Nathan Currier paid the Brooklyn Philharmonic over $70,000 to play his work and they didn’t even play it right.
Cahill told Currier that the performance was running long, and he faced significant overtime costs unless he made cuts to his piece. Flabbergasted, but lacking the funds to pay overtime, the composer attempted to salvage the situation by cutting three movements from the middle of Act Three, thereby ensuring the finale would still be played.
But instead of adhering to the cuts, at 10:45 pm, the orchestra apparently decided on another solution and abruptly ended the piece (overtime would reportedly begin at 11 pm).
He is suing to recoup his costs.
If the system worked the orchestra would pay him, the creator, to perform the piece. But, instead he paid them.
In radio, they call this payola. But, I guess, it’s cool in classical music.
As my friend, Dave, said:
Karlheinz Stockhausen once wrote a six-hour composition that included four helicopters, and the orchestra paid him for the privilege of performing it.
Everything is backwards and stupid.
They’re covering the tearing down of the set for the Met’s Ring cycle.
On the front page.
Not a show…
Tear down and load out.
Then, when you least expect it (because you are disoriented by the notion that The New York Times has nothing else to write about), James Barron unloads this little jewel:
The machine’s malfunctions became something of a leitmotif, right from the start.
You have got to be kidding me with that sentence.
The Awl’s Jamie Green went to a new music concert at Carnegie Hall:
I felt like I was missing something. Like I should like this music. Like I should get it. So I’ve asked for help.
The article contains a transcription of a conversation between Jamie and his friend who is a classical musician. There’s a lot of wonderful insight in there.
A tumblog whose mission is to find and shame “writing that confirms your worst fears about classical musicians and audiences.”
I suspect great things will come of this.
Over on the Naxos Music Blog I came across this post on metadata for classical music. There’s quite a few good ideas there, most of which comports with my own system. I think, going forward, this is the most reasonable solution for which we can hope.
If the entire classical music community should get together and ask for something from the tech world, it should be this: “Make sure we can always see the composers, and give us support for long fields. We can figure everything else out ourselves”.
No problem.
Here: Dr. Ogg undresses the notion, perpetuated by Steve Jobs and Neil Young, that 24/192 recordings are the future. Guess what? They’re actually worse than standard 16/44.1.
The guy who invented .ogg wants to teach you some things about digital signals. For starters: they’re not stair-shaped.
This is required viewing for anyone who is surprised by that.
It’s amazing to me when things like this happen: for some reason, FOX producers decided to completely rip-off arrangements for their (terrible) show, Glee. This time, though, they stole from the wrong nerd. Their version of Baby Got Back is stolen, wholesale, from Jonathan Coulton’s cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s iconic track.
Anyway, there’s no doubt that Coulton is going to sue FOX, and he should win if there’s any justice left in the courts. But, it Turns Out™ that FOX was stealing from a bunch of artists other than Coulton. Now, because Coulton has spoken out, these other artists are also speaking out. What. A. Mess.
In true J-Co fashion, he has re-released the track, as a single, under the same license as he did before. (Mix gets his money.) As for Coulton, he’s donating all of his proceeds to two worthy causes: the VH1 Save the Music Foundation and the It Gets Better Project.
So, cough up a dollar. It helps some great causes and it tells FOX to stop being asshats.
It’s The Real Book. In all three keys. In website index form. With multiple, streaming recordings. Without ads.
Amazing.
From Amazon’s new service, AutoRip, help page:
Music you import into Cloud Player in the future will also be automatically “upgraded” to “high-quality” 256 Kbps[…]1
Wow! Really?!? You’re going to upgrade my lossless CD into an MP3?!? For free?!!? Maybe next you can “upgrade” my paper-towels order to ¼ of the towels I bought. For free.
James Fenton on Handel:
I always think listening to Handel operas is a bit like seeing your luggage on the carousel—Oh no, there goes my bag! And then, Oh good, here it comes again.
Elissa Milne, an Australian composer, has a sobering fact to share about new music:
Of all the possible reasons for a concert to have a microscopic audience the most likely of them all is this one: the music has no fans.
She couldn’t be more right.
I have updated the lossless music downloads page to include one of my favorite labels, Nonesuch Records. It’s not their whole roster; but, there’s enough to get excited about. Take this one, for example.
Nonesuch is always ahead of the crowd and I am excited to see them lead in this area too.