The latest Orchestra Repertoire Report shows a 638% increase in music by women at our symphony halls in the past six years. The numbers for women composers of color — which started at next to nothing — is up a whopping 1425%. - NPR
"(The Czech conductor), 41, will begin his tenure in September 2025. He succeeds Antonio Pappano, who steps down from the post at the end of the 2023-24 season after 22 years in the role – making him the Royal Opera's longest serving music director." - The Guardian
Hebrides Redacted successively removes notes from the 10- to 11-minute overture in proportion to the decline in humpback whale populations over many decades. A short film about the project (embedded above) was released today as part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival. - Ars Technica
"Some things in life are meant to be heavy and indebting and antiquated; they are meant to demand regular and highly specialized maintenance; they are meant to bring forward the weight of the past." Hence, in adulthood, a piano. - The Atlantic
Las Cafeteras, a band, composed a love song to Oaxaca in response. One band member: "It’s now our responsibility, I think, as people of color, specifically Mexicans, Chicanos and Latinos to really take this as an opportunity to do better — to be better." - Los Angeles Times
"Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert 'intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson,'" according to Kiev's culture ministry. - The Guardian (UK)
Music streaming would be integrated into its existing short video service. ByteDance already has a music streaming service in Resso, which is currently available in India, Brazil, and Indonesia. The plan, according to the report, is to expand to several more countries, rebranded as TikTok Music. - Ludwig Van
Zachary Woolfe: "Any judgment on a hall's acoustics is highly provisional after just a few visits. ... But a mighty improvement is already obvious. ... (And) a theater in which it once felt like miles from the back row to the timpanis now verges on intimacy." - The New York Times
To begin with, you have to recognize how great a role Russian classical music plays in Putin’s foreign propaganda program. Most people don’t see that. There are official documents that substantiate this. - Van
Much truer to the spirit of viral jazz is the musician who fully inhabits a given platform, allowing it to inform their creative process — for a point of comparison, someone like the jazz-conversant polymath Jacob Collier, a harmony and rhythm savant par excellence. - NPR
The institution of an orchestra was built for another time. In an age of attacks against institutions, perhaps it's necessary to tweak how the institution works. - The American Scholar
The problem: during the period between the board closing the San Antonio Symphony and the musicians forming the new San Antonio Philharmonic, a stopgap organization was created to provide pit musicians for the opera and ballet. It's that last organization that's been funded in the next county budget. - San Antonio Report
In terms of the music-making, Justin Davidson observes, Blanchett and filmmaker Todd Field do very well. But Lydia Tár's awful behavior? She could've gotten away with much of it decades ago, but not now. And, alas, no female conductor has yet had the opportunity for anything like Tár's career. - Vulture
"Organizations are now accepting the fact that they will need an online presence, but ... they (also) want to be able to focus on their live performance activities. Where will that leave the internet initiatives created during the shutdown? Will they flourish or be starved of resources?" - San Francisco Classical Voice
Spotify metrics we studied — including acousticness, danceability, duration, energy, explicitness, instrumentalness, liveness, speechiness (a measure of the presence of spoken words in a song), tempo and release year — were not strong predictors of the song’s popularity. - The Conversation
