“Through November 21, total track sales (both albums and individual tracks) are up about 5 per cent (assuming 12 tracks equal an album). That gain of 95 million tracks pales in comparison to the 277 million-unit gain achieved in all of 2009. And the revenue those 95 million tracks generated is tiny compared with the financial impact of 47 million fewer CDs sold through November 21.”
Tag: 12.27.10
Louisville Orchestra Asks Court for Permission to Stiff Musicians
“On Tuesday, a judge will hear arguments over whether the orchestra should be granted relief from paying its musicians for approximately 90 days. The orchestra filed chapter 11 earlier this month as part of a massive financial overhaul.”
Winnie Mandela Is Subject of South Africa’s First Homegrown Opera
“Winnie is believed to be the first opera fully composed and orchestrated in South Africa. The historic language of the form, Italian, will be jettisoned in favour of a libretto combining English and Xhosa, with a 60-piece orchestra performing a fusion of western and traditional African music.”
Environmentalists Battle Each Other Over Christo’s Colorado Project
The artist’s plan to hang panels of translucent fabric over nearly six miles of the Arkansas River has gotten the blessing of the local chapter of the Sierra Club – enraging local environmentalists who are adamantly opposed to the project.
Boxing Day Blizzard Wallops Broadway
“The last two weeks of the year are usually the most lucrative for New York theater – especially the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day – because of the huge influx of tourists into the city. Most popular productions are usually turning people away around this time, rather than luring them with ‘snow day’ discount offers.”
Diana Vreeland Changed the Way Everyone Talks About Fashion
Editor-in-chief of Vogue during the 1960s, Vreeland “was dead serious about clothes – she called the bikini the ‘most important thing since the atom bomb’ – but she nonetheless managed to talk about fashion in a way that appreciated and celebrated its frivolity.”
Telenovelas Meet Bollywood
India, a Brazilian prime-time soap opera “that showcases Indian mores in a story of forbidden love between a low-caste Dalit man and an upper-caste woman,” created a sensation when it aired in Brazil last year. Now one of Univision’s Spanish-language networks bringing the series to the U.S.
When Children Learned About Science Through Fairy Tales
“Once upon a time, there was a giant called Gravity and a fairy called Cohesion. This is the story of how Victorians showed children the wonders of science.”
The Rock-Star-Turned-Astrophysicist
Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross interviews Brian May, once the lead guitarist for Queen, who earned a doctorate in astrophysics in 2007 and is now chancellor of a university in Liverpool.
Andrew Lloyd Webber Corrects Small Oversight in Wizard of Oz
Says “The Lord” of his next show, “We’ve added four new songs because it didn’t have anything for either of the witches or the wizard.”