Nutcracker is a Real Ballbuster for ABT

* American Ballet Theater foregoes a fall season to cash in on Christmas.

* Danny Elfman on Tim Burton: "...it’s his head in his hands shaking his head as if he’s just been stabbed in the heart. That’s the bad body expression when I play a piece of music. The good one is a kind of a slight nodding of the head."

* Philly's Ars Nova Workshop turns 10.

* Ray Still: "Reiner could make the orchestra dance on the head of a pin."

* Michigan's unemployment may be at 15%, but the Grand Rapids Opera has a brand new building.

* Portland's going on a new music bender.

Is This Still A Thing That People Do?

* Deutsche Oper gave Rienzi the obligatory Nazi staging.

* Christian McBride: " People tend not to think about the post-Mecca Malcolm X. That's a shame."

* Shlomo: "Beatboxing is a lot less about your voice than people think. It's more to do with your lips and your face and teeth"

* RIP, Irina Arkhipova

* A tiny orchestra gets somewhat bigger. A lesson for the bigs: less is more?

* Not yet. Detroit's doing another Beethoven cycle.

From 88 Keys to 256 Buttons?

* Yamaha's new music interface is flying off the shelves.

* Happy 60th, Michael Berkeley.

* SoundaXis, Toronto's new music festival.

* The media kick poor Dave Lindup while he's down.

* "[Yannick Nézet-Séguin's] gestures were as clear as a bell and there was a lot of music in his hands. It was a very rare thing to see."

* With their concert hall out of commission, the Berlin Phil will play in the Olympic Stadium.

* Pink Floyd and Renee Fleming awarded the Polar Prize. Winners should be forced to release a duo album. The world missed a doozy when Bacharach, Moog & Stockhausen were honored in the same year.

* Copyright sinks its teeth into the Middle East.

Vaughan Williams' V-1 3-Some

* How the composer, his wife, and his lover rode out the doodlebug raids together.

* RIP, Wilfrid Mellers.

* Today's Berlin Philharmonic lunchtime concert was interrupted by a fire.

* Osma Vanska's "The Bridge" premieres on Sunday.

* Does opera need an Oscars?

* Salzburg's got enough tourists as it is.

You Let the Hare Win One Time....

* "You can be rude about the record industry for not reacting fast enough to downloads, but the fact is that that overwhelming change happened years before it expected."

* Ian McEwan: "...it doesn’t suit novelists to be collaborators. We are so used to playing God by ourselves."

* Orchestra director in jail for claiming tax refunds on instruments he never bought.

* Albena Danailova becomes the first female concertmaster at the Vienna State Opera.

* Apparently, the only 'sanctioned' T&A at the Classical Brits were Netrebko's.

* 12-year olds are prodigies at many things, but never the trombone!

Bram Stoker's 'Die Fledermaus'

* Franz Welser-Moest wants no part of a vampire-tinged production of Strauss' operetta.

* "Perhaps bowing should be a part of the training when studying."

* "Beethoven, As I Knew Him: A True Story" premieres this month.

* "...among the very few composers who can reliably sustain an entire concert programme, the greatest has to be Bach."

* Ward Stare named resident conductor in Saint Louis.

* How the Chinese media covered the papal concert.

* RIP, Frances Yeend.

* Warner Music's sales rose 2%, but its stock dropped 29%.

Says Who?

* "Edwardian musical comedy has not aged well."

* Helmuth Rilling doesn't know how many times he's recorded the B Minor Mass.

* Gergiev: "I don't conduct more than five to six orchestras a year, which is a very small number, I believe there are conductors who conduct 30 or 40."

* Berg invented hip-hopera, y'all.

* A children's opera performed by children.

* Nathan Gunn shills for MET in HD on the Colbert Report:

Will 'Out-Of-Print' Go Out Of Style?

* Amazon's CreateSpace offers print on demand of old titles.

* "the BBC banned "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans", because it was actually a bit beastly to the Germans."

* "The performing practices of the 20th century have actually destroyed a lot of the good things of the old style."

* The symphony as a symbol of Germany.

* MET screenings sell out down under.

* Warwick Thompson sees the influx of cinema directors as bad for opera.

Barenboim's Baton Passes To Muti

* A couple of hours ago, the Tribune reported that the CSO was holding its cards close to the vest, but the announcement just came out that they have in fact hired Ricardo Muti.

* Mozart gets his Saudi Arabian debut in a truly revolutionary concert.

* Dominic Muldowney's new piece isn't crossover.

* Nathaniel Stookey: "every composer you can think of is dead."

* Congratulations to John McDonald, Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year.

* Rachel Portman's The Little Prince premiered on the West Coast this weekend.

* Kirke Mechem’s opera about John Brown premiered this weekend, too.

* San Diegoans (San Diegans?) get their choice of 5 operas next year: Don Quixote, Peter Grimes, Tosca, Rigoletto, and Madame Butterfly.

"Toed the party line today..."

* Volume 2 of Prokofiev's diaries is out.

* Corigliano: "I'm always dazzled by percussion concertos, but afterwards I can't remember a single thing about them except that they were exciting and had lots and lots of notes."

* Vivaldi's Argippo gets its second production in three centuries.

* BBC's Young Musician contest turns 30.

* MSN's Music Store died a well-deserved death. Now, the EFF is pissing on the corpse.

