Category: music

This series of unstaged performances of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust was an accident – they were meant to be seven fully-staged performances. But what a happy accident, and what the Met could learn from the experience: “Rameau, Lully, Vivaldi: The glory of early music could finally ring at the Met without the pressure and expense of full stagings. Ditto Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise, a late-20th-century classic still unheard in this city.” – The New York Times

Eilish, whose 22-year-old brother produced her album (and who won Producer of the Year), won Best Song, Best Record, Best Album, and Best Artist. Dudamel and the LA Phil won a Grammy; Jennifer Higdon won a Grammy; Joyce DiDonato won a Grammy … the entire list is at the link. – Los Angeles Times

Last night, the night before the 62nd Grammys, Sean “Diddy” Coombs called out the awards for their lack of diversity – and a decades-long refusal to recognize rap and hip hop. The NYT had already weighed in, agreeing: “Broadly speaking, nonwhite artists, female artists, and artists who come from the worlds of hip-hop and R&B are consistently marginalized, honored in genre categories but shut out in the four major categories (album, song and record of the year, and best new artist). Add it all up, and you get impending irrelevance.” – The New York Times

Public sector workers, dancers, and musicians have been on strike since December, with cancellations costing the Paris Opera nearly 15 million euros. But Saturday night, the production of Tales of Hoffman went up. “‘To preserve the economic integrity of the Opera, we have made the decision to go ahead with the performance this evening, but we remain mobilised for the withdrawal of this bill,’ said a union representative at the start of the performance, in a statement recorded by a spectator and posted on Twitter.” – France24

This is a hot time for symphonies showing Harry Potter movies while performing, live, John Williams’ scores. But, well, why? John Jesensky, who works for CineConcerts and has conducted many orchestras performing movie scores as the movie plays above their heads, explains. “I see so many young faces out in the audience experiencing the orchestra and live classical music for the first time. If there is one thing I hope I accomplish in all of our performances, it is to inspire a youngster to pick up an instrument, or for an adult to decide they would love to come back and visit the orchestra again.” – The Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Jimmie Allen, who hit the charts with “Best Shot” in 2019, says, “I was excited and a little sad to be the first Black artist to launch a career with a number one in country just because of the year it is.” – BBC

“However difficult to imagine, across those eventful decades, countless people embraced the idea that what happened in the concert hall and the opera house was inseparable from the destiny of the United States and the well-being of the American people.” – Washington Post

Ousted chief Deborah Dugan’s explosive claims threatened to overshadow the star-studded show itself, which is scheduled to air on CBS. Her brutal portrait of the Recording Academy as a chummy cabal of men with expense accounts, conspiring to line their pockets on the backs of musicians, harass women at will and cover it all up, seemed to confirm people’s most cynical fears about the music industry and the Grammys in particular, which have long been criticized as out of touch and lacking transparency. – The New York Times

The festival has been in turmoil for the past few years after letting its artistic and executive directors. Finalists are conductors Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Craig Hella Johnson and Julian Wachner. – Eugene Register-Guard

Zach Finkelstein: “Company X is a prestigious music apprenticeship festival for instrumentalists and singers. They take in about $15 million a year in revenue, own over $80 million dollars in assets, including real estate, investments, and cash on hand, and pay their CEO almost half a million dollars a year. Nearly two thousand young musicians paid $60 each last year to apply for a handful of spots, with no guarantee of being heard in person. netting the company an estimated $118,000 in application fees. And they pay their newly-hired apprentice performers absolutely nothing.” – The Middle-Class Artist