Oddly enough, we’re seeing an increasingly samey musical landscape, in which taste has become trapped in a feedback loop of the algorithm’s making. - The Guardian
Sped-up listening emerged in the early 2000s as “nightcore”. This is now commonplace on our social media apps, where the speed of podcasts, voice notes, movies and more can be increased so that we can consume them in less time. - BBC
“Ninety percent of the audience is coming from outside San Francisco. And most of these people are not just coming in for the show, they’re coming and spending the weekend or longer. So it’s going to be a big economic impact for the city.” - Los Angeles Times
Some couples ask for music straight from the show, including the Keys song, said Émme, while others look for something more bespoke; one recent couple requested a mash-up of the traditional bridal march and Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1978 hit September. - The Guardian
"Can we actually capture that power in the concert space and make use of it to get people to do something more?" said Met, who also runs the climate change research and advocacy non-profit Planet Reimagined. - NPR
“His biography has been shamefully distorted by scholars – almost in a way you could say is homophobic – because they represent him as a tortured gay man who was unhappy in his life and his love, and his music is thus reduced to the sound of suffering. But he wasn’t any of those things." - The Guardian
His long tenure at Lucerne has been defined not only by sustainability and survival through crises like the coronavirus pandemic, but also by enormous growth. - The New York Times
"Despite its budget deficits and a well-publicized falling out with acclaimed conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the San Francisco Symphony is moving forward with plans for a full makeover of Davies Symphony Hall." (Which is to say, it submitted drawings to the city planning department before a deadline.) - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
"Technically, from the baton, how you beat, Bruckner is very easy. It’s not like Stravinsky’s Sacre or Mahler. … You have to understand that the tempo comes automatically if you understand the context in which it was written, the spirituality that was in the man and his music and to understand that spirituality." - Bachtrack
Or so Spain is telling Katy Perry, whose production company apparently didn’t bother to get permission to film near environmentally sensitive, and protected, sand dunes. - CBC
Jayson Gillham was removed from a concerto performance with the orchestra this week after, at an earlier solo recital, he dedicated a new work to journalists killed in Gaza. While MSO management still maintains that political statements are inappropriate on the concert stage, it acknowledges having made "an error." - The Guardian
“As a composer, getting a musical idea down on the page feels like a butterfly lover who catches this miraculous, beautiful thing. You then stick a pin through it. My job is to take all the incredible butterflies stuck on the page and allow them to start flying.” - San Francisco Classical Voice
Weinberg, a Jewish composer born in Poland, “found refuge in Soviet Russia, but reputation in the West is largely overshadowed by that of his good friend Dmitri Shostakovich” - at least, until now. - The New York Times
By now he can do anything he likes, and he got the first of many job offers five minutes after announcing his departure from the San Francisco Symphony. Salonen says he doesn't want to run another orchestra — but he said that when he left the Los Angeles Philharmonic, too. - The New York Times
Ilya Ram, a 33-year-old Israeli-American, is currently music director of the Akademische Philharmonie Heidelberg, a position he will keep. He begins his tenure in Tennessee this coming season. - Chattanooga Times Free Press
