And other “classical” Christmas and holiday and winter music, all that a holiday festivity fan’s heart could desire. Just know: “If you’re more a Winterreise than a Winter Wonderland type, this one’s not for you.” – The Guardian (UK)
Category: music
By The Numbers, Gender Inequities In Opera Are ‘Staggering,’ Says New Study
The numbers are truly, deeply bad for women in opera. “Approximately seven out of 10 voice and opera graduates are women, but since the most popular operas in the canon have many more roles for men, female singers are much less likely to be given career opportunities, and more likely to go into debt. Female classical performers also earn on average 29 percent less than their male counterparts.” – Boston Globe
Waiting For Your Virus-Canceled Opera To Premiere, And Then Waiting More, Is So Very 2020
Composer Elaine Agnew was supposed to see her opera Paper Boats premiere in Galway. “The original plan for three performances in mid-June was lost due to the first lockdown and the December performance would have been a slimmed-down livestream. Now, like most of Music for Galway’s 2020 plans … it’s hovering, Cheshire-cat-like, in the imponderable, post-festive, pre-vaccine future most of us are contemplating for the early months of 2021.” – Irish Times
Spotify’s ‘Wrapped’ Function Is Actually About Grift
The news came up on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok; in text messages, surprised WhatsApp screenshots, and amused or horrified phone calls. But it wasn’t news at all. Spotify’s “Wrapped” function is actually a big ad for … Spotify, which “bet that its users, flattered by being designated top fans, would share their statuses on social media, spreading the gospel of not just Spotify in general but specifically the virtue of spending thousands of hours on Spotify. It’s unequivocally worked.” – Slate
Look, 2020 Broke Christmas Music
“There really aren’t enough chestnuts in the world to make this holiday season feel like reason to sing. And I’m here to say that it’s okay to not be okay.” Here’s a classical music critic’s ideas for what to listen to instead. – Washington Post
Louis Andriessen Has Dementia And Has Written His Last Music
The 81-year-old composer suffered a fall last year; this past January, his condition having worsened, he was diagnosed with a combination of Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia and has moved into a long-term care facility. That means that May, a cantata written for Cappella Amsterdam and the Orchestra of the 18th Century that has its world premiere on Saturday (Dec. 5) at the Concertgebouw, is almost certainly his final work. Journalist Guido van Oorschot interviews Andriessen’s wife and his assistant and orchestrator for May about how the score came together and the composer’s state of health. – de Volkskrant (in Dutch)
US Senate Introduces Bill To Let Musicians Deduct Full Cost Of Production As Its Incurred
With many of the CARES Act provisions expiring, the Help Independent Tracks Succeed (HITS) Act, a bipartisan solution that would allow musicians, technicians and producers to deduct 100 percent of recording production expenses in the year they are incurred, rather than in later years — i.e. an individual could fully expense the cost of new studio recordings on their taxes, up to $150,000. This small tax incentive would alter the current tax policy that requires individual recording artists and record producers to amortize production expenses for tax purposes over the economic life of a sound recording. – Variety
Jazz Standard’s Closing Is Likely Only The First Of Many More
According to a recent survey by the New York Independent Venue Association, 68 of its members have accrued $20 million in debt as a result of the pandemic, and they need more than $5 million in monthly relief. – The New York Times
Maybe The Right Concert Piece For The Age Of COVID Is Cage’s 4’33”
When Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic learned, on short notice, that their Oct. 31 concert would be the last for some time with a live audience, they chose Cage’s score-without-notes as their encore — and their rendition has racked up more than 50,000 views on YouTube so far. David Patrick Stearns considers the meaning of this notorious musical landmark, both in general and in this particular performance, which (despite Petrenko’s much-too-fast tempos) “seemed to achieve maximum eloquence.” Seriously. – Classical Voice North America
Reconsidering The Diversity Of Classical Music
“Classical music is diversifying not just on account of contemporary composers, but thanks to increased awareness of figures who were famous in their day but have since been forgotten, covered up or sidelined. The history of classical music is much more complex and diverse than the impression given by the canon as we know it now.” – The Guardian