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ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News - Music
- How Social Media Is Changing The Music Business
"In the past, there were just a few gatekeepers to music, and you had a powerful network of labels, A&R men, radio and TV executives and magazines who decided what you should be listening to. Now, it's so much easier to find out what your friends are listening to or what other people who like the same music on the other side of the world are recommending."...
- Leonard Slatkin Signs Up For Three More Years As Pittsburgh Principal Guest Conductor
While Mr. Slatkin signed on as the PSO's principal guest conductor in September 2008, his tenure with the orchestra stretches back several decades....
- Adversity Leads To Rebirth Of Chicago Jazz Festival
"The transformation brought the Chicago Jazz Festival (belatedly) into modern times, reflecting the multi-venue format that has made the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the San Francisco Jazz Festival the leading events of their kind in North America."...
- Rock Disappearing From UK Music Charts
"Sales of rock singles have dropped by almost 18% in the first eight months of 2010, compared with last year. Urban single sales are up 33%, with pop rising 30% in the same period."...
- Seiji Ozawa Conducts (Briefly) for First Time Since Cancer Treatment
"The 75-year-old Japanese conductor opened the Saito Kinen Festival in his homeland on Sunday. He is the festival's founder and art [sic] director. Ozawa conducted the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, using a chair for support."...
- "The Accordion Is Not a Punchline"
The maligned old squeezebox and its nearest relatives are indispensable to countless types of music, from Mexico to Ireland to Argentina to Louisiana to France to South Africa - not to forget polka, of course. Why does the accordion get no respect? Pauline Oliveros, doyenne of experimental composers and possibly the world's first avant-garde accordionist, has some ideas....
- Evolving - A New Generation Of Musical Instruments
"For lots of musicians, synthesizers are so last decade. In their place, laptops -- especially MacBooks, with their glowing white Apples -- have displaced them as cornucopias of timbre and texture."...
- Recording Companies Embrace Google As Alternative To iTunes
"Google Inc., which is developing a digital music service, is finding a warm welcome at record companies that are hoping the technology company can loosen Apple Inc.'s grip on the digital music market with its iTunes music store."...
- Oooh, That Dangerous Music!
What is it about music that gets true believers so hot and bothered? "Music is almost as dangerous as gunpowder; and it may be requires looking after no less than the press, or the mint."...
- Audience Behavior Matters At Classical Music Concerts
"Does that etiquette have any purpose beyond crusty tradition? As far as classical music is concerned, the answer is yes. The need to sit still and pipe down is purely practical: to enable everyone to hear properly and to respect the performers, as well as fellow listeners. No one cares what you wear any more, and all that social nicety stuff is dead."...
- Court Rules iTunes Music is "Licensed" (And This Means More Money For Musicians)
"In a decision that could affect the financial relationships between record labels and performers, a federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday ruled that songs downloaded from Apple Inc.'s iTunes store are not actually purchased, but are rather "licensed" by the ostensible buyer."...
- Why Does The Flagship of the PhilOrch's New Download Series Sound So Bad?
In the hall, this concert performance of Strauss's Alpine Symphony, conducted by Charles Dutoit, was by all accounts a triumph. Yet the sound files, in all but the most expensive format, are flat and dull, barely recognizable as the Fabulous Philadelphians. What happened in the translation?...
- 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 sells out concerts, in good economic times and bad."...
- 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 Orchestra, has announced his retirement. "...
- 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."...
- Former London Philharmonic Finance Chief Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement
Cameron Poole "admitted charges of fraud by abuse of position and acquiring and using criminal property during a brief hearing at Southwark Crown Court yesterday."...
- The Crossroads Of Music (Which Led To A Crisis)
"A concert-goer in the early 1930s would have been faced with two completely different musics - one (Vaughan Williams, Holst, Sibelius, Walton, Strauss, Busoni) remaining within the bounds of the tonal language, the other (Schoenberg and his school) consciously departing from the old language, and often striking a deliberately defiant pose towards it."...
- If Orchestra Players in Detroit Earn Less, Does the Music in (Say) Portland Sound Less Good?
"Indirectly, the great salaries in L.A. and San Francisco probably help the overall quality of musicianship in Portland and Spokane because they attract more talented musicians to stay in the profession (or art form, if you prefer)."...
- Britain's Booming Music Festival Industry
"Music festivals have grown from nothing to a sizeable industry in 25 years, and the industry is one of the few sectors to have fared well in the slump. There are currently more than 670 events in Britain and the top 200 festivals contribute £450m to the economy in ticket sales, travel, accommodation and food."...
- iPod Sales Sinking. Is The iPod Finished?
"The latest sales figures for the quarter to June showed 9m sold - the lowest quarterly number since 2006. In short, the iPod, launched in October 2001, looks to be in terminal decline. While Apple is unworried - sales of its iPhone and iPad are booming - the drooping figures for the digital music player market are a concern for another sector: the music companies."...
- The Musical Art Of Revival (Or Mimicry Or Tribute Or Raw Material)
A growing number of artists are drawing "from the music of the sixties and seventies with great fidelity, sometimes from one performer in particular. The goal of these artists isn't just able mimicry, though a skeptic would say that the work begins there. But the method accepts a certain pragmatism of pop--that enough work has been done that starting from scratch is just plain inefficient."...
- Will Beijing Opera Fall To History?
"The worry is that, like the city's old neighborhoods, Beijing opera could fall victim to China's rampant commercialism and modernization. If it did, it would be a bit like Italy consigning Verdi or Donizetti to a few small halls in Milan and Rome, or to those folkloric shows for tourists who mostly do not know much about what they are seeing."...
- What Musician Wages Say About Today's Orchestras
New pay agreements are all over the map......
- How Opera Is Like Auto-Tune Is Like YouTube (Or Not)
"In some ways, the traffic in quick music clips on YouTube resembles the voraciousness of opera audiences two centuries ago. But the rapid dissemination of Auto-Tuned songs on YouTube is fundamentally different from opera in one important way."...
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