Created by Canadian-based Massive Technologies, the AI pianist is trained to listen to musical compositions and recreate them with virtual hands—and the results are pretty good. - Vice
As the pandemic and the consequent furlough of Met employees drag on, and as negotiations over a new contract have broken down (the old contract expired at a very bad time), the backstage workers' union IATSE Local One has launched a campaign urging donors not to give the Met money until the furloughs end. The union is even lobbying...
Some might say tackling Richard Wagner’s four-part Ring Cycle during a pandemic is folly. English National Opera, announcing the plan on Wednesday, believes the opposite and wants to return to live performance with a bang. - The Guardian
The move adds a billion more potential customers to the market for the audio streaming giant, which will now be available in 178 countries and will support more than 60 languages. - Variety
Joaquín Orellana, one of Guatemala's leading composers, calls his creations útiles sonoros ("sound tools"), and many of them are de-and-reconstructed versions of his country's national instrument, the marimba. "The ingenuity of Orellana's inventions," writes Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, "often hovers between playfulness and cruelty." - The New York Times
During the pandemic, Darrah’s affinity for film allowed him to pivot to digital content with ease. Over the last six months, the director has worked with LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Boston Lyric Opera and others to produce visually compelling screen experiences hailed by the New Yorker as “arresting” and by the Boston Globe as “ambitious...
Somewhere, in an attic or a music library or maybe hiding in plain sight, are pieces by non-white-male composers that, with the right kind of attention, will open our ears to genius. - Philadelphia Inquirer
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
