Governor Paterson, Mayor Bloomberg join Hov at groundbreaking of NBA team’s new arena. By Shaheem Reid Jay-Z attends the ceremonial groundbreaking for Barclays Center Thursday Photo: Jamie McCarthy/ Getty Images BROOKLYN, New York — It’s been seven years since Jay-Z announced he was bringing the New Jersey Nets back home to New York during his 2003 “Fade To Black Concert” at Madison Square Garden. On Thursday (March 11), Nets co-owner Hov , an assortment of New York...
Watson/McGreevy/Spence/Rutherford/BBCNOW/Lloyd-Davies (Chandos, 3 CDs) Ivanhoe, Sullivan’s most important work without Gilbert, was an ambitious attempt to establish an English operatic tradition that would rival those of continental Europe. Its history was chequered from the outset: it was by no means a failure as some have claimed, but the first production in 1891 was so costly that it bankrupted London’s new Royal English Opera House (now the Palace theatre), and few have dared perform...
Dresden Staatskapelle/Luisi (Sony, 2 CDs) Italian conductor Fabio Luisi caused something of a stir last month when he quit his job as principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle after a row with the orchestra’s management. Artistic differences were cited as the reason for his departure: Luisi claimed that the orchestra had negotiated a deal with the broadcaster ZDF without consulting him. All this is rather sad, since the little we have heard of his work with the Staatskapelle has...
For his latest Sacred Music series, Simon Russell Beale has tracked down today’s greatest exponents. He tells Tom Service why this is so much more than mood music There’s a musical coup in Simon Russell Beale’s second series of programmes on Sacred Music for the BBC: an interview with one of the most reclusive but popular composers in the world, the Estonian mystic, Arvo Pärt. Pärt may be the Howard Hughes of classical music, but his fervently spiritual instrumental and choral...
YouTube is trying to corner the music market, while Spotify counter-attacks on the video front, writes Chris Salmon Last month, a survey from a US market research company found that in 2009 there were 24 million less US music-buyers than in 2007. That’s a drop of 21%, with falls in people buying both CDs and digital music. This, as you’d imagine, was decidedly bad news for those in the business side of the music business. But it seems unlikely that those 24 million people have simply...
The White Stripes show off their weird, off-kilter charisma in this cheerfully adulatory concert film, says Peter Bradshaw Promoting their sixth album Icky Thump (a title calculated to appeal to that crucial Venn diagram overlap between fans of the White Stripes and those of the 70s BBC classic The Goodies), Jack and Meg White went on a massive and gruelling tour of Canada in the summer of 2007, visiting the most wintry and remote places imaginable, playing free concerts at community centres, bowling...
Gustavo Dudamel was its first ever winner. The Gustav Mahler conducting competition has a lot to live up to. Kate Connolly heads to Bamberg for the finals If proof were needed that the International Gustav Mahler conducting competition sets very high standards, then it comes in the form of a mildly irritated Alexander Prior. By the time I arrive at the contest in the baroque city of Bamberg, southern Germany, 17-year-old Prior, who has been hailed a musical prodigy and has just taken up the...
Last week was all about celebrating pulchritude in pop. Now we want songs the signal the witching hour I was back in the chair for one week, just one week, and blow me down if it wasn’t tougher than a tank of teak. One of those weeks when the more you listen the murkier the prospect of determining any sort of playlist becomes. You ask yourself endless questions: Is this about beauty or lust? Can you lust without perceiving beauty? And even if you can’t, wouldn’t you get arrested...
Sacred Music: Brahms & Bruckner | Eurovision: Your Country Needs You | Mastercrafts | Embarrassing Bodies Sacred Music: Brahms & Bruckner 7.30pm, BBC4 Following on from a successful series last year, this is the actor and former chorister Simon Russell Beale’s latest look into the history of western religious music. It shows how deeply classical music was once geared towards exalting the glories of God, and also how momentous events in the history of Christianity shaped the course...
When Greg Kurstin, one-half of esoteric Los Angeles pop duo the Bird & the Bee, speaks of Hall & Oates, it’s in a reverent tone usually reserved for penitents meeting a major religious figure. ” ‘One on One’ is the perfect song with the perfect production,” he says with unblinking earnestness. “I strive for that level of greatness every day.” On March 23, Kurstin and bandmate Inara George will release their homage to the pair, “Interpreting...
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