The claim: "Combining the same kind of vocal-erasing processors used by those bespoke karaoke creators and Apple’s prodigious lyrics database, Sing can instantly engineer a karaoke video out of any song in the Apple Music library, no matter how obscure." - Slate
"Pianos do kind of take on the character of 100 years of playing, you know?” says Tim Vincent-Smith, co-founder of Pianodrome - a project that saves old pianos from ending up in landfill. - BBC
Among the surprises: nearly a fifth of the 100 most-performed works were written after 1918, and topping the entire list is Ravel's La Valse. Not so surprising: Mozart is the most-performed composer of concert works and operas, and Arvo Pärt is still the most popular living composer. - Bachtrack
Nadine Dorries tweeted that she's been "blamed for lazy, politically motivated decision making at (Arts Council England), who … pulled this as a stunt to try (to) reverse levelling up and funding being transferred to poorer communities in the north of England." - The Stage
Until 2020, very few music fans had heard of Vicente Lusitano; even those music history scholars knew him only for a treatise and a notorious 1551 debate. Now performers and listeners are discovering that not only was he a historic figure, his music can be gorgeous. - The New York Times
Founded in 2013 during what had been the slow weeks of mid-January, Prototype — which has already produced two operas that went on to win Pulitzers — "has become increasingly essential as Lincoln Center moves away from presenting festivals that would have hosted (such work)." - The New York Times
"Citing public dismay at news that the Philly Pops would shut down at the end of this season, leaders of the group have reversed course and are now working to save the city's only stand-alone pops orchestra," with a goal of raising $2 million over the next nine months. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
By the mid-aughts, starting a blog was easier than ever. Streaming hadn’t yet taken over our listening habits, but Web connections were speedy enough that, if a blog posted an MP3, a reader could be hearing the song a few minutes later. It was exciting, hopping from blog to blog. - The New Yorker
Relying on her own keen sense of how classical music should sound, she developed a plan that would bring together the finest musicians, outstanding business leadership and a shared organizational goal of world-class stature. - Fort Worth Business Press
The boundaries of classical music are ever more porous and open, spilling into other forms and all to the good. Give up prejudice or fear or indifference. - The Observer
Neither a cult reputation as a pioneer of bebop nor American canonization quite does justice to Monk, who was simply one of the most imaginative composers of the twentieth century, a judgment that in my view does not require the qualifiers “jazz” or “American.” - The Baffler
The album, which is untitled, came together after six weeks of remote instruction followed by in person socially distant rehearsals and four days of recording sessions in which the musicians recorded the sections of the orchestra separately — all without a single Covid-19 infection. - The New York Times
A specially developed device, the Endpoint Cylinder and Dictabelt Machine, has enabled the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to retrieve and digitize the Mapleson Cylinders, made by an archivist at the Met in the first years of the 20th century. - The New York Times
Press On Vinyl got its pressing machine on Christmas Eve of 2021- and by the end of 2022, were pressing more than 3000 vinyl albums a day, heading for double than in the coming year - and fans are still waiting 6-12 months for albums. - The Guardian (UK)
Pop singer Abao: "When people think of Indigenous music, they think of some elder pounding a drum. That's important too, but young Indigenous people have their own way of living and their own community and they want to be able to mix their culture with what they like." - NPR
