Category: music

The accounts are a way for musicians to hold themselves accountable for consistent, productive practice and to receive feedback from other musicians. They are also an archival tool, a way to track progress over time. Practicing, long an activity completed in solitude, with only a metronome and tuner as company, has now become its own sort of performance. Playing to a virtual audience has become one of the few remaining incentives for musicians who are otherwise holed up at home, away from their schools, orchestras, and teachers. – The New Yorker

Teotihuacán, which had a population of around 100,000 at its height circa 500 CE, seems to have had no system of writing and left behind no known written records. But musical instruments have survived — quadruple flutes, double-chambered water whistles and the like. Researcher Arnd Adje Both, whom one might call a paleo-musicologist, has had copies of those instruments made and is planning to bring them to Teotihuacán to be played. – The Economist

According to a new survey, 90 percent of independent venue owners, promoters and bookers say that they will have to close permanently within the next few months, if they can’t get an infusion of targeted government funding. – NPR

The decision not to resume performances before Jan. 6, 2021, at the earliest came the week after the Metropolitan Opera said it would not reopen before the end of December. Like the Philharmonic, the Met has been closed since March, and has furloughed its orchestra, chorus and stagehands and some administrative staff, while continuing to provide them with health benefits. – The New York Times

“The limitations of relaying opera from stage to online are subtle. It’s the difference between an experience that’s mesmerizing and one that’s merely impressive.” David Patrick Stearns considers just what it is we’re missing as houses like the Met remain dark for the rest of the year — things like grandeur, panoramic views of the stage, intermission debates with other opera fans, and the sheer energy of air molecules being moved around. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

To many scientists and doctors, the risk of singing is clear. “It’s not safe for people to simply return to the choir room and pick things up,” Lucinda Halstead, the president-elect of the Performing Arts Medical Association, said in a telephone interview. William Ristenpart, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Davis, who has studied how disease-carrying particles spread during speech, said in a Zoom interview that he “would strongly agree with the assessment that singing, especially indoors in enclosed spaces, is a terrible idea right now.” – The New York Times

“If the music industry wants to support black lives, labels and platforms can start with amending contracts, distributing royalties, diversifying boardrooms, and retroactively paying back all the black artists, and their families, they have built their empires on.” – Rolling Stone

As the novel coronavirus spread, the machinery of live classical performance ground to a halt months ago, putting thousands out of work; the industry will be one of the last to return to full activity, and no one can yet agree on how or when that can happen; unlike continental Europe, Britain doesn’t provide nearly enough public funding to see classical music through the crisis. Many famous theatre folk are sounding the alarm for their art form, writes Charlotte Higgins; why aren’t well-known classical lovers doing the same? – The Guardian

Domingo Hindoyan will succeed Vasily Petrenko on the podium of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in September 2021. A former assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper in Berlin, Hindoyan began studying music in El Sistema in his native Caracas and went on to study violin and conducting in Geneva, where he now lives with his two children and his wife, soprano Sonya Yoncheva. – Gramophone

Last week’s small beginnings showed a way forward, demonstrating what an crucial role the BBC can and must play to aid a potential recovery of classical music before it is safe for venues to open to the public. – The Guardian