Musicians of the Baltimore Symphony have agreed to $900,000 in concessions, on top of $1 million in reduced pay, benefits and working days agreed to in April, as the orchestra struggles with reduced revenues and contributions and faces an as yet undetermined deficit, Tim Smith reports in the Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/bal-bso-musicians-agree-to-more-concessions-0730,0,7328503.story
Michael Steinberg, the musicologist, lecturer and program annotator for the San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic and other orchestras, has died of cancer at the age of 80.
Steinberg adapted his program notes into three definitive guides to classical music, "The Symphony," "The Concerto" and "Choral Masterworks."
His obituary in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/arts/music/29steinberg.html?_r=1&ref=music
The National Symphony's associate conductor, Emil de Cou, has prepared "real-time" program notes on Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral") that will be sent via the Twitter messaging platform to patrons of a July 30 concert at Wolf Trap, Tim Smith reports on his Baltimore Sun blog:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/classicalmusic/2009/07/national_symphony_to_introduce.html
So much for "please turn off all electronic devices."
UPDATE: The Washington Post's Anne Midgette weighs the pros and cons of technological add-ons in the classical concert experience:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/29/AR2009072903067.html?hpid=topnews
The North Carolina Symphony, which ended the season $4 million in debt, has cut its musicians' contracted working year from 43 to 37 weeks plus one week of unpaid furlough, which will reduce players' incomes by 17 percent in the coming season.
Grant Llewellyn, the orchestra's music director, will take a 10 percent salary cut, and its president and CEO, David Chambliss Worters, will take a 30 percent salary cut. The orchestra already had canceled engagements of some guest soloists and conductors, reduced its concert and touring schedule and eliminated programming requiring extra musicians.
The orchestra's operating budget is being cut from $14.1 million in 2008-09 to $11.9 million in 2009-10, Rob Christensen reports in The News & Observer of Raleigh:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1606526.html
The New York Times has agreed to the sale of WQXR, the classical-music radio station it has owned since 1944, in a deal with New York public-radio station WNYC and the broadcasting firm Univision.
WQXR will become a listener-supported station with a narrower broadcast radius; its webcasts (via http://www.wqxr.com/cgi-bin/iowa/air/listen/index.html) will not be affected by the deal, expected to go through late this year, The Times reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/arts/music/15radio.html?_r=1&ref=music
Conductor Lorin Maazel has announced a second season of the Castleton Festival at Maazel's Castleton Farms in Rappahannock County in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwestern Virginia.
The second season, which will run from July 2-18, 2010, will present two new chamber-opera productions and a revival of one of the four Britten operas being staged this summer. Programming will be announced later.
In the current economic downturn, "we should have been deterred, but we weren’t," Maazel said in a prepared statement. Castleton events "have been packed all the way through the festival, and we look towards the future with confidence knowing that there are people out there who appreciate what we’re doing and that love us and as much as we love them," he added.
For details on the current Castleton Festival, running through July 19, visit www.castletonfestival.org
The Lynchburg Public Library has installed a sound system that pipes baroque music, swing tunes and opera into its parking lot, joining "a growing number of communities worldwide using music to discourage loitering and prevent crime," Alicia Petska reports in The News & Advance:
http://www.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/lynchburg_public_library_pumps_music_into_parking_lot_for_security/17551/
Petska quotes the director of the southern Virginia city's library system: "We’re trying to create an overall more pleasant environment for all users. And to keep people moving."