Ogling Orff

* O₂ is hip to the fact that the only way to make Carmina Burana interesting is to throw naked girls, bungee cords, and fireworks at the thing.

* Stephen Paulus is 'one of the few composers who lives entirely from writing commissioned music'.

* Apparently, Handel had quite the pimp hand.

* Rattle is doing Stockhausen in an aircraft hangar, and Berlin is beset by bickering.

* RIP, Marios Tokas.

* China Philharmonic to play for Pope Benedict.

* Congratulations to Joel Smirnoff, the next head of CIM.

* Parking is more important than most producers realize.

* Kristjan Jarvi: "The only reason I believe that classical music concerts have become stale is that...freedom and ingenuity is lacking."

* Someone found Roger Waters' pig.

* Clear Channel dives into social networking.

Welcome To The Party, Pal!

* 3 days later, the Henry Brant obits finally start to appear outside the blogosphere.

* "People clearly see a man standing up there and it's shocking to hear a woman's voice. But I'm creating a fantasy for them..."

* Daniel Kellogg gets recognized at the zoo.

* Columbus Symphony coasts to the end of its season on fumes provided by an anonymous donor; musicians pose the biggest threat to the orchestra's future.

* Melbourne Symphony's 2008 new music schedule.

* The builders of Oslo's new opera house didn't take the needs of pianists and double bassists to heart.

* The Czech children's opera that emerged from the Holocaust.

* "All classical music happens in a bubble. The conventional view is that it needs to be protected from criticism (or any response at all, really) from anyone not entirely invested in the world of classical music. The understanding is these external views will create a pressure that will compromise, or destroy, this music."

Daleks & Humans Alike Bow Their Heads (or the nearest equivalent)

* RIP, Tristram Cary.

* What George Bush really wants to do is conduct.

* Lebrecht: "In 40 years of opera-going in London I cannot remember a moment when new work was so hot..."

* New Zealand's got a new wunderkind.

* Iran's National Orchestra turns 10.

* Brits rock against racism.

* Sony's we7 launches.

* Nokia's music bundle turns out to be a major bungle.

We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off To Have A Good Time

* How To Look Good Naked (While Playing In An Orchestra).

* South Africa's OperaMania works sex, drugs & rock 'n roll (by way of Meatloaf) into their productions, and oh yes, there was nudity.

* Sibelius plaque to be affixed to Marienstrasse 4 in Berlin today.

* Music NOW 08-09.

* ASIMO to conduct Yo-Yo Ma in Detroit.

* Grand Rapids to get an opera house. Still waiting to get their primary votes counted.

* Seoul's Chamber Music Festival turns 3.

Mathemusicality

* orchestra+

* Pavarotti x 2 = Juan Diego Florez (OR 18 high c's in "Pour mon ame").

* RIP, Bebe Barron.

* It's evaluation time for Rattle in Berlin.

* 'The Fragmented Orchestra' wins the PRS Foundation New Music Award 2008.

* The only place less musical than Salzburg these days is Vienna.

Say What?!

* Esprit Orchestra premieres new Colgrass piece for amplified harpsichord and altered piano while claiming to be 'the world’s only symphony orchestra that specializes in playing music of our time'.

* New Music Award Shortlist.

* Peter Maxwell Davies is on about Scottish independence again.

* Meet The Really Terrible Orchestra.

* ACO sez Ruby Fulton, Takuma Itoh, Andrew McKenna Lee, Leanna Primiani, Conrad Winslow, and Roger Zare are the balls.

Philip Glass on China:

* "They’re a bunch of losers".

* Valery Gergiev ranked #82 on the Telegraph's list of The 100 most powerful people in British culture, one spot behind Keira Knightley.

* "Why is NYC allowing an operatic desecration of Ground Zero?" [IOL, DW]

* Merkel pulls a Bruni @ the big opening in Oslo.

* "The idea that classical music is elitist has become an article faith in the area of art and educational policy."

* José Abreu: "Essentially this is a social system that fights poverty. A child's physical poverty is overcome by the spiritual richness that music provides."

How Not To Produce A Music Festival

* Run up £500,000 in debt.

* "At the heart of the writing process – whether you're a writer or a composer – is solitude."

* Phil Kline's Gonzo song cycle.

* Oregon signs Kalmar through 2013.

* Marc Blitztein's opera of Hellman's The Little Foxes debuts this week.

* Oslo opens its opera house, and Ho Chi Minh City refurbishes theirs (with help from Lyon).

* April 16 is World Voice Day?

Music Execs Accept Tarzan As An Apt Metaphor

* "We're still clinging to the vine of music as a product, but we're swinging toward the vine of music as a service. We need to get ready to let go and grab the next vine, which is a pool of money and a fair way to split it up, rather than controlling the quantity and destiny of sound recordings." (Maybe next month they'll figure out that whole fire thing!)

* CBC Radio 2 to broadcast So Jeong Ahn's new found sounds piece next Thursday.

* The opera house that oil built.

* Dalai Lama, Philip Glass & Richard Gere to hang out in Ann Arbor.

* Podcast of Edwin Outwater tapping a keg at an April Oktoberfest.

* What Is Music?

Shostie 5 Ain't Exactly a Lullaby...

* German Orchestra cans Israeli composition for being too loud. Composer claims bias (against new music).

