, they employed the services of an organized body of professional applauders, commonly known as the 'claque.' These claqueurs were tucked away throughout the audience, disguised as...

How A 1967 Recording By The Who Predicted Where Pop Music Would End Up

The contradictory impulses about pop’s progress and possibilities at its heart make The Who Sell Out sound like a perfect snapshot of music at a moment of flux: poised between pop and the more serious business of rock, between pirate radio and prog. Meanwhile, what it has to say about music and advertising seems eerily prescient and thoroughly modern:...

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