“It was amazing to be able to sing with my friends again,” said Ian Bass, a seventh grader in the Ragazzi Boys Chorus, a Silicon Valley choir that has made online rehearsals work through a technology called JackTrip that eliminates the dreaded delay. “Sometimes I forget I am not in a normal practice because it feels so real.” -...
Stéphane Lissner has been the superintendent/general director at the two most notoriously contentious companies in the world: La Scala and the Paris Opera. Now he's at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, financially stabilized after years of crisis, with the brief of bringing back artistic glory. Here he talks about the ingenious ways he's kept staffers working through...
Endel uses a bunch of data, including your location, weather, time of day and even biometrics to create an individual soundtrack on the fly. "This is a technology that is designed to help you focus, relax and sleep." - Protocol
"Classical music has been surprisingly slow to embrace podcasting, a medium ideally suited to illuminate its sounds and stories. But something changed in the last year, with live performances on hold because of the pandemic and the music industry belatedly exploring new platforms." Joshua Barone has a look at three notable podcasts, including one that follows the creative process...
"Parsons faced a financially embattled DSO when she took the reins in 2004, followed by grueling labor strife several years later. She ultimately helped guide the organization to fiscal stability, along with global acclaim for a series of pioneering digital initiatives. Parsons also oversaw the appointment of two music directors, Leonard Slatkin in 2007 and Jader Bignamini in 2020."...
Musicians addressing the environment head-on only represents one side of the music industry’s engagement with the climate crisis. The way we listen to music impacts the environment. Streaming music uses a significant amount of energy, even though the technology seems to make sound feel immaterial. Kyle Devine is author of Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music, which traces “the...
The stress and cost of work visa requirements, new taxes, and prohibitively high touring costs have upended the careers of scores of British musicians, to the extent that many are considering moving to Europe. “There will be a new hub of freelancers in an EU country instead.” - Bloomberg
Thomas Larson, former music critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican (1980-82), now a staff writer at the San Diego Reader: "Figuring out that the thing words do for music is not a musical problem. It's an aesthetic one, which adds more ambiguity, not less. Good ears and smart criticism trail the music like a bloodhound, howling out the...
Says San Francisco Opera general director Matthew Shilvock of the platform, called Aloha, "It allows a singer and a pianist to essentially be in the digital space together making real-time music — which is just transformational for us. A pianist can now hear a singer breathe, and that may sound very basic, but those breath cues are the things...
Almost all his renown has come from his exhilarating performances with symphony orchestras. Does lacking operatic experience matter in landing an important opera post? - The New York Times
Last June, English National Opera and a branch of the NHS launched ENO Breathe, a program that offers what are basically online voice lessons adapted for patients suffering from ongoing shortness of breath weeks and months after (partially) recovering from COVID. The program's administrators report that more than 90% of participants have experienced both improvements in breathing and reduction...
And would a penny per stream be a little more fair? After all, "Spotify increasing royalties to a penny per stream would send a clear, graspable message to its subscribers that it values the artists who serve as the foundation of the company. It would also bring Spotify in line with competitors Apple, Amazon Music and Tidal." - Los...
Adams came up with the vision for Grand Pianola Music when he was tripping - literally - and audiences weren't sure what to do with it. "They didn’t know what to make of its puckish rebelliousness. The beginning, a Minimalist shimmer, was familiar territory — albeit scored idiosyncratically for winds, brasses, percussion, two pianos and a trio of siren-like...
For star conductors, of course, it's not unusual to have appointments both with an orchestra and an opera company. And Dudamel's contract with the LA Phil runs through the 2025-26 season. Classical France is interested: "Radio France, clearly anticipating the appointment, ran five 90-minute programs on Dudamel in the last week of January, ostensibly in celebration of the conductor’s...
“While I was doing the recording, it became really apparent that the cellphone was such a prominent actor in that transaction,” says Christopher Kirkley. When he sat down with an artist, children nearby would pull out their cellphones and do the same. Contrary to Western notions, music from the region has been digitised at a high rate because of...