* RIP, Ramiz Mustafayev.

* The EMP Pop Music Conference kicks off today. (We presented at the very first one!)

* Lalo Schifrin: "There are many motives for mixing sounds in the mind. I hear them inside, all the time, though my interior ear which is always experimenting."

* "It is important that when I am sitting in the concert hall behind a conductor that I can see the music in his body. This will help me to feel the emotions and understand what the conductor is thinking. In this way, the conductor provides a very important connection between the music and the audience." (Anyone care to call 'Bullshit'?)

* Marin Alsop isn't the only conductor who has to pretend things are peachy.

Better Late Than Never

* A batch of 18th century Italian works will receive their US Premieres on April 13.

* BBC Proms to give one day over to Stockhausen.

* Oxfam receives donation of 4,000 LP's to its thrift store.

* Andrew Lloyd Webber awarded for his classical music.

* Anne-Sophie Mutter: "There is no longer any orchestra that can accompany pianissimo as wonderfully as Karajan could."

* Philip Glass: "The world is unimaginably more violent than it was. We've accepted violence into our lives."

* The British classical music scene is so much sexier than ours.

* In global market, digital music is only 10% of the market.

As Janis Joplin Once Said,

* "On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone."

* Roman Maciejewski anyone?

* "We learned songs in high school, but not the notes. [William] Dawson let us know that being poor, black and miseducated was no excuse."

* "Making Norma dramatically convincing is tough."

* All the musicians who've toked over the years and these are the Best 5 Pot Stories you can find?

Rossini, Dvorák, Gershwin & Grofé

* The Final Four of Classical Music.

* Ear infection keeps Vladimir Jurowski from conducting in Philly.

* Brit critics conflicted over Lost Highway: Guardian, Telegraph, Times

* Opera sells tix for £10 to attract new audiences.

* A Ugandan music school turns 7.

* Downloaders take a baby step against RIAA.

Classical Music Is Getting A Bad Rep

* Telegraph: "So forget Beatles v Stones or Blur v Oasis. If you want a good old fashioned barney then welcome to the world of classical music - it's in (extremely) rude health."

* Christopher Butterfield: "I’ll never make rude comments about the woodwind quintet again!"

* Golijov wins $50k from Vilcek Foundation. Plans to blow it all in Brazil.

* Alain Trudel pens an ode to the CBC Radio Orchestra. People are protesting in the streets over its demise.

* Pittsburgh Gazette offers a snapshot of the current opera crisis. JP Morgan Chase is in buyout discussions.

* Oslo gets a new opera house.

* Hova joins Madonna and U2 in the mega-deal club at Live Nation.

* Corigliano: "A symphony seemed like an ego trip until my friends were dying of AIDS and my closest friend came down with it, and then I realized, well, this is bigger than me or anything else."

* "There's a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists."

When Has Music Ever Brought People To Fistfights?

* Golijov: "I love it when music brings people to fistfights."

* Antony Walker earns MVP status by pinch-singing during Aida while he conducted it!

* Why would anyone leave Google for EMI?

* Aussies think gyms don't pay enough for music licenses.

I Hope I Get It...

* The market's tight when 226 conductors apply for a $45,000 part-time gig.

* Bulgaria undercuts Hollywood in the film scoring sector by as much as 500%.

* Can Facebook save an orchestra?

* Dan Ettinger to take the helm at the Mannheim Opera House in 2009.

* Paavo Jarvi: "There is a sex appeal associated with larger, more glamorous American cities, but Cincinnati is real America."

* "The thing about classical music, particularly writing for orchestra, is that you have to be a control freak."

Can Slatkin Stop the Slide?

* Detroit Symphony Orchestra attendance is running at 59% of capacity this year.

* RIP, Gerhard Samuel.

* It's cheaper for CBC to do remote broadcasts of orchestras than bankroll one in its studio.

* New Jersey Symphony Orchestra to premiere a piece by one of its fiddlers.

* Vienna State Opera exhibit showcases the purge of Jewish staffers in the 1930's.

* The Tosca Trail.

* Germany makes it harder to track internet usage.

* "A huge organization like RIAA is using an anvil to nail a tack. It's starting to look like they're using the court system to generate revenue."

No One Wants To See The Fonz @ Covent Garden

* More Reaction to the Royal Opera's makeover: "Every rebranding of this sort involves, sooner or later, a DJ and the artist Julian Opie, and this one goes along with the general tendency in an almost parodic way."

"...any self-respecting "buzzy, cool" youth knows when they're being served half-baked ideas instead of the real thing. They also know crap when they see it."

* Wayne Shorter: "We just go on stage and don't know what the hell we're going to do; we just go. And then we say, let's do it again."

* The last radio orchestra on the continent will cease to be in November.

* The CEO of New Zealand Symphony Orchestra tackles an orchestral rivalry.

* Billy Corgan: "They've lost money continuously for seven or eight years and they continue to hold on to the Titanic. This is just another indication of them thinking that they can get away with whatever because they're the big old record business."

* "[David] Lynch discussed with Olga [Neuwirth] the idea that one or more of the characters in the film are undergoing a ‘psychogenic fugue’."

* "Brain-drain in music is a fact in Vietnam. Most music talents who are trained abroad don’t return home because they can’t live by music in Vietnam."

Everybody Wang Chung Tonight!

