Myth is everywhere on Broadway and in opera right now, including a collaboration between 88-year-old composer Wayne Shorter and the younger composer/performer/lyricist Esmerelda Spalding. Why now? "In uncertain times, myths give us something sturdy to lean on, a narrative handrail to grip." - Washington Post
A middle-school class at NY's Special School discovered there was no Price biography aimed at children - so "this beautiful book emerged that they wrote together, 45 of them together." - NPR
In terms of payment, it's a huge mess - thanks to the failure to win residuals from reruns in the 1960s, plus streamers' legendary anti-union stances: "A growing number of producers are not hiring union musicians in order to avoid any kind of future payments." - Variety
A church founder says hearing Coltrane turned him into "born-again believer in that anointed sound that leaped down from the tone of heaven out of the very mind of God, stepped from the very wall of creation.” - The New York Times
"I've spent a lot of years doing roles where I'm the third person in a love triangle, … and the lead soprano almost always has to kill herself, and those stories are 1,000% created by the patriarchy, and I'm not interested in them anymore." - The Guardian
At minimum, percussion students need a room to practice in — usually in a large single family home and not an apartment — over $10,000 for instruments, and $6,500 per year for lessons. And this is to say nothing of other crucial training opportunities, which come at an additional cost. - I Care if You Listen
Adaptations from well-known sources go right from the beginnings of opera as a distinct genre circa 1600 (Peri's Euridice and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo) to the remarkable flowering of new opera (especially chamber opera) in the US today. And there are good reasons for that. - Van
“We have been here for 35 years. We have made 300 creations, several international tours, 11 Canadian tours, and 70 concerts across the country. Before, the word “fatigue” was not even a reality for me, but time does its work.” - Ludwig Van
Korea accounts for 20 percent of worldwide classical music sales, with a much younger audience base than in the West. The K-pop juggernaut needs no elucidation. Koreans have embraced Western music and elaborated on it. - 3 Quarks Daily
When it comes to established and continuously active opera companies in North America, there is the Metropolitan, founded in 1883 ... and then San Francisco Opera. - San Francisco Classical Voice
As of January 1, shortly before his 49th birthday, the Peruvian will take the reins at the event where his international career was launched: the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy. He succeeds his longtime mentor and manager, former tenor Ernesto Palacio, now the festival's superintendent. - OperaWire
His sabbatical will run from Dec. 19 to Jan. 10; he has withdrawn from the Met's January revival of The Marriage of Figaro and the Philadelphia Orchestra's New Year's concerts. - The New York Times
The piano is the instrument of expressive individualism; the harpsichord is the instrument of a vibrant, discursive life of the mind. It is the glorious vestige of an era when music was free from the impossible burdens that Romantics placed upon it. - First Things
The Brit Awards announced they "would do away with gendered awards categories entirely, following in the footsteps of the Grammy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards and the Juno Awards." A big concern: Women performers may get shut out once again. - CBC
