Block Club Chicago: The Mintels Spent Decades Preserving Classical Music In Chicago. Their Archive Is Headed To The Library Of Congress. “Four decades of Chicago’s contributions to classical music history, painstakingly recorded and archived by a Hyde Park husband and wife, will be preserved and catalogued by the Library of Congress. The Richard and Judith Mintel Archive of Recordings contains nearly 350 hours of classical music recorded from 1974-2014, of which samples are available online.”
classical music
Introducing: The Groupmuse Foundation (Groupmuse)
Groupmuse: Introducing: The Groupmuse Foundation. “The Groupmuse PBC is a squad of millennial cultural activists — no one on the team is older than 40. We’ve got the energy, the tech-savvy, and the fresh thinking to build something unprecedented. But we don’t need to erase the old to create the new. We need to honor and make space for all the work that has been done by those that came before us. Classical music has always been supported by patrons and communities who understand there are some things that are too important to be buffeted by economic forces, and that is what The Groupmuse Foundation is ultimately about.”
Classical Music: The best score-reading apps for classical musicians
Classical Music: The best score-reading apps for classical musicians. “I’m a busy concert pianist and teacher, and have had little time for deciphering each of the many apps. I’ve also been terrified that a tablet might crash or run out of charge midway through a concert. But technology moves quickly and the time has finally come for me to overcome these fears and plunge headlong into the brave new world of score-reading apps.”
Complete Music Update: BBC launches new classical music discovery service
Complete Music Update: BBC launches new classical music discovery service. “The BBC has launched a new archive of more than 600 recordings of classical music performances, under the name Experience Classical. A collaboration between BBC Radio 3 and BBC Archive, the project is being fronted by BBC Young Musician winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason, his sister Isata, and composer Hannah Peel. It aims to provide tools for people – particularly newcomers – to discover classical music. Users can browse music by composer, instrument, mood and the age of pieces.” While the archive seems to be free, it also seems to be geo-restricted.
NPR: Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism — On Social Media
NPR: Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism — On Social Media. “Two controversies broke out this week regarding accusations of anti-Black racism in classical music. One involved two high-profile international soloists, pianist Yuja Wang and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. The other features less prominent individuals — a group of academics — but it also points to the slowness of the classical music community to take up difficult conversations about race and representation. But in both cases, the accusations and the rebuttals have played out speedily on social media — within a community that still relies heavily on hierarchical prestige and institutional power.”
Connacht Tribune: Cathedral’s annual series of summer recitals goes online
Connacht Tribune: Cathedral’s annual series of summer recitals goes online. “The Galway Cathedral annual season of summer recitals will take place online this year due to Covid-19, and is running from next Thursday, July 2, to Thursday, July 30, at 8pm nightly. Each organ recital will last for 20 minutes.”
Rhinegold Publishing: Historic piano recordings database goes online
Rhinegold Publishing: Historic piano recordings database goes online. “Michael Spring, owner of historic piano recordings label APR, has launched a free, comprehensive online database of 78 rpm piano recordings, comprising more than 12,000 entries dating from the 1890s until the mid-1950s.”
Mashable: This cellist is spending quarantine recording delightful retro multitracks
Mashable: This cellist is spending quarantine recording delightful retro multitracks. “Samara Ginsberg’s career as a session musician went on pause in March thanks to covid-19. Now, the London-based cellist is spending quarantine arranging elaborate covers of pop culture classics for her YouTube channel — including, most recently, the Knight Rider theme.”
The Strad: Classical Encounters goes online this Sunday
The Strad: Classical Encounters goes online this Sunday. “Classical Encounters, the international chamber music festival normally based in the region of The Hague and Leiden, Holland, goes online on Sunday, 17 May. Originally scheduled for 13 -17 May, it will now take place in one day from noon until 6pm, livestreamed on the festival website.”
Phys .org: Vivaldi reworked to ‘make climate change audible’
Phys .org: Vivaldi reworked to ‘make climate change audible’. “A classical orchestra in Germany aims to ‘make climate change audible’ with a reworking of Antonio Vivaldi’s famous violin concertos “The Four Seasons” using algorithms based on climate data.”
U DiscoverMusic: Beethoven 2020 Campaign Celebrates Beethoven’s 250th Birthday
U DiscoverMusic: Beethoven 2020 Campaign Celebrates Beethoven’s 250th Birthday. “Today Deutsche Grammophon unveiled its major new Beethoven 2020 campaign, celebrating Beethoven’s 250th birthday, at an exclusive launch event at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, marking the start of a new partnership between the research centre and the label that has recorded more of Beethoven’s music than any other.” A digital archive is one of the things planned.
Classical Music: Warner Classics digitises its full catalogue on new streaming site
Classical Music: Warner Classics digitises its full catalogue on new streaming site. “Warner Classics’s back catalogue of classical music will now be available to stream for free on the label’s new website. It allows users to access 30-second samples of recordings from the likes of Jacqueline du Pré, Simon Rattle and André Previn. Subscribers to Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer are able to stream entire tracks.”
The New York Times: In Streaming Age, Classical Music Gets Lost in the Metadata
The New York Times: In Streaming Age, Classical Music Gets Lost in the Metadata. “When Roopa Kalyanaraman Marcello, a classical music aficionado in Brooklyn, asked her Amazon Echo for some music recently, she had a specific request: the third movement of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. ‘It kind of energizes me, motivates me to get things done,’ she said. But the Echo, a voice-activated speaker, could not find what she wanted.”
Stanford University: Stanford launches new free online course on Beethoven
Stanford University: Stanford launches new free online course on Beethoven. “A new online course explores Ludwig van Beethoven’s music and development as a composer. The class, led by music historian Stephen Hinton, features performances by and discussions with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford’s ensemble-in-residence.”
Cleveland .com: Cleveland Orchestra expands access to archives with two new digital tools
Cleveland .com: Cleveland Orchestra expands access to archives with two new digital tools. “No need to be a scholar. These days, if you want to study the Cleveland Orchestra in depth, all you need is a computer or a ticket to a concert. Thanks to two recent developments in the orchestra’s archives department, everyone from scholars to the general public can now pore over the orchestra’s collections from home or casually examine treasures during a visit to Severance Hall.”