Category: music

Todd Ellison’s contract took effect last July 1, and on January 21 he and the Pops “separated,” according to a statement from the orchestra. Principal guest conductor David Charles Abell has been appointed music director effective immediately, and he starts on a new three-year contract next July. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

“The RNZ board has backed down on the decision to take Concert off the FM transmission. The move comes after widespread criticism from the arts community and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement yesterday that the Government would free up unused FM broadband spectrum to keep the station where it is.” – The New Zealand Herald

No details about money or the length of the season have been announced yet; the first will probably come out later this month, and the second will be addressed in this year’s contract negotiations. But there are plans to live-stream concerts and give performances in Baltimore neighborhoods and around Maryland. – The Baltimore Sun

The Uruguay-born conductor will be 63 when he departs in the summer of 2021 after 18 seasons. He raised the profile of the orchestra considerably during his tenure, most notably with a very well-received performance at Carnegie Hall in 2011. – The Oregonian

“There are more and more people that are really, really good at their instruments, and the amount of competition has certainly gone up. It’s getting increasingly challenging to win a job even in a small market orchestra — the level of playing across the board is greater.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

She had just finished recording some Beethoven, and movers were taking her piano from the Berlin studio; they dropped it while trying to lift it onto a hand truck, and the instrument’s iron frame crashed and its lid split in two. The Fazioli F278, custom-made for Hewitt, was the only one of its model with four pedals; Paolo Fazioli himself examined it and called it “unsalvageable.” – The Guardian

For example, Taylor Swift’s song “Shake It Off” had a whopping 46.3 million streams in 2017 and earned between $280,000 and $390,000, according to one report. Swift, one of the world’s biggest pop stars, will generate more streams with one song than most musicians can accumulate in a lifetime. Another study by Digital Music News found that Pandora had the highest per-play royalty rate. At Pandora’s 1.68 cents per play, a musician would need about 114,149 plays to earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage ($12 per hour) of $1,920. – Seattle Times

Philip Clark, author of a forthcoming book on Brubeck, the American jazz legend, has for the first time gained access to 1959 recordings that had lain forgotten in a Californian archive until now. He was taken aback to hear a completely different rhythmic groove and Brubeck’s quartet struggling to make sense of it. “It sounds like a bad student jazz band,” he said. – The Guardian

The station draws about 170,000 listeners a week in New Zealand, heavily skewed towards those aged 65 and older, according to the broadcaster. But fans mobilised last week when Radio New Zealand proposed to throw out its classical arm’s FM station in May, replacing it with a youth radio channel in August. Some 18 jobs would be eliminated, with new roles created at the youth station, RNZ said. – The Guardian

Gudnadóttir won for Joker. She said, “To the girls, to the women, to the mothers, to the daughters who hear the music bubbling within, please speak up — we need to hear your voices.” – The Hollywood Reporter