Category: Blog
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‘West Side Story’ and the Question of Artists’ Legacies
The rights holders for West Side Story have withdrawn permission for the musical to be performed in Mississippi and North Carolina, apparently because of the new anti-LGBT laws passed in both states. The move, which was reported by Playbill, follows cancelled concerts in those states by pop artists including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Star and Bryan Adams.
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Is Ravel’s ‘Boléro’ Really a Warhorse?
The European copyright has expired for classical music’s largest and most extravagant crescendo, Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. Although the U.S. copyright does not run out until 2025, Europeans can now use the piece freely in advertisements, films and figure-skating routines without having to pay royalties.
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‘The Shining’ Opera Is Based on King Novel – Not Kubrick Film
Any list of “horror operas” would not be a long one. It might include supernatural thrillers like Meyerbeer’s Robert Le Diable, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Philip Glass’s Fall of the House of Usher. Some would add Verdi’s Macbeth (plenty of witches) and Strauss’s Elektra (an all-around grim tale).
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Marian Anderson to Appear on the $5 Bill
The United States will soon join Sweden, Norway and Australia in featuring a famed opera singer on its currency. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Wednesday that the back of the $5 bill is going to be overhauled to include images of the late contralto Marian Anderson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Martin Luther King…
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Henry Threadgill’s Pulitzer Prize Win Is a Gesture to Jazz’s Avant-Garde
The 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music went not to a classical composition but a jazz work: Henry Threadgill’s In for a Penny, In for a Pound, a four-movement, self-described “epic” written to showcase the members of his quintet Zooid.
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James Levine: His Top 10 Operas at the Met
In a widely expected move, the Metropolitan Opera has announced that music director James Levine will step down at the end of this season, after more than 40 years on the podium. The Met plans to name a successor in the coming months and, starting next season, Levine will become the company’s music director emeritus.
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New Jersey Arts Groups Grapple With Changing Audiences
Working in the shadow of a major city is a challenge faced by suburban arts organizations across the United States, but especially in New Jersey, where New York City and Philadelphia act as strong magnets for culture lovers. The state’s opera companies have particularly struggled to stay afloat, not only in recent times, but for well over a decade.
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Goodbye ‘American Idol’… Hello ‘Virtuosos?’
Just as “American Idol” prepares to ride off into the sunset with a three-part series farewell on Fox this week comes this news: a Hungarian TV talent show devoted to young classical musicians has been optioned by a major American production company.
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Five Takeaways from Classical April Fool’s Day
April Fool’s Day offers classical music organizations an opportunity to reveal a less serious side, which increasingly means online video. There were at least three such videos that made the rounds in 2016. At the risk of turning a holiday of silliness and shenanigans into an exercise in furrowed-brow analysis, here are five takeaways from April Fool’s Day.
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Baltimore Symphony Premiere Aims to Address Racial Strife
Tucked inside a press release about the Baltimore Symphony’s April 16 concert at Carnegie Hall was one eye-catching detail: Before the program’s centerpiece of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Marin Alsop is slated to conduct the premiere of Kevin Puts‘s The City, a long-scheduled piece whose creation took on “added focus,” after last year’s rioting and protests after the death of Freddie Gray. It will be accompanied by a film by…