Music

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 the instrument then under construction (destined for Sydney); all supplies, tools, and treated wood and metal for pipes; and all preliminary and intermediate design sketches and archived photos of every instrument Dobson has built. – The New York Times

“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 suggested that she had been singled out because she is Black.” – The New York Times

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 a South African passport without a visa and that she was released after a phone call confirmed her identity. – AP

It’s been a consequential time for our culture, and the role of an orchestra has changed enormously. – Boston Globe

“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 ever told me I can’t do something.’ Jimmy and I never said another word to each other.” – The New York Times

Sharon, the MacArthur fellow who founded the company in 2012 and who became artistic director of Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit last September, isn’t leaving the Industry. But, in what he describes as a deliberate effort to make the organization more diverse on a managerial as well as an artistic level, he and the board have taken on two co-artistic directors, composer Ashley Fure and interdisciplinary artist Malik Gaines. – Los Angeles Times

The problem for festivals is that preparation and planning – let alone building a site – stretches over months and often costs millions, and the current question marks hanging over festivals are making such work impossible. – The Guardian

The latest four-week delay to fully unlocking Covid restrictions has pushed an additional 5,000 gigs into doubt. – BBC

According to folk singer Martin Carthy, the football chant can be considered one of the last embodiments of the oral folk tradition. – The Conversation

“A conversation with him can easily pinball from contemporary politics to ancient Egypt. But what he’s most eager to talk about now is ZIM Music — his latest structural model in a lifelong pursuit to locate clarity within chaos.” – NPR

The Greenroom app lets any user host or participate in live rooms, as well as record live conversations. – Variety

“It’s difficult because I am very happy here. And this orchestra has made me a better conductor. But I can’t just think of myself. I also have to think of the orchestra and its future. I’m convinced that when things are calmer at the end of this pandemic, it will be the time for the orchestra to open a new chapter of its history, which means a new direction and a new face.” – The Cincinnati Enquirer

“Philadelphia Orchestra president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky will become leader of the new parent company upon finalization of the deal, and Kimmel president and CEO Anne Ewers” — who initiated and championed the deal — “will retire. … While pressures brought on by the pandemic sparked talks toward the move, the benefits of the new structure are independent from the pandemic shutdown and abrupt disappearance of ticket revenue, leaders say.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, attracts an average of 30 million visitors a day, and its users watched more than one trillion minutes of content last year, according to the company. – The New York Times

The tentative return of gigs could not have come soon enough for jazz performers. A 2008 study on the economics of the genre found that 49% of jazz musicians’ income came from live performances. – The Guardian

“It was still a gritty city, before gentrification really took over. Artists could afford to live in the city – they didn’t have to scramble to make rent, so they could concentrate on their work. You could afford to experiment.” – The Guardian

Sparks from a malfunctioning fan appear to have ignited sawdust at the factory of Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Lake City, Iowa on Tuesday afternoon, starting a fire that consumed almost everything but part of the exterior walls. Among the instruments Dobson is best known for are the organs at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and Merton College, Oxford; the now-incinerated instrument under construction had been for the historic St. James’, King Street in Sydney. – Des Moines Register

“Opera Australia has posted a $7.1 million trading deficit for the year ended December 2020, or almost $6.5 million after bequests are included. … The company received $11.4 million in ‘absolutely critical’ JobKeeper subsidies in 2020. ‘If we hadn’t had that $11.4 million, we would have been potentially looking at a $20 million trading loss, and that would have meant us having to take more drastic action,’ says [outgoing CEO Rory] Jeffes.” – Limelight (Australia)

Whether you’re singing along with “Messiah” or rocking with Metallica, the common auditory input of the rhythm and melody, plus the visual input of musicians and conductor, causes our brains to “entrain” or synchronize to this shared sensory awareness. – San Francisco Chronicle

Among audiences, the government survey data showed that more men than women report attending jazz concerts, and that the gap is larger for jazz than for rock. – The Conversation

“Composers from that same time period, say, the ’30s to the ’60s — the likes of Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Elliott Carter, George Perle, Harold Shapero, Roger Sessions, and others neglected for decades by America’s musical institutions — have been experiencing an uptick in interest of late, particularly at summer festivals and in recording projects.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

“If I had it to do all over again, I would not have tried so hard to move the BSO out of the Ivory Tower. Sometimes you have to say, ‘OK, this is not where people want to go. Try to enjoy the orchestra and community as much as you can.’ … I didn’t have problems with any one individual. It’s more about an ethos and a philosophy of how you want to exist in a community. I had pushed as hard as I could push.” – The Baltimore Sun

It’s taken Australia’s oldest orchestra five years to find a successor to Andrew Davis, whose tenure ended in 2019, but they’ve now settled on this Spanish-born, London-based flutist-turned-conductor. Martín is also chief conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, and he recently extended his contract as the LACO’s music director to 2027. – Limelight (Australia)

The problem is that, as one wag put it a few years after the composer’s demise, “Now that Josquin is dead, he is putting out more works than when he was still alive” — the height of his fame, in the decades after 1500, coincided with the birth of music printing and the utter lack of copyright law, and many publishers found they could juice sales by slapping the great man’s name on other people’s music. Alex Ross spent much of this spring sitting in on Zoom seminars with two of the world’s top Josquin scholars, Joshua Rifkin and Jesse Rodin, watching students wrestle with determining whether a given work was genuine Josquin or not. – The New Yorker