The Telegraph

The organ: The king of instruments restored

Rupert Christiansen finds listening to the organ suffocating and depressing, but, he says, he must be missing out on something.

The New York Times (via Arts Journal)

Digital Music, the African Way

The music business recently celebrated a milestone in the form of its first annual revenue growth since 1999, but one region, Africa, was unable to join the party.

WQXR (via Arts Journal)

Does Bach Need ‘Rescuing’ from Period Instruments?

In recent months, symphony orchestras have returned to the music of J.S. Bach with a vengeance.

LA Times

He was transformed by Mozart

The composer’s choral piece ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ becomes a part of Times pop music writer Randy Lewis’ life and leads him to a performance of a lifetime with the Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale.

The Economist

Serenading the future

It might sound like a tagline for an upmarket tattoo studio but “Written on Skin” is in fact the title of a new British opera composed by George Benjamin and written by Martin Crimp.

Classic FM

Model aeroplane ‘dances’ to Strauss waltz

A model aeroplane aviator has been filmed using Johann Strass II’s ‘Voices of Spring’ and ‘Tritsch-Tratsch Polka’ and ‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’ as musical accompaniment for an indoor display.

Oregon Live (via Arts Journal)

Oregon Symphony musicians perform free concerts where you can tweet, text

Week after week the musicians of the Oregon Symphony play in formal wear on a stage in front of thousands of people. Distant and unapproachable, they perform behind an invisible barrier that prevents audiences from getting to know them.

The Economist

(Written on March 26, 2013 )

(Written on March 15, 2013 )

Stockholm club Obaren hosted an intriguing event on 10th January: Stockholm’s first Yellow Lounge. Established in Berlin seven years ago, the Yellow Lounge promotes ‘classical clubbing’, where international classical musicians perform with top DJs in unexpected spaces. The project is hosted by Decca, supplying world-class artists to perform.

The evening’s performance was another first for the Yellow Lounge, as it was streamed live for the first time and broadcast on the Deutsche Grammophon website.

Violinist Daniel Hope, accompanied by composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi, performed pieces from Daniel’s upcoming album Spheres, to be released on 15th February internationally on Deutsche Grammophon. The music of the album celebrates the concept of Musica Universalis, which is the idea of the planets creating sound through their movement. Spheres features works from canonical composers such as J. S. Bach and Gabriel Fauré to contemporary favourites, such as Arvo Pärt and Ludovico Einaudi.

The live videos can be found on Deutsche Grammophon’s YouTube page here.

Other Yellow Lounge events will be taking place across the globe, such as in Trouw, Amsterdam on 7th February. More information can be found here.

(Written on January 25, 2013 )

BBC Music Magazine

An off-peak return and a spot of JS Bach

Gramophone

Sally Beamish explores new musical terrain 

The British composer embraces film and dance in her new composition based on mystical Persian poetry

(Written on October 5, 2012 )

Die Thomaner Entartete Musik article

Published on Monday 3^rd September, Gavin Plumley’s article on his online music journal, Entartete Musik, provides a great insight in to Accentus Music’s new DVD release, Die Thomaner.

‘Die Thomaner: A Year in the Life of the St. Thomas Boy Choir, Leipzig’ is a documentary that follows a year in the life of boys in the St.Thomas Choir, Leipzig; one of the most prestigious boys’ choirs in the world, which celebrated its 800^th anniversary this year. Plumley described the choir as ‘the bedrock of all musical life in the city’ and agrees that ‘as this film testifies’, the legacy of J.S.Bach’s musical reign over Leipzig lives on.

The article comments on how the DVD captures the boys’ emotional attachment to the choir and its ability to reflect the impact it has on the boys’ lives, when “Tears flow from the eyes” of one of the choir’s established leaders leaving the choir. Moreover, it encapsulates the ‘inimitable chemistry for Bach’s choir’, demonstrating how the boys, ‘like Bach himself…weave the extraordinary from the everyday… The results speak for themselves’.

The latest documentary in a line of past successes for Accentus Music, ‘Die Thomaner’ follows Accentus Music’s DVD release of Claudio Abbado with the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA performing Mahler’s ninth symphony, which won the 2012 BBC Music Magazine ‘Best DVD’ Award.

Read the full article here: http://entartetemusik.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/spinning-gold-from-bachs-legacy.html

(Written on September 10, 2012 )

Kimiko Ishazaka and Robert Douglass will be featured at Munich’s Classical:NEXT conference on 31st May, where they will provide a demonstration of the Open Goldberg Project. Audience members will have the capability to see every note played via their partners’; MuseScore and SampleSumo’s unique technology.

Previously, the public domain Goldberg Variations scores and recordings were extremely hard to locate or non-existent. The Open Goldberg Project (OGP) desired to produce a public domain score and recording that is easily accessible to all. MuseScore.com is creating a public version of the score using open source software, based on an open peer review process.

Thanks to Robert Douglass’ vision, the project is realised! Through the use of crowd-funding via Kickstarter, the OGP raised over $20,000. Embracing technology – from raising funds to online publishing to open peer review and sourcing – is a distinguishing feature of the project.

The score and recording will be available for digital download on 28th May 2012.

For more information on the Variations and the free download please visit the OPG website here

For more information on Classical:NEXT please visit their website here

For information on the new technolgy used please visit MuseScore’s website here and SampleSumo’s here

(Written on May 18, 2012 )

You can watch a new video about the exciting Open Goldberg Project on Youtube now. Pianist Kimiko Ishizaka talks about her involvement in the project and the passion that inspired it.

The Open Goldberg Project, which was funded entirely through the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter and raised over $20,000, has made a recording of pianist Kimiko Ishizaka playing all of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It will be available for everyone to download for free from May 28^th.

To visit the website, learn more about the Open Goldberg project and download the amazing recording please click here

To view the video (in Geman) please click below

(Written on May 11, 2012 )