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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 |
How Much Does Lang Lang's Haiti Benefit Concert Actually Benefit Haiti? "The biggest chunks of the proceeds from a Carnegie Hall concert to benefit the earthquake-ravaged country will actually go to stagehands and newspaper advertisements. Even if the event's nearly $200,...
Lauritz Melchior Heldentenor Foundation Closing (Is The Cause Lost?) Founded by the man Daniel J. Wakin calls "the Lou Gehrig of opera" with "a set of brass lungs," the Foundation was set up to seek out and train heroic tenors for big, tough Wagner roles like Tristan a...
Attention, Met Publicists: Here Are Your Pull Quotes For 'The Nose' "It's musical junk sculpture … a sort of Marx Brothers version of Wozzeck." "The storytelling breezily disregards logic." "[The director's] vision of everyday humanity is squat and gnarled."...
No Deal: Talks Between Detroit Symphony, Musicians End The talks were aimed at gaining "players' concessions as a key to stabilizing the orchestra's finances. Battered by the recession, the DSO ran a $3.8-million deficit in 2009 and projects about a $5-mi...
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Slipped DiscNorman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds |
A Very Serious Jew Before you sit down tonight to watch the Oscars, you may wish to sample the latest in-depth analysis of one of the outside contenders. A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers' account of second-generation im...
News just in: Philip Langridge has died The great English tenor, the outstanding Peter Grimes and Aschenbach of recent years, has succumbed to a rapid, aggressive cancer. He was 71. The last time I saw him was in Harrison Birtwistle's late...
How critics make up their minds Coming out of a premiere at the Young Vic last night, I overheard the following exchange between two of the attending critics, one of them a recent appointment. Critic A: I know we shouldn't share, bu...
Breaking news: English National Opera goes bilingual The tenor in Elixir of Love called in with a sore throat. His understudy went missing and no-one else in the world had memorised the new street-cred English translation of Donizetti's village comedy. ...
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The Artful ManagerAndrew Taylor on the Business of Arts & Culture |
Is new technology a complement or supplement to real-world interaction? Interesting stuff, as ever, at the Pew Internet & American Life Project web site. This time, on the contrary evidence to our common assumptions about new technologies. While many take it as a give...
Generosity and curiosity Yet more compelling and inspiring words from Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation during his recent talk at TEDxYCC in Calgary. Well worth a watching.
Unbundling the arts organization My conversations at the Salzburg Global Seminar last week reinforced the inherent tensions in the business of arts and culture. Example 1: We build organizations to resolve cost and scale problems. Or...
Art. It's what's inside. Redux. Way back in June 2008, I posted an 'open-source public service announcement' concept and media mock-up called ''Art. It's what's inside.'' Since I didn't have the means or the channel to produce a pro...
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The Rest is NoiseAlex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker |
Art must die I was surprised and delighted to see my name pop up in John Colapinto's New Yorker profile of the young jazz bassist and composer Esperanza Spalding. She'd been reading The Rest Is Noise—on a Kindle, ...
Welcoming new visitors Benvenuto! Bienvenido! Willkommen! This site is a companion to my books The Rest Is Noise and Listen To This (forthcoming). To listen to audio examples for each chapter of Noise, go here. For a glossa...
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SANDOWGreg Sandow on the future of classical music |
Orchestra. Circa now. Conductor/composer Paul Haas sent this as a "solutions" comment:For our upcoming NYC concert - Tweetheart - Sympho has teamed up with the multimedia team Aytia|Matia and four intergenre composers to c...
An audience your own age From March 25 to March 27 I'll be at the Yale School Music (where i got an MM in composition in 1974), for a variety of activities, culminating in a talk on the 27th at one of their Think Tanks, a ser...
Proactive orchestras Proactive, that is, with anyone who buys a concert ticket. Momentary digression. Note that the solutions page has been updated, as will happen every Monday. This is where you find a growing catalog of...
Strategy and social media In my post on using new media for promotion, I said something that might sound provocative. I said that some people at big institutions may not understand that before they can jump into social media, ...
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From the Orchestra Librarykschnack.wordpress.com/ |
Yes, Melissa, there is a Santa Claus In the past couple of weeks as we have pushed through the final edits of Moldydow and the Vlasts, DSO Assistant Librarian Melissa Rogers has exhorted me — only half kidding — to “ple...
Z!#&?esk?%#luh??@a^($h?!! Sincere apologies to Czech musicians and citizens, and Mr. Smetana of course, for defacing the lovely name of the 4th movement of M?last, but we are just ready to be so DONE with this project. Really...
Mein Vaterland, Mein Gott! I had a library nightmare over the holidays, and I don’t mean that figuratively. You know those performance anxiety nightmares players can have over a particular piece that’s difficult or...
I Lost December Well, I didn’t plan to take a 4-week break from writing the blog, but December got the best of me. This is probably not unusual for people in our business; in my case, I just seem to have taken...