Category: music

That’s the grim figure that the Milan opera house’s new superintendent, Dominique Meyer, will present to its board of directors on Thursday. Under the law that Italy’s parliament passed last week, La Scala could accommodate only 200 people, including the performers. – Gramilano (Milan)

“For decades, [the piece] seemed, to Mr. Glass’s circle, to exist only as fragments in his archive. Then the final manuscript for Music in Eight Parts resurfaced near the end of 2017. … Now in the hands of Mr. Glass’s publisher, it has been realized anew for his ensemble and, 50 years after its premiere, released on a recording by Orange Mountain Music this week.” – The New York Times

“Bucking the trend of the vast majority of international festivals and opera companies that have been forced to shutter due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Salzburg Festival announced today that it plans to present a modified festival this summer, with fewer performances in shortened formats taking place from August 1 through 30.” No details of the programming were revealed. – Opera News

The musicians asked to take a 50 percent pay cut. Instead, while two-thirds of the administrative staff stayed on with a 20 percent pay cut, “the board opted to temporarily stand down its musicians and put them on the federal government’s JobKeeper program in response to the financial impact of COVID-19.” The musicians are not fond of this plan. – Sydney Morning Herald

That’s what Orchestra Kentucky says, anyway. And if you don’t have your own instrument, no problem: “Even just listening to music and watching other musicians can have positive effects.” – WNKY

For the moment, the eyes of the concert industry are on the Arkansas city of Fort Smith. There, at a venue called TempleLive, blues-rock singer Travis McCready is set to perform a solo show Monday. It may well be the first ticketed indoor public music event in the nation to take place since the coronavirus-fueled shutdown of concerts. – San Diego Union-Tribune

“As a critic, I am desperate to maintain contact with what musicians are doing, thinking, and feeling. The sound is often tinny, the stage patter awkward, the home décor distracting. One could instead sample archived professional-quality videos that opera houses, orchestras, and other organizations have placed online. For me, though, the live or freshly recorded happenings matter more. They document, with the oblique power that the arts possess, an extraordinary human phase in history. Their mere existence is bracing, and at times they achieve startling power.” – The New Yorker

And the music at issue is almost always in the public domain. The bots, developed and trained on popular music, are finding performance videos of, Bach, Mozart, Chopin and so on to be too similar to existing commercial recordings by other musicians and automatically blocking them. Then the appeal process with these enormous corporations is frustrating and way too slow. – The Washington Post

The performance, Riccardo Muti conducting the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra in Scriabin and Mozart, will be the opening event of this year’s Ravenna Festival. Attendance will be limited to 250 people, masks required, with both audience and musicians practicing social distancing. – Yahoo! (AP)

Our preconceived ideas about a composer or piece can keep us from listening with fresh ears. An intermezzo by the mighty Brahms? Before you hear a note, you may already have decided it’s great. – The New York Times