A judge approved a stipulation that the organization pay $300,000 it owes musicians for 2022's Christmas show. But this year's holiday program is performed by the No Name Pops, the group formed by the stiffed players, and the Philly Pops still owes the Kimmel Center back rent. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"Something struck me forcibly as I was trying to fulfill the New York Philharmonic’s 9/11 commission: America had no contemporary musical work that could express national trauma. We Americans seem to have a popular song for just about every emotion, but in the immediate aftermath of tragedy only classical music seemed able to fill the void." - New Yorker
"The six-movement work, written for Kronos Quartet and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, was conceived as a wordless celebration free of any connection to specific religious traditions. … (Its) title translates from Latin as 'Mass Above Words.'" - MSN (San Francisco Chronicle)
"The company had a shortlist of five places where it was considering setting up a new headquarters, with Manchester, the biggest city in Europe without a resident opera company, always the favourite. … (The announcement comes) a year after funders said it must move its base out of London." - The Guardian
Julian Wachner, who made the historic church into a major force in New York's concert life, was fired in March 2022 for behavior "inconsistent with … a leadership position." His new successor is Melissa Attebury, who directs Trinity's music education programs and is the choir's star mezzo soloist. - The New York Times
The technology, originally developed for the Abba Voyage show, will allow them to stay on the road in retirement. Gene Simmons said the band could now be "forever young and forever iconic". - BBC
The figure represents around 1,500 of the Sweden-based streamer’s 9,000 staff, as is the result of economic growth slowing “dramatically,” according to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. - Deadline
The program brings students from rival high schools together in a non-competitive environment to work and play with pros. Project Chamber Music's "secret sauce is how it fosters real interactions between students and professional musicians." - Oregon ArtsWatch
Except for church, around the corner from his place in Tuscany, it isn't that different from other days. "When you’re a singer, what night of the week it is doesn’t matter. ... I can’t tell you exactly what I do before I sleep. I’ll leave that to your imagination." - The Observer (UK)
"The apparent hack is weird because it flew under the radar. There was no obvious social engineering involved, and the only evidence that it occurred is buried in the weird algorithms of Spotify." Sure, that seems fine. - Vice
In a Q&A, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns says that yes, it has — even the recent visit by only 14 musicians (following the cancellation of a planned full tour). - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
On Thursday (Nov. 30), during Act II of Wagner's Tannhäuser, as the characters were singing about a natural spring, activists on each side of the top balcony unfurling banners reading “No Opera on a Dead Planet” and chanting that the spring was fouled by climate change. - Hyperallergic
"That’s not a matter of preference, such as not caring for sports or pets; it’s a pathological condition. Accordingly, it’s been given one of those Greek-derived diagnostic labels that allow us to imagine we’ve established a scientific truth rather than merely invented a term: 'musical anhedonia.'" - Literary Hub
After a baby seagull under the roof dislodged a bunch of asbestos in 2017, what was then a very decrepit Colston Hall was closed for a major overhaul. It took three years longer than planned, at nearly triple the original budget, but the Bristol Beacon is now open. - BBC
“Jews being held in concentration camps were unable to document what was happening to them by conventional means. Writing down or photographing this would have been impossible, so they turned to a long cultural tradition of telling their stories through songs and music." - Washington Post
