And you thought the only ones who needed to worry were the illegal file-sharers? After reading this article, think again: …in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased
Read moreGavin Borchert, composer and the Seattle Weekly‘s classical music critic, has an interesting take in this week’s rag, on current calls for jazzing-up or otherwise “slumming” the concert experience. A couple cogent paragraphs: A couple of things puzzle me. First, the classical concert experience is, in all essentials, identical to that of dance, theater, literary events, or for that matter—barring the munching of popcorn and cheering the fireball deaths of villains—movies. Go to the performance space, buy a ticket, sit down in rows, watch and listen, try not to disturb your fellow audience members. Yet it’s only in conjunction with concerts
Read morePaul Dirmeikis attended Stockhausen’s funeral on December 13, and has a report. The family is already starting to slowly walk away. Some of us stay around the tomb, scattered between the neighbour tombs. Near the larger alley going down to the chapel, all members of Stockhausen’s family gathered together in a circle, holding their hands. Simon reads something. It’s around 4 pm. That’s it. One of the greatest composers of these last 50 years has just been buried. It’s a freezing afternoon in a distant German village. Fermata.
Read morerecieved at the Canadian Eletroacoustic mail-list: PRESS RELEASE The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at his home in Kuerten-Kettenberg and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kuerten. He composed 362 individually performable works. The works which were composed until 1969 are published by Universal Edition in Vienna, and all works since then are published by the Stockhausen-Verlag. Numerous texts by Stockhausen and about his works have been published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music. Suzanne Stephens and Kathinka Pasveer, who have performed many of his works and, together with him, have taken care of
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: 2005 Snapshot: Music at Northwestern University Obviously a picture from a warmer season… Northwestern has a killer location, right on Lake Michigan, just a bit north of downtown Chicago. I’ll be heading that way for a week in late January (tagging along for my wife’s special management class), and in honor of the visit I thought I’d share the site linked above, full of streaming
Read moreAll the ooh-ahh flutter over Golijov’s Ayre, or even the recent Dudamel & Co., and then you spot something like this: Loredana: Marioara de la Gorj (2001)
Read moreI’d read about the dastardly act a while back, but Ethelbert Nevin over at La Folia has some amusing speculation in his “Top 12 Reasons Why Somebody Broke into a Warehouse and Stole Hundreds of Luigi Nono CDs“. You’ll have to go there to read them all, but I do like “Featured orchestral musicians afraid col legno will adopt Radiohead’s business model”, “col legno’s sets of Rihm string quartets were too heavy”, and “Joyce Hatto discovered playing trautonium on Isola 3“.
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing musicians that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Julie Harting (b. 1957 — US, NYC) The talk is always “Oh that Schoenberg, making this artificial system that nobody really gets or feels!”… Except there are a few people like Julie: When I was 7 or 8, I found a miniature violin in my father’s closet, because he played violin when he was a kid. I also found a book called
Read moreRecent postings here notwithstanding, I swear I’m not on a complete György Ligeti kick; but it just so happens that the German-news-in-English website Sign and Sight has printed the translation of a speech György Kurtág gave in remembrance of his great friend, fellow Hungarian and fellow composer. (The occasion was Kurtág’s receiving the Ordre Pour le Merite in Berlin.) The German version was originally published in August this year, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. As a bonus, this article includes all the extra stuff that Kurtág never got to say during the ceremony. It’s a beautiful, intensely intimate memoriam.
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing musicians that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Strange and intimate places via Myspace Rather than go in-depth on one or two musicians, we’re going to play epicurean. The back-stories and other works of each of these musicians may (or sometimes, may not) be found easily enough with a few clicks around; I’ll leave that up to you. Right now, it doesn’t matter; I only want to lead you to
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