"The Met is the first major performing arts organization in the city to announce a booster-shot mandate that will apply to audiences as well as staff members; the new rule will take effect Jan. 17." - The New York Times
"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
“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
"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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
