J.S. & The Oscars: That Old Bach Magic

Unlike last year, I won’t be in front of the boobtube tonight for Oscar night; instead I’ll be doing one of my Concert Previews at a Washington Performing Arts Society – sponsored “house concert” featuring a terrific young Chinese cellist named Jian Wang, who’s in town to play various of the six solo cello [...]

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The Klassical Komeback, Pt III: Surge or Free Fall?

A couple of mainstream media outlets have picked up on the Great Classical (crossover) Comeback of 2006 lately: My old employer NPR had a story on All Things Considered The hook in the Tuesday (Mar 20) New York Times story was the just announced Classical Blowout Store from Amazon.com – a response, in the [...]

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Living Beethovens

The consistently interesting conductor Marin Alsop’s debut season as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s new Music Director promises to be one of the most interesting seasons in Bawlmur in years. Tim Smith in today’s Baltimore Sun has all the details. Sample grab:
“With cheap seats, conversations with high-profile composers and programming that [...]

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Up off the Canvas, PT II: The Classical Comeback?

il Divo: the future of classical music?
From Slate comes an article about the surprising sales of Classical Music recordings in the last year. The lede is attention-getting:

“Is classical music—a genre that has spent a seeming eternity on the commercial skids—staging a comeback? That’s the buzz on Nielsen SoundScan’s 2006 report card, which listed classical [...]

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Up Off The Canvas (or, The Other Shoe Drops)

All right, it was a big deal to me, but not many other folks paid much attention to the news that I wrote about on Day One – Bonneville’s “Yankee Swop” of its frequencies with Entercom, meaning a likely sayonara for classically-formatted KDFC in San Francisco. Sure enough, the other shoe dropped today [...]

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CLASSICAL RADIO CHANGES IN CANADA

The same winds of change are blowing across the classical-music landscape at the CBC. Witness today’s announcement about the program changes in their classical channel, CBC Radio Two. I’ll have more to say about this a little later, after I get back from participating in tomorrow’s Panel Discussion at the Arts Presenters [...]

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Day One

Yet one more blogstar (okay, supporting cast?) to join the billions and billions twinkling away in the firmament. But an interesting dose of news to start the day: Bonneville, the major radio-chain owned by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, has announced a “station swap” with Entercom, another media giant, essentially trading their three San Francisco [...]

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