* Except for the Boston Ballet, that is.

* Emir Kusturica's operatic adaptation of "Le Temps de Gitans" is playing in Paris' Palais de Congres.

* New music makes strides in Czech Republic.

* Thom Yorke and others to remix classical tunes for some new compilation.

* 'As classical music is piped into 40 Tube stations to reduce antisocial behaviour, Jessica Duchen asks if we really want rush hour symphonies.' (Yes, it's the ONLY good thing about Penn Station!)

* Chamber Orchestra Anglia will premiere new Britten works next month.

* American Idol for classical music.

* Isn't 'The Bernstein of Early Music' a woeful oxymoron?

* "In the car, I also listen to the Saint-Saëns requiem and the Mozart requiem -- that's usually the right mood for Baghdad"

* "An endless stream of standards by Beethoven, Brahms and the Russians is a programming strategy that leads to artistic oblivion."

The Fed Has a New Industry to Bail Out

* The run of bad luck at the MET has begun, all subprime-like, to contaminate other sectors of the classical music community.

* Hao Weiya finishes Turandot for a new Chinese production.

* John Corigliano, Carter Burwell, and Lawrence Dillon to judge 2008 Realize Music Challenge.

* "With Toscanini, you got such a sharp, delineating beat, you knew exactly what he was looking for."

* Karajan dreamed of becoming the general music director for all of Europe.

* Opera Australia performs Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress.

* April's a good month for new music down under.

Vaughan Williams KO's Rachmaninoff

* 100,000 Britons have voted The Lark Ascending the best piece of all time.

* The dustup in Sydney continues with the revelation of the interior design.

* Peking Opera still too hard to interest Chinese students.

* LA Times catches up with Paul Potts, whose YouTube clip still astounds.

* Almost half of Israel Opera's 08/09 productions are Zeffirelli's.

* Director of Padmavati is hungry for more opera.

* RIP, Datuk Wan Othman Wan Hamid Al-Khatib.

* "...when some of the really slick string quartets, like the Kronos or Turtle Island, or Alarm Will Sound play a piece, does it automatically become art music because it's done by a classically trained string quartet?"

Talk Amongst Yourselves. We'll Give You A Topic:

* The Sydney Opera House Is Neither a House Nor a Suitable Venue For Opera.

* Perhaps the end of an orchestra isn't always a bad thing.

* FT profiles Gottfried Wagner's ongoing crisis of conscience.

* Perhaps he should heed Furtwangler on the matter: "These people, the compatriots of Bach and Beethoven, for Mozart and Schubert, still had to go on living under the control of a regime obsessed with total war. No one who did not live here himself in those days can possibly judge what it is like."

* Iceland held its I Never Went South festival this weekend.

* A primer on Japanese orchestras.

* Vietnam experiences female composer boom: "Women tend to pay attention to the smallest details in life, which are usually ignored by men."

Who Knew?

* Bernard Haitink had never conducted St. Matthew Passion?

* Detroit wraps up some meaty contemporary rep in a dressing gown of 'change'.

* Albert Roussel's Padmavati opens in Paris.

* "It is as futile to go about shouting that Elgar is the English Beethoven as it would be to proclaim Mr Bernard Shaw as the English (or Irish) Goethe."

* "Anyone in whose music collection resides a solo bass record owes a debt of gratitude to Francois Rabbath."

* Royal Opera to charge fatcats $415 for admission so's it can let the groundlings in for $59.

* Dennis Russell Davies tapped to helm Basel Symphony Orchestra.

* Pauline Viardot showcase this weekend in San Fran.

* Scorsese inadvertently holds up Marley biopic.

Pop vs. Classical, Round Gajillion

* Gabriel Montero bridges the high/low divide in a welcome way.

* BSO? Not so much.

* Congratulations to former Iron Composer judge Thomas Wilkins on being appointed principal guest conductor at the Hollywood Bowl.

* Chickasaw composer gets his work recorded by San Francisco.

* Industry seems to be getting over its anti-Apple bias.

* Brendel: "you should get the information about the piece from the piece, and not inform it on the basis of what the piece should be like or what the composer should have written."

* Don't mess with Texas! Especially now that UT's music school has $55m on hand.

Just What You've Always Wanted

* Your very own Stylophone.

* The story behind Leos Janacek's Intimate Letters.

* David Arnold on film scoring: "Nothing is actually real, you don’t actually have to worry about having a responsibility to truthfulness in a real sense."

* BBC Philharmonic Orchestra takes funds away from urban renewal projects.

* Music Theatre Wales revives Birtwistle's Punch and Judy.

This Just In:

* Mozart identified.

* Robert Craft accuses Stephen Walsh of plagiarism. Stravinsky's mute on the subject.

* "would any musicians now put up with a conductor tuning an orchestra for 45 minutes or making wholesale changes to scores or learning to beat time in music he soon would lead by listening to a pianist playing it?"

* The orchestral beer ad we all loved is causing a ruckus.

* Cleveland Orchestra devotes a healthy amount of its time to new music in 08-09.

* Edinburgh slashes funding to its opera and ballet companies.

* "Classical music is enjoying mini-comeback thanks to the Internet"

* Lorin Maazel: "If there isn't some effort made to attract young males to classical music, we are going to lose, again, half the human race."

Th-th-th-that's All Folks!!

