A study undertaken over the past season by the Utah Symphony and University of Utah researchers found that a new seating arrangement could reduce the spread of aerosols by a factor of 100. The key principle? The equivalent of making a smoker sit by the window. - Smithsonian Magazine
About six weeks after announcing that, as a COVID safety measure, it would eliminate intermissions when it resumes live performances — and just over a month after critic Chris Jones issued the cry "Let the people pee without missing a note!" — the company has reversed course. - Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Musiio is just one of many hi-tech firms changing the way songs are categorised, playlisted and promoted, to eventually reach the ears of millions. They’re fast, efficient and get attention for unheard-of acts. - The Guardian
The plot calls for a lot of music: "Teenage Luca lives underwater with his fish-finned family, but when he steps out of the water and into an Italian fishing village, he becomes a human boy in the very recognizable 1960s, a time period fixed by the pop music that is frequently blaring from tiny portable radios." - Slate
And the virus killed two of the three "marimba healers" of Los Angeles, men who restored the old, cracked, broken marimbas of the area's Guatemalan community. And "in addition to taking a devastating toll on the Central American community, the pandemic shut down indoor dining at Guatemalan restaurants where marimbistas would ply their trade." Now, with vaccines, things are starting to...
"Desert In is an operatic experiment. Co-produced by Long Beach Opera and by Boston Lyric Opera, which commissioned the work, the eight-episode streaming miniseries is the brainchild of LBO Artistic Director … James Darrah, composer Ellen Reid and peña. … Episodes," each with a different composer and scriptwriters, "are just 15 to 20 minutes long, but each packs...
Oboist Nicholas Daniel: "This week, singer Andrew Watts and I will make our fourth attempt to give the world premiere of Sir John Tavener's La Noche Oscura. The most surprising part of this is not that three scheduled performances have been cancelled over the last 12 difficult months, but that the work is getting its first performance ." -...
The factory — where the organs of Verizon Hall at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, St. Thomas Fifth Avenue in New York, Merton College Chapel in Oxford, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles were built — burned to the ground last week. While scans of the company's final design drawings still exist, completely lost are...
"Yende took to social media to share her experience, saying she was 'stripped and searched like a criminal offender' during the ordeal, which lasted more than two hours. While she was not asked to remove her clothes, she says, the police told her, without explanation, to take off her shoes and kept her in a cold, dark room. She...
A government-backed insurance scheme, or a lack of it, has become a make-or-break factor for festival organisers who are deciding whether to continue with this year’s events or pull the plug to avoid huge financial losses. - The Guardian
The South African coloratura, who is currently starring in Bellini's La Sonnambula at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, says she was detained by authorities at Charles de Gaulle Airport who took her cell phone and other belongings, strip-searched her, and held her for more than an hour. A French government source says she attempted to enter France on...
"I sat with him and explained we couldn't go forward. And I said, 'You know, you're a phenomenal teacher.' And he looks at me. He says, 'I only live to conduct.' And then he says, 'You're telling me something?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm telling you, Jimmy, it's done. We're over.' And he looked at me and said, 'No one's...
