Category: music

Using foundation and individual funding, the Curators of the University of Missouri purchased 91.9-FM from William Jewell College, which had owned the frequency since the 1970s and had leased it to various groups over the years. – KC Independent

Both the pandemic and the protests have revealed how deep inequalities run within the music industry, among audiences and performers. There is no going back to normal. – Van

“We’re accustomed, after all, to think of the opera house as a place where larger-than-life conflicts play out, amid crashing orchestral textures and powerful vocal exertions. And the standard operatic repertoire offers a broad array of deep-dyed villains, among whom Trump might seem to be well at home.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“Musically, I came of age in a time when there was this ongoing war between smart music and pretty music. And one of the things that I discovered was that it’s a false dichotomy. … The construction of the music, the intellectual care, the mathematical rigor, the algorithmic detail — all that is essential, even if you don’t hear it or you choose not to listen to it. … Music can be intellectually airtight and still sock you in the belly or grab you by the ears or seduce you, ravish you.” – The Nation

The expanse of the Mann’s stage looks like some hip warehouse theater in Berlin. With black masks and plexi-glass partitions, the concert might be mistaken for an art installation in pre-COVID times. – Philadelphia Inquirer

“It started with David Newman, a baritone on the voice faculty of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. In May, after a widely discussed web conference on the dangers of singing, Mr. Newman set up a sound system with four wireless microphones, an old-school analog mixer and an amplifier. Several singers gathered in their cars on his street, and he conducted them from his driveway. It worked.” – The New York Times

“The damning, detailed 54-page report by the law firm Cozen O’Connor … shows that … time and again, the elite music conservatory on Rittenhouse Square failed to respond to St. John in a meaningful way to her accounts of rape and repeated abuse by violin professor Jascha Brodsky.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Earlier this summer, our team made a promise to ourselves — and to our audiences — to explore every possible option for going ahead with our season. Since then, however, the changing local health situation has made it clear that cancelling our original winter and spring programming is the only safe decision for our staff, artists, and audience members.” – Ludwig Van

The English-speaking world’s most prestigious classical recording prize goes to DG’s release of Mieczysław Weinberg’s Symphonies No. 2 and No. 21, with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducting the City of Birmingham SO and Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer playing the violin solos. Notable among the other awards is the rehabilitation of the Philadelphia Orchestra: 12 years after being pointedly left off the magazine’s list of the world’s 20 greatest symphonic ensembles, the band has been named Orchestra of the Year. (As David Patrick Stearns puts it in the accompanying essay, “Like all heavenly bodies, the Philadelphia Orchestra moves in and out of eclipse.”) – Gramophone