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Abu Bratsche, Musings of a lead viola operatortheafmobserver.typepad.com/abu_bratsche/ |
Such a versatile instrument
Musicians to the ice floes, please (cross-posted from the Polyphonic blog) If one single factor underlies the turmoil at the New Hampshire Music Festival in the minds of the musicians and the external support group SOON, it appears to ...
When the excellent becomes the enemy of everything (cross-posted from the Polyphonic blog) While doing some research on the New Hampshire Music Festival situation, I came across a blog post by Henry Fogel that I found both interesting on its merits an...
A Coup-de-Festival (cross-posted from the Polyphonic blog) A friend of mine alerted me last week to a recent series of events at the New Hampshire Music Festival. I've been trying to make sense of what I've read in news...
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Arts Journal MusicMusic News From Around the Net |
Montreal Symphony Hangs On to Kent Nagano for Three More Years "Even hardboiled Nagano skeptics, whether inside or outside the orchestra, are probably pleased with the stability that comes with this announcement. Four years after his appointment, Nagano still sel...
London Bridge As Musical Instrument "Nick Franglen is using London Bridge and its human traffic to create a 24-hour piece of music - armed only with a theremin and an espresso machine."...
Washington National Opera's Music Director Steps Down "After 18 years and a recent bout of ill-health that kept him off the Washington National Opera podium for more than a year, Heinz Fricke, the music director of WNO and the Kennedy Center Opera House ...
China Learns to Love Outdoor Rock Concerts "The Middle Kingdom may not yet have a Glastonbury or V Festival, but Archie Hamilton's company Splitworks is doing its best to promote a fledgling live music scene."...
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Slipped DiscNorman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds |
Watch where the money's moving The opera singer who suffered agent abuse in last week's leaked email has left Universal Music to join Jack Maistroianni at IMG. Two more singers are talking of quitting Universal, leaving t...
Sony snaps up Vienna Philharmonic The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's New Year's Day concert is one of the most watched classical events on world television. Sony today snapped up world rights from 2012 on as a token of its renewed co...
Two looming big holes in British opera At the closing performance of the Glyndebourne season, chairman Gus Christie announced that Vladimir Jurowski was leaving in three years (as tweeted by Jessica Duchen). By then he will ...
How did he get to Carnegie Hall? On tonight's edition of the Lebrecht Interview, Sir Clive Gillinson charts his progress from the second desk of cellos in the London Symphony Orchestra to the leadership of the world's most prestigiou...
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The Artful ManagerAndrew Taylor on the Business of Arts & Culture |
The myth of the artist in a mash-up world Interesting thoughts on artistry and authorship in this excerpt from Aram Sinnreich's book Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture. It's now a well-worn story that tech...
Economies of Life Most conversations that try to connect ''the arts'' to ''the economy'' are exercises in frustration. For arts enthusiasts, the conversations seem cold and disconnected, but necessary to advance the ca...
Are you ready for Facebook Places? Facebook unveiled its new "Places" feature last night, a riff on other geolocation and tagging systems already in vogue among the mobilirati. In a nutshell, Places makes your current location (latitud...
Connecting the dots, again The artist service and support organization Fractured Atlas has a knack for offering what's necessary and useful on the path from creative inspiration to realized experience. Their service areas may n...
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The Rest is NoiseAlex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker |
Let there be Haas Sylvain Cambreling / Klangforum Wien; Kairos 1233. The fiercely original Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas is at the center of a late-summer festival entitled Moving Sounds 2010, which unfolds ov...
Hammered ring Did Mark-Antony Turnage have a bit of fun with Hammered Out, his recent Proms commission? Tim Rutherford-Johnson, of The Rambler, drew attention to the fact that the opening minutes of the work bear a...
Hiatus Excuse me while I disappear, at least until September.
Pre-hiatus miscellany Stephen Hough illuminates the topic of string vibrato.... Ethan Iveson writes a brief history of jazz blogging.... Lisa Bielawa recounts the latest rendition of her Chance Encounter, on the Tiber in R...
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SANDOWGreg Sandow on the future of classical music |
One last thought... ...about the dead-horse essay I've been beating. The writer of this airy document, Heather Mac Donald, offers this notion:[Perceptions of a declining audience demand for classical music in our time], ...
The poor dead horse To wrap up what I've been doing in this post, this one, and this one (dispelling some optimistic silliness about classical music's present state and its future)...I'd been enumerating the reasons give...
Still in the clouds Continuing (with apologies for letting it drop yesterday) my catalogue of reasons why Heather Mac Donald thinks classical music is in a golden age. Here's her essay to that effect, and here and here a...
Off in the clouds So here are the main points made in the essay I talked about yesterday -- the main points as I think the author sees them, rather than the serious holes in both her data and her analysis that I noted ...
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From the Orchestra Librarykschnack.wordpress.com/ |
Not in the Excerpt Books: Part II It cracks me up that I entered Lady Gaga as a Composer in OPAS yesterday. I was working on an upcoming Idina Menzel concert, who I am embarrassed to say I didn’t know much about until she was bo...
I Don’t Think These are in the Excerpt Books I must have written this memo to the orchestra while I was lost in a flash sideways or something, because weren’t we just doing Mahler??? Dear Orchestra, This is to let you know that the Video G...
Twenty!! Whew, made it. Finished my twentieth season at the DSO last weekend! (Well, that is, the classical season, which always feels like the “end” even though we have about seven more tough week...
If You See Your Librarian at the Grocery Store, and Other Gentle Reminders Maybe it’s the time of year, but it seems to be “silly season” in our business. So I offer these gentle reminders about ways you can help me help you, in the hope that we can all li...