It made international headlines when Pensacola Christian College cancelled a performance by the famed vocal sextet two hours before curtain time because of some members' "lifestyle." The group's two countertenors recount how they got the news, what they did next, and what they heard from students afterward. - Classic FM (UK)
“It gave people a different way into what I was talking about, other than just showing slides. The sound conveyed what it was like to be there.” - The New York Times
The frustration of conductors and orchestra musicians was at times quite palpable. One of the instrumentalists, a principal player from a major orchestra, recounted a recent music director search in his orchestra that revealed some of the very tensions occurring at the meeting. - Nightingale Sonata
The Montserrat monastery in the mountains of Catalonia, home to the famous Escolania de Montserrat boys' choir, is forming a new ensemble of 25 singers -- a mix of boys, girls, and young women -- which will fill in for the main choir for one weekend each month. - The Guardian
In 1798, King Stanisław II, exiled to St. Petersburg and knowing he was dying, commissioned Józef Kozłowski, who'd come to the Russian capital a decade earlier, to compose a funeral Mass. The little-known score had survived only in a later recomposition for Tsar Alexander I -- until Graf started researching. - Bachtrack
For nearly two decades, Tina Chancey and her ensemble, Hesperus, have been assembling and performing live music — songs and instrumental works from the Middle Ages, along with period-style improvisation — to accompany such classic silent films as The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. - Early Music America
"The 43-year-old label — which is home to artists like Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt and Stephen Osborne and represents a catalog of 2,500 recordings, some (of music) dating back to the 12th century — will operate as a standalone label within Universal Music U.K.," with Simon Perry remaining as managing director. - Billboard
Among the damning claims levelled by BBC Singers Acting Co-Directors Jonathan Manners and Rob Johnston is that a “recurring narrative of toxic culture now exists at the BBC, reflected in the working environment from the Director General downwards.” - Deadline
Paul Hughes, former director of the BBCSO and the BBC Singers: "The BBC's timing is as calculated as its strategy is callous: ensembles struggling to recover from the pandemic, exhausted from keeping the show on the road throughout, three of the ensembles without a director and all contractually gagged." - The Guardian
Worries about music today ignore every development in the transmission of music in the past. “I mean, when recorded music first came out, people were like, nobody’s ever going to learn how to play anything ever again. Then came radio and nobody’s ever gonna go and see live music.” - The Guardian
Vinyl revenue grew 17% and topped $1.2 billion last year, making up nearly three-quarters of the revenue brought in by physical music. At the same time, CD revenue fell 18% to $483 million, the RIAA said. - NPR
The pit orchestra "will disappear along with the show. It holds 27 full-time musicians, 11 of whom have been with Phantom since it opened in the late 1980s." Those musicians have built comfortable lives, which are about to be upended. - The New York Times
"I worry about how moods are being targeted in music by a company’s algorithms. But I know he loves this music, albeit in a very different way to me. I wonder why I spend so much time worrying." - The Observer (UK)
"Just in case you're only feeling partially exercised at the evening's pending legit controversies and fashion disasters, let me give you one more reason to sharpen your hashtags. I'm here to argue the obvious: The Academy is getting its best song category all wrong." - NPR
"At first, the Minnesota Opera planned to adapt The Song Poet as a youth opera—part of a program then called Project Opera. But in 2020, that changed with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial justice uprising that challenged representation in the arts." - Sahan Journal
