Category - Electronic media

1
The Force Is Already With Us
2
DigitICE: Opening Access, Historical Records, and Performance Practice through Documentation
3
Technology and the Orchestra
4
A Look at Forte Notation Software, Plus a Free Giveaway!
5
No Time At All
6
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at 100
7
Gold in them thar toobs?
8
Didn’t work
9
How to Miss the Titanic
10
No settlement in Detroit

The Force Is Already With Us

John Williams is one of the most important and influential composers writing new music for orchestras today. In fact, the most exciting and anticipated new music for orchestra this year is John Williams’ new score to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Yet, despite his incontestably successful forty-year career writing new music for orchestra and his[…]

Read More

DigitICE: Opening Access, Historical Records, and Performance Practice through Documentation

By nature, a composer’s work exists outside the bounds of human time. Works are remembered for centuries and, eventually, millennia, but the feedback loop varies greatly; it often takes years or generations for a composer’s work to receive deserved recognition. For performers, the feedback loop is immediate—sometimes rewarding, sometimes disappointing, always providing an opportunity for[…]

Read More

Technology and the Orchestra

Symphony magazine featured an interesting article about how digital technologies are impacting orchestras. Written by Andy Doe, a media and technology consultant who writes about music at his blog, properdiscord.com, “The Digital Orchestra” takes us from 1994, when the New Zealand Symphony’s principal bassist Dale Gold put up a simple website, to our world of ever-increasing mobile[…]

Read More

A Look at Forte Notation Software, Plus a Free Giveaway!

We are giving away one free download for Forte Premium, the top level product from Forte (retail price: $229)!  One winner will be chosen at random. Enter your name in the drawing up to three times – see details at the end of this post. Giveaway ends May 26, 2014. *UPDATE*: Congratulations to Jen Elle[…]

Read More

No Time At All

Just like Rip Van Winkle, American orchestras have been asleep for twenty years. Season after season of the same repertoire, played again and again for generations until the idea of an orchestra participating in modern musical life seems outrageous. Last week, the League of American Orchestras focused their annual conference around the idea of “Imagining Orchestras in[…]

Read More

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at 100

2013 is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and 2013 will see more than 270 performances of this iconic work of the early 20th century. Donald Rosenberg, long-time music critic and reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has written a fascinating article about the Rite in this month’s Symphony magazine.[…]

Read More

Gold in them thar toobs?

Think “orchestral institutions” as “artists” in this article and some interesting questions emerge: Are we finally entering the age of the digital cultural entrepreneur (DCE)? That is, has it now become possible for a gifted artist or writer to control the reins of his or her career from a laptop, scheduling gigs, selling books or[…]

Read More

Didn’t work

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has pulled the plug on its attempt to emulate the Metropolitan Opera’s successful series of live broadcasts to movie theaters: When the Los Angeles Philharmonic launched its series of live broadcasts to cinemas in 2011, the organization touted it as an innovative program intended to broaden the popular reach of the[…]

Read More

How to Miss the Titanic

[This is the second in a series of posts in which I will talk about the current, troubled, state of professional musicmaking and offer some glimpses of possible solutions for the future.] The first time I heard the London Symphony … Continue reading

Read More

No settlement in Detroit

There’s a management offer on the table, and a management-dictated deadline to accept it or the else, but there’s no agreement between the negotiating teams: Detroit Symphony Orchestra management made what it calls a final offer to musicians tonight, requesting an up-or-down vote on the contract proposal by 5 p.m. Thursday. The move — which[…]

Read More