“Someone on our team said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we could bring together musicians around the U.S. who are not working, for some project?’ It morphed into involving Fabio Luisi, who’s been really bummed out about the Met, which has had such a hard year. He thought about Mahler 1, and bringing in about half the Met Orchestra....
Afro-Brazilian musician Luedji Luna: "It’s been a sad year for artists and for the three of us: What we love doing most is performing with each other." But it hasn't been all terrible. "When the pandemic started, we all reacted differently. Xenia is more of a meditative person, so she wasn’t online much. Larissa started to produce beats. And...
And she has the duet series to prove it. Lin, who commissioned duets before adding interviews to her presentation of new work: "In the beginning I just wanted to have these duos written. Then I decided, you know, part of the reason people are afraid of new music is they don’t understand it. What happens if people get to...
Though the bowl will be limited to 4,000 in a venue that seats 17,500, the excitement is real. "The organization is still ramping up to tackle the complexities of reopening, but Smith said the L.A. Phil is planning 45 to 60 concerts." - Los Angeles Times
The business side of music can be vicious for its musicians, and when a label owned by a man you loathe gets to profit off your music? Well. "The debut this week of the now 31-year-old Swift’s full rerecording of that album she made at 18, under the title Fearless (Taylor’s Version), is a reminder of how inextricably blurred the creative...
" now-21-year-old Temple student said that Mikhail Yanovitsky, 56, hugged, kissed, and fondled her while she practiced piano in a classroom at Temple's Rock Hall in February 2020, then forced her to touch him sexually over his clothing while he spoke of 'eroticism.'" - The Philadelphia Inquirer
"What David Lang wrote in 1989 was not wrong: no senators took to the floor to tear up scores by Philip Glass or John Cage. New music was ultimately collateral damage in the Culture Wars, not directly targeted by congressional Republicans but still subject to the same devastating public funding cuts that the controversies over Serrano and Mapplethorpe inaugurated....
"At the end of February, Grimes sold 10 pieces of digital artwork as NFTs for $6m, while Deadmau5 has offered bundles including music and collaborative artwork. The Weeknd generated $2.2m by selling digital artworks with clips of a new track. … Despite the clear traceability, there remains enormous uncertainty about just how the rights and ownership of the original...
It turns out that there is more to the question than appears on the surface, and multiple psychological studies have supported the idea that musical preferences are actually linked to our cognitive styles, or the way we think about, and react to, the world around us. - The Hill
"Born in 1778, in Biała Podlaska, Poland, Bridgetower started playing the violin at an early age. His father John Frederick Bridgetower (probably of West Indian descent) was a servant of Joseph Haydn's patron: the Hungarian Prince Esterházy. And the young Bridgetower was tutored by Haydn himself. … Later, Bridgetower went on to give the first public performance of...
The worried reporters would need to recruit community allies. Hire a public relations firm to sway public opinion. And most crucially: Figure out how to find rich people who might be persuaded to finance a rescue plan. - Washington Post
"Researchers have captured how they believe choral music would have sounded when played and sung in the now-ruined chapel at Linlithgow Palace, west Lothian, which was the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots and where James IV visited for Easter celebrations around 1512. … Gaming technology … allow specialists to model how acoustics would have been affected by long-destroyed...
The yazh is a seven- or 14-stringed harp, built over a wooden bowl resonator covered with hide like a drum, that's referenced in Tamil scriptures dating back to the Sangam period (6th century BCE to 3rd century CE). There are replicas of the yazh in museums, but none are playable. In a Q&A, Chennai-based instrument maker Tharun Sekar talks...
"With concerts in the hall canceled since March 2020, construction began in earnest over the past few months. Work is expected to continue for the next year and a half, with a reopening planned for fall 2022, the orchestra and center announced on Monday. That is a year and a half ahead of schedule." - The New York Times
Or at least, a Hollywood record store shuttered for many months by the pandemic: "'We’ve been waiting for a year,' said Silver Lake resident Kerri Barta, who was near the entrance on the cusp of access. Until COVID-19, a visit to Amoeba was part of the weekly ritual for her and companion Jason Yates. 'It’s been a big hole...