* Will the next generation of conductors be trained by Nintendo?

* Piotr Anderszewski: "It's very easy to get dragged into filling your diary, into accepting engagements because they make sense on the calendar, but I want to stop this."

* Since WWII, only 2 of Wagner's operas (Dutchman and Rheingold) have been performed in Moscow.

* The English Touring Opera is promoting Carlisle Floyd's Susannah as 'the most remarkable piece of American music theatre since Gershwin's Porgy and Bess'.

* New York City Opera veteran director Michael Haneke's new film Funny Games opens today.

* The Mess Hall win the Australian Music Prize.

It's a Dead Man's Party

* Being in Oingo Boingo seems to be the key to getting soundtrack work. Hey, once you're in with Rodney Dangerfield, you're golden...

* Golijov on Piazzolla: "He said that new music is like one of those great promises for a scientific breakthrough that could save lives."

* "You cannot trust the cultural development of a country only by what is presented in the capital."

* The Berg Orchestra takes a novel approach to audience participation.

* Barenboim's bold work on behalf of Palestine continues.

* Damon Albarn's Chinese opera to be performed at Covent Garden this July.

David Mamet Grows Up

* "...a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."

* First, Leonard Cohen gets inducted into the Rock Hall. Then, he gets his poems set by Philip Glass.

* Nigel Kennedy on conductors: "All they’re interested in is strutting about, wielding a bit of power."

* AR Rahman: "There is so much talent in India, but we have no symphony orchestra"

* Enrique Batiz: "When people in the United States hear “Mexican,” they think of someone who’s looking for a job somewhere."

* Chinese don't see the need for arts education either.

Let's Get Ready To Rumble:

* Chavez v. Revueltas.

* Ethan Bortnick, the 7-year-old wunderkind de jour.

* Melbourne Symphony Orchestra markets its season around...Enescu?!

* "Karl Jenkins should be public enemy No 1 for the self-appointed classical- music elite."

* Annual Tibetan opera festival in Dharamsala.

Where's Willy?

* Royal Opera House airbrushes penis for an ad. Model not happy.

* The Sphinx Commissioning Consortium will focus on Black and Latino composers.

* 2008 Charles Ives Fellowships go to two female composers.

* UAE hosts the Al Ain Classical Music Festival.

* Bangor U to create archive for Welsh music.

God Bless The Brits:

* They're up in arms over their beloved BBC Proms! Such a kerfuffle is impossible to imagine in America. (Times, Daily Express, Telegraph, Guardian 1 2 3, Evening Standard, Mirror, Sun, Star, Daily Mail)

* RIP, Leonard Rosenman.

* Joshua Schmidt (friend of the show) is working on a musical version of Candida.

* Vladimir Jurowski "may not be ready for Philadelphia for a while".

* Abu Dhabi has a Richard Wagner Society.

* Chen Kaige has wrapped his biopic of Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang.

* Chicago Opera Theater is letting its audience decide whether it will perform Mozart, Rossini or Britten. COT encourages them to vote early and often.

How come many opera singers are so thin these days?

Nicholas Kenyon (managing director, Barbican): One of the positive things that's happened in opera in recent years is that great acting and dramatic commitment have become as important as great singing; the era of sometimes glorious noise accompanied by lumpen, unconvincing drama is over. We're getting away from the cliche that opera is just the fat lady singing, and there's a premium on opera singers who fit their roles well visually as well as vocally - though of course this can be done by singers large and small.

Hmmm, what a curious answer. Let's see how Mr. Kenyon does on another question:

Q What does a conductor do?

NK: Nothing, that's the point. He or she does nothing in sonic terms, while the orchestra players actually do everything and make all the sounds. But the conductor is the central point in the audience's relationship with the music, which I suppose is why they tend to get paid so much.

The Guardian sure grabbed itself a winner for this cutesy Q&A!

Actually, the answers from a member of the Berlin Phil are much more edifying.

The Guardian's Young Composer Competition

* "Those who compose in their heads, not at the machine, are those whose pieces are best."

* Bach was one ugly mofo.

* Keiser's 'Croesus'.

* Say it ain't so, Enrique!

So how were those mini-operas?

* "even 15 minutes seems a long time when the music is no good."

* Bach: the patron musical saint of the Cubicle Nation.

* Universal looks to control half the Latin market by acquiring Univision.

* The Millenium Dome to take on the Royal Albert.

* Ng Cheuk-yin: Culling the sounds of Hong Kong

And the Lancaster Symphony Composer Award Goes To:

* Jennifer Higdon.

* Malcolm Arnold's estate to go to Tony Day.

* Christopher Rouse & Prokofiev won Oscars last night.

* One llama can help you pick your playlists.

WTF Quote of the Year:

* Classical Music "is relatively easy to learn and offers career opportunities with salaries as high as a politician's."

* People are still rapturously reviewing The Rest Is Noise.

* The University of Chicago will play host to one of the biggest Messiaen tributes this year.

* Profile of Baltimore's Colored Symphony Orchestra.

* Classical radio is big in Anchorage.

Two New Uses For Classical Music:

* Animal control and growing weed.

* Downloads to pass CD sales in 2012. (What's taking so long?)

* What happens when your night at the opera only lasts 15-minutes?

* Chen Qigang: "I look around the West and see that most serious composers have simply nothing to do with the rest of their culture."

