Are music downloads declining in popularity with a return to the hallowed CD? The people who were surveyed in this feature seem to overwhelmingly prefer to spend their money on music they can hold.
The Marais Project has commissioned a number of new works in 2014 to celebrate its 15th anniversary year. The first of these new pieces is by composer and viola da gambist Alice Chance whose work “Mathematics of Motion” will receive its world premiere at the Marais Project’s season launch, “Rameau”. Philip Pogson caught up with…
Last month, conductor Simone Young gave this interview to Deutsche Welle, Germany’s national broadcaster. In it she talks about her work as general manager and music director at the Hamburg State Opera and chief conductor of the Hamburg State Philharmonic. As well as giving her insights into some basics of conducting, she also talks about her…
Congratulations to pianist Alex Ranieri who has won the $15,000 first prize in New Zealand’s Kerikeri International Piano Competition held recently in the Bay of Islands. Alex also received the Jill Cottle award for the Best Sonata. Ranieri’s award-winning performance included music by Berg, Brahms, Vine, Granados and Messiaen’s Le Loriot, A graduate of the Queensland Conservatoium of Music from whence he graduated in 2013 with a University Medal and First Class honours in Advanced Performance, Ranieri is presently undertaking a Master’s degree offered jointly…
Gondwana Choirs, the nation’s highly respected choral training ground is in the thick of its National Choral School. With more than 300 young singers, composers and conductors hot-housing vocal repertoire over a fortnight, you could be forgiven for expecting unbridled cacophony. On the contrary, these emerging musicians will be formed into six choirs under the…
First there was the short story by n Annie Proulx. Then there was the Ang Lee directed movie starring the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Now there is the opera, Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain, which premiered last month in at the Teatro Real in Madrid. As reported in The Guardian, Wuorinen says that he wanted to…
It makes sense to be good friends with people you have to work with. Especially if they are people whose characters you have to inhabit. American tenor Arnold Rawls is in Sydney to sing the role of Manrico for Opera Australia in Il Trovatore. Sitting in the Green Room of the Sydney Opera House, Rawls confesses “Manrico is probably…