Music

“A team of researchers studying brain activity of singing male and female plain-tailed wrens has discovered that the species synchronizes their frenetically paced duets, surprisingly, by inhibiting the song-making regions of their partner’s brain as they exchange phrases.” – Phys.org

As vaccines spread and COVID-19 numbers drop, “concert and theater venues are scrambling to keep up and figure out when and how to welcome back the crowds they depend on. For the Hollywood Bowl — perhaps the most celebrated outdoor venue in the nation — that has meant making plans, and ripping them up again, as it rides rapidly changing county and state regulations and shifting public attitudes ahead of its planned July 3 opening.” – The New York Times

William Grant Still’s one-act Highway 1, U.S.A. has barely been seen since its 1963 premiere, but it’s being brought back to life this summer by Opera Theater of St. Louis with a cast headed by Nicole Cabell and Will Liverman and no less than Leonard Slatkin conducting. Yet it wouldn’t have happened at all if not for COVID. – The New York Times

Angelico specializes in trousers (or pants, in the US) roles. He says that one day, he finished a rehearsal at covent Garden and realized that he couldn’t play the role of a woman offstage anymore. “The art of opera has always had an appreciation of gender fluidity – and it allowed Adrian to perform as a man onstage before he realised that this was how he wanted to live offstage too.” – BBC

To be fair, the Skagit Valley Chorale (the one where 52 of 61 singers eventually got COVID from a single rehearsal in March 2020) is singing together now – over Zoom. But a planned return in the fall looks bumpy, thanks to politics around vaccine requirements. – NPR

Justin Davidson, on the NY Phil’s Green-Wood Cemetery “Death of Classical” concert: “That might not seem like the obvious location to stage the revival of performance culture, but when Green-Wood opened in 1838, it was intended to be one of New York’s grandest, most verdant, and most romantic public parks. (Today, its permanent residents include the orchestra’s late music director Leonard Bernstein.)” And for the musicians who will take part, they will inevitably experience some emotions about performing together after so long apart. – Vulture

Sara Glojnarić, who won Berlin’s “Neue Szenen” competition last year, explains that being a woman, being queer, and working against racism all intersect in her work, and she believes others’ identities are reflected in their work as well. When she was in school at Stuttgart, she says, “our professor, Martin Schüttler, encouraged us to engage with that, to work with our identities in our music. He made it clear that we mustn’t run away from who we are when we’re composing. It was a really cool place to be, in that kind of a class with that kind of a professor. All of these things that were so difficult for me in Croatia suddenly became completely normal.” – The Nerd Daily

The amount of money people are spending on music hasn’t changed from when we bought albums at the record store or CDs by Sony subscription service – but the way musicians get the money, and how much money they get, is radically different. “When we talk about per stream rates, what we’re doing is sort of smushing all of this data together and dividing it up and looking at averages and trying to work out basically where they are. When you do that with Spotify, you come out with a horrendously low rate: around $0.003 per stream.” – The New Republic

A Facebook post in late April from an alumna of Venezuela’s famous system of free musical education “has since sparked a collective portrait of teenage girls in El Sistema being systematically groomed by older male teachers, with coercive innuendos and propositions as everyday occurrences.” Said one former student of her oboe teacher, “His methods rested on an uplifting discourse of art, passion and intellect. According to him, I had to let myself be carried away by sexual desire in order to achieve a full sound.” – The Washington Post

“While a normal season features about 90 concerts over eight weeks, last year just 14 concerts played to an empty Royal Albert Hall. The BBC said the plan this summer was for 52 concerts over six weeks, with audiences. ‘And we pray it will be a full audience,’ said the Proms director, David Pickard.” – The Guardian

The demand for remote performances is presumably waning, which is why it’s weird that Spotify just entered the virtual concert business and thinks people will pay $15 for prerecorded shows you can only watch once at a dictated time. – Mic

“I sometimes feel we’re losing sight of how valuable music is. I get messages on Patreon or Instagram from fans telling me how my music got them through a huge depression or losing a child. It was the same for me.” – The Guardian

“Choirs had been working under the assumption that restrictions on rehearsals would be relaxed on 17 May, at the same time as shops, bars and hairdressers opened up. Instead, the guidelines” — revised the following day to limit indoor rehearsals to six people and those outdoors to 30 — “were actually more draconian than the ones in place last September and October, when infection rates were higher, and no-one had been vaccinated.” – BBC

“More than 40% of musicians polled about their work in the European Union said they would consider relocating to Europe to continue accessing jobs, with a fifth contemplating changing career entirely. Musicians warned that the red tape and additional costs of touring and working in Europe after Brexit would have substantial impacts on their careers.” – The Stage

Alsop satisfies exactly none of these stubborn criteria for conducting an orchestra, which is perhaps why her career has been an exercise in exhausting the potential of the word “pioneer.” Owing to her severe allergy to “can’t” and “don’t,” Alsop’s achievements are many and, more often than not, warrant some celebratory disclaimer to the tune of “first woman to [fill in the blank].” – Washington Post

The girls went absolutely viral for a video of their performance at the Los Angeles Public Library, especially a clip with their song “Racist Sexist Boy.” Now the punk band comprised of 10-16-year-olds has a contract. (Though one hopes they don’t tone things down for the record company.) – Variety

Composer Keiko Fujiie, who moved to Burkina Faso and built a house where the musicians can practice without annoying their neighbors, hopes to tour the country and debunk the idea of opera as an elite art form: “”I didn’t come to introduce European opera here – to the contrary – I needed to study their music, and little by little share the dream of making an opera with them.” – BBC

Congrats to Italy’s Måneskin. But yikes to the UK (which, technically, is no longer in Europe anyway?). “The UK’s James Newman came last, getting zero points from both the jury and the public. – BBC

Let the Long Beach Opera show you. “Guests have the choice of watching this production “tailgate-style” or from inside their automobiles. The action occurs throughout a parking structure with multiple screens projected live on big screens.” Safe, and very Southern California as well. – Los Angeles Times

“A violin found in an attic in Italy has been confirmed as a priceless instrument made by Giuseppe Guarneri ‘filius Andreae’ in c.1705. The age of the wood was confirmed using dendrochronology, and the researchers were even able to prove it came from the same tree as the wood in an already-identified violin by the same maker.” – The Strad

“Seventy-four years after it first formed,” and 66 years after it closed, “the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra has been revived to support musicians in northern England hit by the pandemic. … The conductor of the re-formed ensemble, Ben Crick, said the lack [of an orchestra during those decades] was ‘really strange’ given the size of the cities of Leeds, York and Sheffield.” – The Guardian

For the second year in a row, the company’s critically praised September week of mostly new opera is called off; even as other groups expect to be in the concert hall by then, management feels that opera requires too many people collaborating in too-close quarters to be safe so soon. Meanwhile, says general director David Devan, the company will “continue the artistic exploration of cinematic opera [online].” – The Philadelphia Inquirer