* The strange and impossibly ironic death of Claude Vivier.

Slatkin's Serious About Outreach

* "We've suffered through 35 to 40 years of decline in music education in the schools. I'm determined ... to give young people the chance to have a solid background in music."

* Beethoven, As I Knew Him.

* 'Why is Ralph Vaughan Williams not honoured?'

* New Marvin Ayres CD.

* "People who love classical music are nicer, more precise, more open to new experiences but emotionally less stable."

* 'Is Faure most underrated composer?'

The New York Foolharmonic

* "Lorin Maazel opened his mouth - and made things worse."

* Marco Beltrami dishes on film scoring.

* The year of the Magnificent Seven continues in the Palmetto State.

* "Eighth Blackbird may claim darling status with this move to visual delights, but unless it can increase its quality and pick better music, it runs the risk of hurting its primary mission -- bringing audiences new music that we want to hear, not see."

* Blur bassist to host major classical music radio survey.

* "[Charleston's] classical scene has never been better."

It's After Midnight...

* Now is an awfully appropriate time to celebrate how Thriller saved the record industry.

* John Williams and Thomas Adès on player pianos.

* Minnesota recording Paulus' Holocaust oratorio this week.

* The Opus 95 project.

* Happy 20th, Eroica Trio!

* UK weighing policy of blocking users who download media.

Credo in unum Dollar

* Universal looks to sign monks.

* Dutilleux festival in Cardiff.

* First recordings of de Visee's music released.

* A meditation on the future of the symphony.

* To clap or not?

Music Fading Away

* Neil Young says "I think that the time when music could change the world is past."

* New Turnage CD.

* The economics of pop intrude on Houston Grand Opera's 08-09 program.

* Mariss Jansons, "The Best Living Conductor"

* Apple sics the Feds on Universal.

Suing the Barn Door:

* Baidu's in the crosshairs of the industry yet again.

* Average kid hears 84 references to drug use on his iPod a day.

* Jean Coulthard, "the first significant composer from Vancouver".

* Lindberg: "I have made a commitment to myself that I will write out each part in pencil at least once."

* Happy 30th, Chanticleer!

* PBS to broadcast NY Phil's North Korea performance.

Before You Go-Go, You Should Know:

* Wham City is not the tribute band we'd hoped it would be, but it still sounds cool.

* Mark Swed reviews Stephen Scott. (Photos)

* Peter Maxwell Davies' latest work written in honor of Karen Aim.

* Eliahu Inbal tapped to helm the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

* Alan Gilbert: "My New York Philharmonic debut program was not the kind of home-run program you might expect to see."

* A new double bass concerto premieres in Nova Scotia.

* Finns open two new classical music nightclubs.

The Future Of Classical Music

* Seattle hosts conference to discuss the fate of the field.

* Northerners dance faster than Southerners in the UK.

* Vasily Petrenko: "Even at 18, I realised my career would be successful"

* Happy 80th, Charles Strouse!

* Happy 90th, Gara Garayev!

Berkeley Professor Hit By a Train

* RIP, Jorge Liderman.

* BSO to perform Steven Mackey's 'Time Release' at Carnegie this weekend.

* Conductor Slash...Actor?

* i-Maestro

* Rhapsody bought up Yahoo's Music Unlimited before the Microsoft offer.

Here They Come To Save The Day!!

* The Royal Concertgebouw is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

* The Rambler writes about Messiaen.

* Vegas has a new music scene.

* RIP, Evelyn Barbirolli.

* The Tube's 40-hour playlist is better than most of classical radio.

* aVinci offers licensing for personal use.

Happy 210th Birthday, Franz!!

* The 'Belle Epoque of the Brit film composer's art'.

* New PDQ Bach album in the hopper.

* Study confirms the obvious.

* "We're superimposing a party on the symphony, and we're going to see what happens."

* Industry wants to fine you $1,500,000 for copying a CD.

Happy 60th, WCRB!

* You play the most wicked music.

* Jessye Norman tapped to curate an African-American festival at Carnegie.

* Napa Valley Opera broadens film rep to include Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

* 'Why architects can't predict the future.'

* The Audio Foundation presents The Necks.

* "We’re still writing within the limitations of those 12 notes. As a composer, I wish I had at least a few more."

* Naxos to distribute Chandos.

* Iowa shows its love for Robert Wilson.

EU Says FU To Music Industry

* ISP's don't have to fork over subscriber data.

* Baltimore's bounty of music series.

* Milhaud to Bacharach: "Never be ashamed of a melody"

* The orchestral world needs more body checking.

* BSO busks to save its season.

* Will Stephen Colbert also wonder aloud if Tchaikovsky was one of the greatest conductors of the 20th Century when Alex Ross is on the Report tonight?

Eat Your Beats:

* Making skiffle with Skittles.

* Luke Bedford in residence at the Wigmore.

* Orchestra news from the Axis of Evil.

* Boosey & Hawkes: "...we've not tried to find unpublished superstars. The key task for us was making the most of what we had, not trying to diversify."

The Guy Who Introduced Us to Stockhausen (& So Many Other Things)

* RIP, Larry.

* Gordon Mumma, Canadian.

* Who gave the Moscow premiere of Varese's Ameriques?

* Hey, you got your Kyle Gann in my Alex Ross.

