"The Los Angeles Opera has scrapped plans for the world premiere of Mason Bates's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay this fall because of finances. The work will instead open with a student cast at Indiana University" ahead of a planned run at the Met during the 2026-26 season. - AP
The Musicians' Union and Equity, which represents the company's chorus, put a hold on the planned strike after Equity announced that it has reached an interim settlement with management. At issue are the company's plans for employing union members during and after its move from London to Manchester. - The Guardian
The industry is facing yet another revolution, but what sort isn’t yet clear. Is A.I. a format change in the way music is consumed, like the transition from records and cassettes to CDs, or is it a threat to the business model, as were free downloading and file-sharing? - The New Yorker
Candlelight Concerts aren’t about digital projections, but are about curating and customizing full experiences. And that’s striking a major chord. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sure, the 80-year-oldCanadian singer-songwriter has been nominated 18 times and has nine wins, and is nominated again this year for best folk album, but this will be her first official Grammys performance. - CBC
Hollywood, of course. But also, an understanding of the supernatural: "In L.A., bizarre gods have tended to operate more in realms of grand fantasy. It's not the power of specific individuals that need scare us but power, period." - MSN (Los Angeles Times)
It's not just TikTok - "The average song length peaked at 4 minutes 21 seconds in 1992," or about 30 years before TikTok came on the scene, but now, a need for quick-engagement dances and memes means the average song length is plunging again. - Washington Post
In LAX's Orchestrina, "he light dims to a soothing cerulean. Swells of ambient music rise to meet passengers as the moving sidewalk whisks them through the terminal. Along the way, the music shifts between 30 compositions written in a single key (C major)." - Los Angeles Times
A generation ago, this kind of laziness didn’t exist in the music business. Before streaming, everybody in the value chain needed new music. The record stores would go broke if people just listened to the old songs over and over. -
It is easy, and accurate, to call “Rhapsody in Blue” naïve and corny. But, to be fair, it was still very early in the timeline of jazz and swinging Black music on record. - The New York Times
Last season, amid rising costs and still-lagging ticket sales and donations, the Met took $30 million from its endowment to cover its expenses; this season, it has withdrawn almost $40 million. Even so, general manager Peter Gelb says things are starting to move in the right direction. - The New York Times
In addition to giving its music director an automatically renewing contract, the BSO has appointed Carlos Simon to its composer chair (a new position expanded from the composer-in-residence role) and created the Boston Symphony Orchestra Humanities Institute, which will present lectures, film series, and other events.. - The Boston Globe (MSN)
"Playfulness, irreverence, goofiness are part of us too. ... It is a mistake to equate artistic greatness with emotional sobriety. P.D.Q. Bach’s best compositions are, genuinely, masterpieces, magnificent expressions of the deepest currents of joyful absurdity. They are great works not in spite of their humor, but because of it." - Van
AI tools analyse vast amounts of music data to learn patterns and styles, enabling them to generate compositions in any genre. This technology is not just a tool, it’s a collaborator, opening doors to new soundscapes and musical possibilities. - The Conversation
