Category: music

The company that manages the orchestra’s usual home, Bass Performance Hall, changed its mind and decided to keep the building closed through the end of 2020. The orchestra’s CEO said in a public statement, “We were extremely surprised to receive this disappointing news … especially after working with Bass Hall management all summer on detailed plans for a safe reopening.” Things being what they are these days, another option was available on short notice. – Fort Worth Magazine

The Live from the Barbican series will present chamber, jazz, and other programming (including such stars as Bryn Terfel, Sarah Connolly, and the Kanneh-Mason family) from early October to mid-December 2020. Thirty socially-distanced seats for each concert will be available at £20 each; online viewers can stream each performance on demand for 48 hours afterward for £12.50 each. In addition, the resident orchestras, the London Symphony and the BBC Symphony, will begin live concerts at the Barbican in November. – The Guardian

A Danish collective of jazz musicians have perfected their far-right counter-protest strategy. “Free Jazz Against Paludan” follows the far-right politician Rasmus Paludan around the country and plays jazz very loudly and very badly at his events, in a bid to drown out his voice. – Vice

In March of this year, Yi-Wen Jiang posted a comment on the Chinese social media platform WeChat in response to a post by San Francisco Symphony associate principal viola Yun Jie Liu. Jiang’s comment, which went viral, was denounced by some Chinese media outlets as ’racist’ and led to a parting of the ways between Jiang and his fellow Shanghai Quartet members. – The Strad

With fundraising for the Colburn School project stalled, Frank Gehry released to The Times images of his concert hall models for the first time. As the architect’s design demonstrates, the two halls could well make or break the promise of the $1-billion Grand. – Los Angeles Times

“To alleviate the [lockdown-induced budget] shortfall, orchestra musicians have amended their contract to take a 25% cut in base salary in the 2020-21 season and a 50% cut in overscale pay. … Previously, musicians had accepted a cut of 10% in May and then 20% in July. … The administrative staff is changing the status of 30% of its full-time staff — 25 people — through a reduction of hours, furloughs, layoffs and position elimination through attrition.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Back in 2001, a group of people decided to take the tempo direction in John Cage’s 1985 work As Slow As Possible to an extreme and began a performance (of the composer’s 1987 arrangement for organ, Organ²/ASLSP) intended to last 639 years. (Since the score opens with a rest, the first notes didn’t actually begin sounding until early 2003.) On Sept. 5, which would have been Cage’s 108th birthday, performers executed the first chord change since 2013; it was the 14th since the concert began. Catherine Hickey reports on how it was done (and yes, there was a crowd). – The New York Times

Michael Andor Brodeur looks at the NFL’s decision to add “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” to “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games, and ponders other anthems (because that’s what they are) ranging from “God Bless America” to “This Land Is Your Land” to “The Times They Are A-Changin'” to “Born in the U.S.A.” (and maybe even “Strange Fruit”). “However varied these many musical visions of patriotism may be, they share common concerns: struggle, tension, transition, uncertainty, progress. These are not songs that chant U! S! A! (although Bruce does comes close) so much as walk its roads, fight its wars, bear its burdens.” – The Washington Post

“As it evolved, jazz remained a resistance music precisely because it was the sound of Black Americans building something together, in the face of repression. But at the end of the 1960s, … schools and universities across the country began welcoming jazz as America’s so-called ‘classical music,’ canonizing its older styles and effectively freezing it in place. … Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it: young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins.” – The New York Times

“Classical music has long been criticised for being overwhelmingly white, but the Southbank Centre said its first post-lockdown season in the Royal Festival Hall would feature works by 16 composers of colour. … Musicians will be returning for the three-month series of concerts at the centre, but audiences will not. Instead the events will be streamed online and 10 of the concerts will be broadcast on [BBC] Radio 3.” – The Guardian