* PBS profiles freelancers.

* "There's no point in sending a newcomer, somebody who's never heard a symphony concert before, to hear the Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra. They would not get it."

Become a Dilettante

* Another social networking site for classical music dorks.

* A composer and a rabbi were stranded on a desert island.

* Chris Paul Harman wins the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music.

* Internet radio roundup in the Guardian.

* Charleston's New Music Collective.

Make It Work:

* Project Runway calls crimped hair avant-garde and a collective failure of imagination ensues.

* Lemony Snicket to perform at Lincoln Center.

* 6 Award-worthy new music businesses.

* Scottish Chamber Orchestra to premiere Sally Beamish' Concerto for Saxophone Quartet.

* Farmers increase crop yield by 5% with piped-in music instead of pesticides.

* Classical music fans' protest thwarts an attempt to shut down an Israeli radio station.

The Kids Have All Grown Up Into Silas Stingy

* MUSIC: A NEW ERA OF SELLING OUT

* MS has not daunted Robert Parker one bit.

* New Canadian reworking of Don Giovanni to premiere in 2011.

* Sondheim discusses Sweeney Todd; Rumon Gamba discusses Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, and Korngold at Stage & Screen.

* Meet the 8 finalists in the Ft. Wayne conductor search.

* New Bedford has a truly novel approach to audience cultivation.

* Toronto catches the pub bug.

The Titillations of Time and 'Truth'

* Stephen Fry set to helm Handel biopic.

* Roddy Bottum on film scoring: "You have to get used to people saying, 'No, that's not right.'"

* Barenboim, the Palestinian.

* Amazon to get a Superbowl blitz.

* RIP, Jon Stoll.

The Siegfried Saga

* Whatever happened to all those Wagner's?

* Magnus Lindberg in the Globe.

* Oscar Peterson got an All-Star send-off.

* The World's Greatest Horn Player is also a competent conductor.

* WaPo discovers NPRMusic.org.

* As Dawn Upshaw embarks on her 3-year partnership with St. Paul, she talks with the Star Tribune.

* The Death Rattle of Classical Music World Tour 2008 plays Korea this weekend.

* EMI's private equity ownership all set to slash a third of the label's staff.

Higdon Provides Bulletin Board Material

* New Music's Joe Namath proclaims, "I absolutely guarantee the audience will like them!"

* NY Phil to play just 4 world premieres next season by Kernis, Stucky, Rands and Lieberson. (Average age = 60)

* The Rhode Island Phil scores a $1m bonanza.

* "we must have had the same fantasies as all boys our age when it came to what women cellists liked to put between their knees."

* Nico Muhly muses about pop v. classical...again.

* EMI knew the jig was up when they could no longer give away CD's.

"I Can't Believe It's Schoenberg"

* Apparently, Verklärte Nacht is the equivalent of margarine.

* "I started to realize how removed the modern composer was from daily life."

* Armand Merck anyone?

* Barbican fetes Judith Weir.

* Leroy Jenkins tribute concert.

* RIP, Joan Ingpen.

Talk About Tabula Rasa!

* Orchestra plays new music as it is being written.

* Mixed stories about Philip Glass' health: injury or surgery? (Maybe it's surgery for the injury. In either case, we wish him well.)

* "I feel, as a modern classical musician, having the knowledge of both music performance and music technology is invaluable...Only having the skill to perform an instrument may not necessarily be lucrative."

* RIP, Mort Garson.

* First Mingus, now Marsalis.

* Detroit gets $1m from Honda.

White Punks On Dope Becalmed By Mozart

* Classical music trial in London's Underground gets extended.

* "Our mission is to perform every note that Mahler wrote."

* Foundling, the all-female Baroque orchestra.

* Alsop wins the Theodore Thomas Award from the Conductors Guild.

* Developing compelling new business models is part of why sales are in the tank.

Tally Ho

* This is just a slow motion version of the way the press killed Lady Di.

* "Wagner could never bear to be away from the center of attention."

* Michael Nyman's Facebook fiasco.

* The Guardian reviews Robert Scotto's Moondog.

* The raw sales numbers from Nielsen.

* DRM loses another corporate backer.

Downloads Grow in '07 (But @ Slower Rate Than '06)

* Even a new Wu Tang album can't stop the decline in rap sales. Classical downloads also shrank, as did just about everything in 2007.

* Milwaukee appoints Edo de Waart.

* Charlie Court is laid to rest today, great politician and capable bandleader.

* Thailand will build a conservatory in honor of Princess Galyani Vadhana.

* GOP continues to commit Huckacide, and Dems favor a guy whose middle name is Hussein. This ain't your daddy's Iowa, or is it?

III Variations on Variations VII

* Three British Takes on an upcoming Cage premiere: Guardian, BBC, Independent

* "It is the connective tissue between the set pieces that betrays a hasty and uncertain sense of narrative, with questionable emphasis."

* Thomas Wilson: Colorado-born, Scottish composer

* Why do brits outsource the baton?

* Digital music sales double in the last week of 2007 in the UK.

* EU properly diagnoses regulatory fragmentation as a major impediment to further growth in the digital entertainment sector.

"Classical business is temperamentally resistant to novelty"

* Paganini, Arthur Fiedler, The 5 Browns, and countless others would beg to differ.

* 4 Discs of LPO, Beecham thru Boult.

