There’s no summer season of music for the L.A. Phil at the Hollywood Bowl. But there are food banks, a take-out restaurant from those who usually make food for the concerts, and a lot of musicians, socially distanced, trying to record music, and live through this. – Los Angeles Times
Category: music
The Joys Of Music Reaction Videos
Is it time for, say, Beethoven reaction videos? Because this was the experience of someone hearing “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time: “Watching the full gamut of human emotions – gentle contemplation, wistful sadness, wide-gobbed amazement – shimmer across his face, as the song lunges from one operatic movement to the next, is nothing short of wonderful. ‘WHERE HAVE I BEEN?!’ he asks at the end, on the verge of tears.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Leonard Cohen Estate Is Considering Legal Action After RNC Uses Hallelujah – Twice
The RNC asked for permission, and the Cohen Estate said no. According to estate’s legal representative, “if the organizers had requested to use Cohen’s 2016 song ‘You Want it Darker’ then ‘we might have considered approval.'” – Slate
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Musicians Sign A Contract Through 2025
Just a year after a protracted and bitter lockout, the musicians approved a multiyear contract that, while it includes COVID-19 related wage cuts (for administration as well as for musicians), restores the money over time, giving the BSO time to recover. The chair of the Players Committee: “What’s happened at the Baltimore Symphony in the past year is nothing short of miraculous.” – Baltimore Sun
Meet The Musicians Who Are Going To The Scenes Of Tragedies to Play
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Twenty volunteer musicians, all Black and Latinx string players from in and around Milwaukee, make up the Black String Triage Ensemble. When a tragedy occurs, they bring their instruments to the scene and play a concert. They go to shootings, suicides, overdoses, house fires, car accidents. They organize their concerts around the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. – Chicago Tribune
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What Came Out Of The First-Ever ‘Opera Hack’? This
“Just over a year ago, San Diego Opera gathered 40 opera industry artists and cutting-edge technology designers from around the country for a first-of-its-kind Opera Hack weekend, with the goal of finding 21st century ways to modernize the 400-year-old art form. On Wednesday, the public finally got a look at the three ideas that earned the green light to move forward.” – The San Diego Union-Tribune
Much-Lauded Black-Run Jazz Label Faces Up To A Complicated History
The campaign that was intended to celebrate the partnership of Gene Russell, a Black pianist and producer who died in relative anonymity in 1981, and Dick Schory, a White percussionist and arranger who earned millions during RCA’s golden era, has instead revived a debate over the romantic mythology surrounding the label’s history. It has also brought to the surface the complicated, decades-old web of business dysfunction that kept these albums from being properly released over the years. – Washington Post
Ani DiFranco’s Plan To Give Prisoners A Voice
The Prison Music Project, which is a political and creative effort, is focused on centering the voices [and] stories of people who get entangled in the justice system, people who experience racial oppression and poverty and class oppression. – Shondaland
New Chief Of Paris Opera Will Begin Work Next Month, A Year Early (But What Of His Current Job In Toronto?)
When Canadian Opera Company general director Alexander Neef accepted the appointment to run the Opéra national de Paris from 2021-22, he was cutting short his Toronto contract by four years. But now he’s leaving for Paris right away, following a special request to COC from France’s Minister of Culture because of the situation in Paris. The COC’s board chair says Neef can run both companies from Paris until the board finds Neef’s successor. – Ludwig Van
Why Don’t Orchestras Improvise?
“There’s a language there, and the language comes out of so many years of study. And the idea that the orchestra can’t move a couple of paces in a certain direction toward what they would do, even as they move many paces to use orchestral notation — to try to codify things in a language that these players appreciate and are familiar with — I find that dynamic odd. Because this is the music of today.” – The New York Times