The pandemic has wrecked an already vulnerable jazz industry by forcing live music shows to halt. Musicians and club owners have turned to online fundraisers for survival, and point to the music's connection to civil rights as a need to keep its legacy alive. - Axios
The Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles is the largest Black-majority orchestra in the country. But it doesn't want to be alone. The ICYO founder's mantra "is that there needs to be an inner city youth orchestra in every city where there's an NFL team." - NPR
As the leader of "NYPopsUp" explains, "This is what I like to call 'social music.' ... You can use music to minister to so many sectors of society." This summer, that means 100 days of scattered, mostly unannounced street performances across the state. - Washington Post
The Marsh family of Faversham are dealing with Britain's lockdowns by performing parodies. "This six-voice choir, with its sweet harmonies and the occasional wobbly note, is creating songs that dramatize the mundane moments of lockdown life, from too much screen time to the horrors of remote learning." - The New York Times
There's no Indigenous Artist of the Year award in Saskatchewan this year, and when a committee was discussing why not, well: "Somebody made a comment about 'why should we give them an award when they're just going to pawn it off anyway?'" That's led to a reckoning about anti-Indigenous and other racist (and homophobic as well) attitudes in Canada's...
Vertenstein, a Holocaust survivor, was 93 when she died earlier this month. She "began giving lessons at age 14 in war-torn Romania. She did not stop for nearly 80 years. Toward the end, adapting to the pandemic, Ms. Vertenstein gave lessons on FaceTime from her home in Denver." - The New York Times
“It’s a further confirmation of the parochialization of British music and the arts,” said Jasper Parrott, a co-founder of HarrisonParrott, a classical music agency, in a telephone interview. The mood among musicians was low, Parrott said, especially because of changes to the rules governing European tours that came about because of Brexit. - The New York Times
"An ambitious £288m concert hall that was supposed to be 'the Tate Modern of classical music' has been scrapped by the City of London Corporation, which said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made the plan impossible to complete." The recently-announced departure from London of the project's highest-profile advocate, Simon Rattle, probably made this decision inevitable. - The Guardian
Martin Kettle: "Justifying the cost, the priority, the location and the uses to which the hall would be put were all delicate tasks in any case. It was hard not to see it as an elite project, only distantly connected with wider public need at a time when funding was being squeezed." Then came Brexit, followed by COVID. "It...
More than a year after it began its search for a new president and chief executive, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is expected to announce on Thursday that it has found a new leader on the opposite coast: Gail Samuel, president of the Hollywood Bowl and chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. - Los Angeles Times
"In picking , the orchestra looked west, to one of the most successful American orchestras of recent years" — the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she is COO — "for its choice to succeed Mark Volpe, who led the Boston Symphony for 23 years. Samuel will be responsible for steering the organization out of one of its most dire crises,...
Says managing director Sarah Hopwood, "We are determined to present a festival this summer in whatever form is possible. We consider this essential to protect the livelihoods of our staff and freelance artists we employ and to continue to engage with our audience." Audiences will be limited to 50% of capacity, and other COVID safety measures will be in...
His city—our cities—aren’t empty now. They’re just pretty much shut down. There’s a social media campaign attached to the Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s new outreach efforts, asking for posts in response to the question, “Have you ever been saved by a song?” Our answer is and will be, yes. - The Daily Beast
These days, Bang is a sprawling artistic conglomerate, with an annual budget of $2 million to $2.5 million, a dedicated record label, a virtuoso chamber ensemble (the Bang on a Can All-Stars) to carry its branding internationally, an active commissioning program, a summer residency and a distinctive performance format — the new-music marathon concert — that is practically a...
"Called E.N.O. Breathe and developed by the English National Opera in collaboration with a London hospital, the six-week program offers patients customized vocal lessons: clinically proven recovery exercises, but reworked by professional singing tutors and delivered online." - The New York Times
