The scandal-plagued Recording Academy is making the change after decades of complaints. Instituted in 1989, "the committees’ work began to be seen as evidence of a problematic system in which insiders rewarded their friends and punished their enemies. More recently, a number of high-profile Black artists — among them Drake, Frank Ocean and Sean 'Diddy' Combs — have suggested...
Last year it was a Ford F-250 pickup truck that saved the day, and the audiences around the city. "Bandwagon 2 will trade in the pickup truck for a 20-foot shipping container atop a semi truck, which will visit four parks around New York City for weekend-long residencies through May. ... Tricked out with a foldout stage, video wall...
Josquin des Prez was, in his day and for more than a century after his death in 1521, the most influential and most revered composer in Europe. He demanded, and got, the highest salary; he was the first to have an entire volume of printed music devoted to his work alone; he was the first composer about whom anecdotes...
"'What we learned in the crisis was that the public purse was very much willing to keep alive in Germany,' says Dieter Haselbach, a German cultural sociologist and consultant. 'But in the long run the state-funded system covers a structural crisis which is an oversupply of theaters and opera houses, with competition from digital performances.'" - The...
Kevin Berger: "In the past two years, the debate over whether music is universal, or even whether that debate has merit, has raged like a battle of the bands among scientists. The stage has expanded from musicology to evolutionary biology to cultural anthropology. … My recent adventures in the fields of music research have instilled in me … a...
Just two years ago, out of cash, The Song Company entered liquidation bankruptcy; it was rescued by a donor a month later. Then came 2020 and the pandemic, with Australia undergoing unusually strict lockdowns. Those measures worked, and with the country reopening, the ensemble has reorganized itself, started a professional apprenticeship for young singers, and is doing both mainstage...
Back in the early 19th century, "the directors of the Paris Opera saw no reason to leave the success of their performances up to the whims of an unpredictable audience. To guarantee acclaim, they employed the services of an organized body of professional applauders, commonly known as the 'claque.' These claqueurs were tucked away throughout the audience, disguised as...
The contradictory impulses about pop’s progress and possibilities at its heart make The Who Sell Out sound like a perfect snapshot of music at a moment of flux: poised between pop and the more serious business of rock, between pirate radio and prog. Meanwhile, what it has to say about music and advertising seems eerily prescient and thoroughly modern:...
“We view it as a second stage,” said Ian Derrer, the Dallas Opera’s general director and CEO. “And it has accessible on-ramps for many more people globally.” - Dallas Morning News
"Peter Kjome capped a roller-coaster five years as president and CEO of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra" — a period that included a financial near-collapse, a lockout-turned-strike, and, ultimately, a new contract that improved relations between musicians and management — "by announcing Monday that he will leave the organization when his contract expires in January 2022. Combined with the departure...
A Guardian investigation found that dozens of professional touts have snapped up tickets for eagerly awaited festivals and are demanding massively inflated prices from fans desperate to see artists such as Stormzy, Nile Rodgers and Fatboy Slim. - The Guardian
Lois Kirschenbaum was a switchboard operator from Flatbush, Brooklyn, who became perhaps New York’s biggest and longest-standing opera buff — and an obsessive autograph collector. For over half a century, she spent about 300 nights a year at the Met and other musical and dance performances. - The New York Times
Laurie Anderson: "It’s very interesting ... that a lot of that early work in electronics was done by women. Some of them wanted to do nothing less than change the way people listened, which is telling. They wanted to think about how sound could recalibrate our body and mind." - The Guardian (UK)
And then DSO vice-president Erik Rönmark posted the letter to social media (with the patron's, or former patron's, name redacted). Response on social media was strong. The CEO of a tech company wrote: "You just won yourself a new patron at the $125 level. My company ... would like to sponsor 4 new patrons at this same level, preferably...
