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MUSIC

Album Of Actual Bird Calls Makes Top Five On Australia’s Charts

"Songs of Disappearance is surpassing the likes of Abba and The Weeknd - not to mention Christmas favourites Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey. Created by BirdLife Australia, the album features the birdsongs of 53 of Australia's most threatened species." - BBC

Redefining Mainstream American Music

 “We can perform this music in the concert hall, we can talk about this music. But until people are just hearing it on an everyday, run-of-the-mill, hearing-it-in-your-car basis, nothing really shifts.” - DCMetro Theatre Arts

Canon Fodder: Classical Music’s Difficult Reckoning with Race

"More than anything, the artistic questions facing classical music today go well beyond the simple dualism of keeping or tossing the canon; they revolve most of all around access and the hurdles facing marginalized musicians." - Boston Review

Where The Main Thread Of American Opera Ought To Have Gone: “Porgy”

Joseph Horowitz teaches us to stop hearing “Porgy and Bess” narrowly, as a Black opera, or as some sideline oddity called a folk opera. It is what opera should be in this country, with our history, period. - The New York Times

Afghanistan’s National Institute of Music Will Rebuild Itself In Portugal

On Monday, 273 teachers and students from the school flew from Qatar, where they landed at a US base after fleeing the Taliban, to Lisbon, where they have been granted asylum. - AP

Singers Who Have Found New Creative Life During COVID

As devastating as the pandemic has been to lives and livelihoods, a number of opera singers have found themselves emerging back into live performance with careers in better, more interesting places than they were when the shutdown began. - NPR

How Paul Winter Redefined Ambient Music

No one in the music world has been more ambitious or creative in exploring the ways musicians can create soundscapes in dialogue with the surrounding world. And he has been doing it for decades, all over the globe, from Siberia to the Grand Canyon. - Ted Gioia

Why Didn’t Lyric Opera Of Chicago Tell Anyone It Renewed Its CEO’s Contract?

Anthony Freud's term was to have expired this year; in October, LOC's board extended it for five years with no public announcement. When asked, the company has given no reason for the silence. Freud's management has come under increasing criticism in recent years. - Chicago Classical Review

Bramwell Tovey Makes It Official: Artistic Director Of Rhode Island Philharmonic

The longtime music director of the Vancouver Symphony (2000-2018) has been the RI Phil's artistic advisor since 2018, and he is also music director of the Sarasota Orchestra and chief conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra. - Newport Buzz

Five Years After Her Death, Composer Pauline Oliveros Is Finally Getting Her Due

Her music has been more widely performed, some of her sonic meditations — for example, "Take a walk at night. Walk so slowly that the bottoms of your feet become ears." — have gone viral, and her concept of deep listening has spread. - Texas Observer

Dvorak Predicted Black And Indigenous Music Was the Future Of Classical Music. Why Didn’t It Happen?

In a depressingly familiar trope, Joseph Horowitz exposes a deliberateness in denying Black and Indigenous composers and musicians their role in America’s classical-music development. - Washington Post

What To See When Geffen Hall Reopens Two Years Early In 2022

Rather than face the unenviable task of enticing post-pandemic audiences to a substandard hall, Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic will unveil an eagerly awaited, transformed venue almost two years early. - Architectural Record

Chente Has Left The Rancho

Vincente Fernández was a "debonair Mexican crooner with the buttery baritone whose romantic rancheras and timeless folk anthems defined the grit and romance of his turbulent homeland and elevated him to a cultural icon for generations of fans throughout Latin America and beyond." - Los Angeles Times

Live Music Is Collapsing Again In The UK

At least, live pop music is seeing its attendance take another dive; some artists estimate that as many as 40 percent of those who have tickets aren't showing up at venues. - The Observer (UK)

The Engineer Who Became A Dance-Battle Musician

Jlin: "Math is my first love, not music, though they're both one and the same." - NPR

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