The original lyrics written for the film Meet Me in St. Louis began "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past." For the version we know now, we can thank first Judy Garland and then Frank Sinatra. - Mental Floss
“New” is the key factor here. In compiling my best-of list for the year gone by — a list that has now swollen year-over-year from 12 to 14 — I found that contemporary offerings made up the bulk of my choices. No knock on Beethoven, but it’s good to hear some fresh perspectives. - San Francisco Chronicle
The orchestra said that Runnicles will take up the post in the 2025-26 season and will lead the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra as Chief Conductor Designate from the coming 2024-25 season. - OperaWire
"Equity said its members in the ENO chorus would vote in early January on whether to launch industrial action. The union said it was fighting plans to cut chorus salaries by 40% under moves to shorten their contracts" with ENO's reduced season in London and headquarters move to Manchester. - The Guardian
"What should Wagner look like in the age of the Wagner Group? How can the hammer of the Norse god Thor appear on stage, after the Russian mercenary army used a sledgehammer to shatter a captive’s skull, his face bound with clingfilm, in a video broadcast to the world?" - The New European
"Honestly, the majority is always wrong. Music is just the backdrop to their life. I’m not saying that mainstream music isn’t important to them, but they’re not connoisseurs. They’re not making it their whole life. But the people who really love it, they will be at the shows." - The Wall Street Journal
"The reason … is one that several pop stars who made it out of the 20th century have cited lately. 'The road life just got too hard,' (said) Alan Paul, 74 and one of the two remaining original members. 'And schlepping doesn’t swing.'" - San Francisco Classical Voice
"This is not a program of audience integration (the management cannot be so unobservant as to suppose that will happen, except at the outermost fringe), but of audience fragmentation, in perfect synchronization with the oft-remarked silo-ing of group identities in our society as a whole." - Conrad L. Osborne
The city's Coney Island amusement park, opened in 1886, had fallen out of public favor in the past few years. The Cincinnati Symphony's subsidiary, Music & Event Management Inc. (MEMI), has purchased the site to build a $118 million outdoor amphitheater for touring popular acts as well as orchestra concerts. - WCPO (Cincinnati)
“Maestro” is a complete enough achievement that there is no point in dwelling on what it might have done differently. What’s most significant is the fundamental respect that the film shows for music and musicians—which is not the same as awe for Bernstein himself. - The New Yorker
"The Clarion is essentially software which can mimic the sound of any instrument you desire and works on technology including iPads." That might sound suspect, but one designer says it's "software in the same way that a violin is made of wood." - BBC
"There’s an openness and curiosity about ideas here. We’ve always been interested in what’s new, what’s next, and what’s the way forward. That shows up in the way we talk about classical music.” - USC Today
Post-pandemic trends that will grow the market most: a) the rapid rise of AI, and B) the rise of the consumer-creator. Consumer-creators transformed photography (Instagram) and videography (TikTok); music will be next. Not only will casual music creation become mainstream, it will trigger an unprecedented widening of the music creator economy funnel. - Music Industry Blog
Spotify states that redistributing the revenues from the end of the tail will be more impactful for ‘these tens of millions of dollars per year to increase payments to those most dependent on streaming revenue — rather than being spread out in tiny payments that typically don’t even reach an artist’. - Music Industry Blog
The $125 million redesign/renovation of Copley Symphony Hall, begun in late 2021, was supposed to be done this fall, but the scheduled Nov. 4 opening was postponed indefinitely, and the CEO won't yet say exactly how far along the work is. - The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)