* Mac users buy more music.

* DIY merch goes big time.

The Terrifying Tale of the Murdering Maestro:

* Before the Garden State banned capital punishment, it sent the conductor of the Camden Philharmonic to the electric chair.

* $1,000 reward for info on slain conductor.

* Review of the new Henryk Melcer CD.

* New Drinking Game: Every time Gustavo Dudamel is not mentioned on a best of 2007 list, take a shot. (You're sure to be sober as a judge)

* Tommasini: "classical music seems in the midst of an unmistakable rebound"

Adventures in Radioland

* Ravi Shankar says fusion is the future.

* "There are lots of ways to go broke in the music business."

* Jay Greenberg is so old.

* Highlights of the Muscovian music year.

* High school musical about Honest Abe.

"The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred"

* RIP, Benazir

* "When you hear 'Harry Potter,' and 'Star Wars' — that's something Vienna can be proud of."

* RIP, Jiří Pauer

* The Bad New: There used to be an orchestra with the name 'The Concertos With OrchestraThousand Oaks orchestra'. The Good News: It's changed its name.

* MET simulcast makes the top five musical events of 2007 in Toronto.

* "Electronic music is always moving forward -- that's its nature. If anything, it's the real L.A. alternative"

* Amazon adds Warner.

Elcho Islanders Go Viral

* Aborigines dance to Zorba the Greek.

* The year in Canadian music.

* The state of the protest song.

* Baidu beats the rap.

* Lukas Haas: "It's so easy to play music."

It's a John Cage Christmas

* Kiwis cut hit single that only dogs can hear.

* Hansel & Gretel get lost all over again.

* "If you don't give concerts, you can't have a presence."

* Cue the Ghost of Music Education Past.

* The world's most inept retiree quits his second job.

Joyeux Noël de Le Petit Prince:

* Wisconsin Public Television viewers get a Christmas Day treat.

* Filipino finds a treasure trove of music.

* "It's a folk tradition ... as opposed to being composed by a trained composer."

* Keep your eye on these acts in 2008.

* A fascinating look at a christmas concert in Jakarta.

* Live webcasting looks well-positioned for 2008.

* "...without the beauty of the human voice expressing deep emotional truths, something of a culture's heartbeat is cauterised."

Sometimes a Concert Is Just a Concert:

* Teachout takes the political bait.

* The year in weird.

* RIP, Lydia Mendoza.

* Blackhawks fans want more organ music.

* Solomon Burke's eulogy: "Ike's got a better gig, and he took it."

X Factor Is What So Many Wish Were Missing:

* "It may be hard for youngsters now to believe but huge numbers of us used to convene in pubs to argue about what would and should be top of the hit parade on Christmas Day."

* "Like a hydrologist charting a river or an economist tracking the movement of money through society, Imbrie had a keen awareness of what makes music behave as it does".

* BBC chooses Guto Puw.

* The competition for the classical Christmas no. 1 gets ugly.

* The year in digital music services.

Move Over John Williams:

* Giorgio Moroder is trying out for the Olympics.

* "The weight of the 19th century has been lifted off ('Messiah's') shoulders."

* The Year in Russian Music.

* Barbie's classical odyssey continues.

* Remember when South By Southwest didn't use to be a drag?

* We'll take Chicago's indie scene over Williamsburg's any day, but best in the country...?

And Now For Something Completely Different:

* Thumbing their noses at convention, NJ Symphony and its chairman part ways amicably.

* The legacy of Glenn Burleigh.

* There's a reason orchestras big and small program nothing but pops this time of year.

* The only way Mahler 2 gets heard in Northern Ireland is when everyone plays for free.

* Turkish record industry struggles too.

* Apparently, the solution is to get more Turks using Macs.

* Canadian Sound of Music reality show apes British version. Surely, America is next.

* Who'd have thought the 'Noles would be brought so much lower by a little old music history exam?

Bottle of red, Bottle of white

* Janet Hopkins takes cross- promotion to a new low.

* RIP, Huy Cam & Sheldon Morgenstern.

* Composer goes mental on account of a neighbor's taste in music.

* Bernstein's daughter: "Kaddish is an audible battle between tunes and 12-tones."

* Some orchestras aren't content to leave acoustics purely up to nature.

* The Death Rattle of Classical Music World Tour 2007 continues down under.

* "Music doesn't stop crime"

Fergie Goes Nuts

* "I'm more like the people's artist - the same way Diana was 'the people's princess." (Is that why your London Bridge wanna go down?)

* Hoang Viet memorial continues this week.

* Europe has a road map for the future of music tech. The US has....

* CalArts alum takes the helm at LAist.

* The Arts Council of England plays Scrooge.

* A re-appreciation of Randy Rhodes.

Gerry Schwartz Likes To Shoot The Messenger:

* Seattle musicians: "We’re sitting there with a sledgehammer over our heads."

* Einojuhani Rautavaara turned 70.

* Israel never ceases to meddle.

* "It's kind of an artistic genocide"

O, For a Thousand Eyes to See:

* The new Charles Wesley documentary that premieres on Tuesday.

* The market for hi-fi downloads is starting to emerge.

* "...do not be afraid to be smart, desire to be inspirational and to be studied 120 years from now."

* Swed's Year in Review.

* The music thereapy boomlet continues.