At year’s end, Tony will step down as The Times’s chief classical music critic. It is a position he has held since 2000, giving him the longest tenure in the role since Olin Downes. - The New York Times
And the puppets; don't forget the puppets. Instead of a quiet recital hall, "Schubert’s songs grew from entertaining evenings of spontaneous, alcohol-fuelled interaction, with dressing up, games and stories." - The Guardian (UK)
Claddagh Records, founded in the '50s to preserve Irish musical heritage, fell on hard times in the 2000s. But now a deal with Universal Music Ireland has changed its trajectory. - Irish Times
"The musicians, all connected to the country’s network of youth orchestras, performed a roughly 10-minute Tchaikovsky piece outdoors under the watchful eyes of independent supervisors with the job of verifying that more than 8,097 instruments were playing simultaneously." - Washington Post (AP)
From Google Doodle. Hensel "composed more than 450 pieces of music, most of which show a deep reverence for Johann Sebastian Bach. But she struggled with the societal constraints on the roles of women at the time and was overshadowed by her more famous brother." - CNET
Musician Melanie Charles wants to revitalize knowledge of, for instance, Betty Carter - whose "improvisational approach to singing that influenced generations." She was one of the first jazz artists with her own label, founded a jazz program at BAM, and brought up countless musicians. - Washington Post
Deaths are rare, but they're hardly unknown; however, music promoters like Live Nation, for instance, say that the rarity "proves that most shows are perfectly safe." - The New York Times
Joshua Kosman: How long can an artistic culture survive and thrive on the work of the same circumscribed set of a dozen or so dead white European males? - San Francisco Chronicle
"After a two-year stalemate that sparked a feud with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra," — which cancelled several concerts this fall because of the standoff — "Strathmore has reached a tentative agreement with its unionized box office staff that extends their contract through June 2024." - MSN (The Washington Post)
David Finckel: "People have a hard time sitting still. Attention spans are getting shorter. The only thing this doesn’t change is the length of a Schubert trio. You can’t make it shorter, and you can’t play it faster. You can’t cut sections out of it." - The New York Times
A longread on how the Metropolitan Opera's general manager is handling the company's reopening and its long-term problems, what people inside and outside of the Met think of him, and what he thinks of what they think of him. (He's fairer than you might expect.) - New York Magazine
Morlot, born in Lyon in 1974, will replace Kazushi Ono. The contract with the OBC is for four years, with a minimum of eleven weeks of work with the orchestra each season, of which eight would be for seasonal concerts, two for recordings and one for festivals. - Ara Balears
Many musicians have watched, cringing, as the term “gig economy” has become a defining term of the national economic Zeitgeist. Not just because the word “gig” is our word—it originated with jazz musicians in the 1910s—but because, in a larger sense, we are the original gig workers. - Brooklyn Rail
John Mortensen has made a thorough study of how music students in Baroque-era Naples were taught to improvise harmony and counterpoint, then a basic skill. And he's seeing interest from present-day students who don't want to play the same hundred pieces everyone else does. - Early Music America
In fact, there have been composers in China writing for European instruments for over a century. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, though, the country has produced several generations of accomplished composers — and developed an audience eager to hear new scores. - Prospect
