The "Star-Spangled Banner" that kicks off opening night concerts across the U.S. is often believed to be a great patriotic tradition. But some people think it's out of place and out of mood. The Fort Worth Symphony recently drew criticism over its practice of playing the anthem before every concert. A Dallas musician sounded off on Facebook that orchestra concerts were not meant to be patriotic events, and that the anthem ruined the mood a conductor was trying to set. Many others agreed. In this week's podcast, two experts weigh in on the anthem at the orchestra. Marc Ferris, author of Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America's National Anthem, says he has no problem with the piece's appearance, which is a holdover from 9/11 in many concert halls. "Just to shoehorn it in there just for the sake of doing it could take away from the thematic program," Ferris said. "But you don't have to do it at the beginning. You could do it after intermission. You could do it at the end." He notes that the first time it was played at a baseball game was during the seventh-inning stretch at 1918 Brooklyn Dodgers game. Leon Botstein, the conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College, is more ambivalent. "I don't think it necessarily spoils the mood," he said in the second part of the segment. "But to repeat it at every concert is a kind of cheap patriotism. It has, unfortunately, a negative effect. It's like repeating a prayer every day without understanding its meaning."  However, Botstein believes the "Star-Spangled Banner" can be effective when American orchestras play it on international tours. He also thinks it provides an opportunity for an otherwise passive audience to participate in a concert. Ferris dismisses the notion that the anthem's octave-and-a-half range and complicated lyrics are overly challenging. "It's a real myth that this is hard to sing," said Ferris. "What, a professional singer can't remember 81 words? We're only singing the first verse." Botstein disagrees. "The 'Star-Spangled Banner' is not a great national anthem," he said. "It happens to be ours. It's slightly unsingable and the words don't really make a lot of sense. But it is our national anthem. If the audience actually likes it, maybe it doesn't spoil the mood." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and leave a comment below: How do you feel about playing the Star-Spangled Banner before concerts? After four years, this is Naomi Lewin's final episode as host of WQXR's Conducting Business. We thank her for her steadfast dedication to the show, her commitment to quality arts journalism, her sense of humor and willingness to dive into a wide range of topics involving classical music. We wish her best of luck in her next endeavors.

An international dispute arose last month when Russia announced its intentions to reclaim Rachmaninoff's remains from a cemetery in Valhalla, NY. Russian cultural minister Vladimir Medinsky claimed that Americans have neglected the composer's grave (pictured above) while attempting to "shamelessly privatize" his name. But Rachmaninoff's descendants have balked at the idea of moving the body, pointing out that he died in the U.S. after spending decades outside of Russia in self-imposed political exile. This week's podcast explores just how Russia has built its case for moving Rachmaninoff's body, and what larger ambitions may be driving the effort. Simon Morrison, a professor of music and Slavic studies at Princeton University, was approached by Russian officials to find evidence that the composer wanted to be buried in his homeland. "Rachmaninoff didn't express a desire to be buried anywhere, as far as I know," Morrison tells host Naomi Lewin. All that Morrison could find was an "offhand" comment, cited in a biography, about his Swiss estate, Villa Senar. "He did write a letter to his sister-in-law, saying, 'If I must die, then this wouldn't be a bad place to be buried' – or words to that effect," noted Morrison. Sergei Rachmaninoff at a Steinway grand piano. Circa 1936 or earlier. (Wikimedia commons) Morrison says that a Russian delegation then traveled to the U.S. in 2014 to secure a copy of the letter from the Library of Congress. That led to a meeting between officials from Russia and the U.S. State Department, which Morrison attended as a musicological expert witness. Ultimately, the talks fell apart over Russia's military intervention in Crimea. Welz Kauffman, president of the Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation, a nonprofit established by the composer's late grandson, Alexandre, says the matter of Rachmaninoff's remains are intertwined with Russia's efforts to purchase Senar. An attempted sale last year to an unnamed Russian oligarch fell through. The Foundation maintains that any decisions over the composer's remains or effects should be done in consultation with all of the composer's heirs (his great-great-granddaughter, Susan Sophia Volkonskaya-Wanamaker, has repeatedly dismissed the idea of reinterment). Ultimately, Morrison believes that the case reflects a desire by Russian politicians to reclaim their cultural legacy, whether that involves scattered manuscripts or the bodies of long-dead artists. This, he says, would establish Moscow "as this faux imperial city that it never was in the first place. It's part of a broader effort to re-establish imperial culture back in Russia." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page, take our poll below and share your comments: .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "should-rachmaninoffs-remains-be-moved-back-russia", "survey_should-rachmaninoffs-remains-be-moved-back-russia");

Attending a new opera? Better take it all in because there's a good chance it may not be performed again. According to a 2015 study by Opera America, of the 589 operas that were premiered over the last 20 years, just 71 (or 11 percent) received subsequent revivals. For the second of two episodes dedicated to contemporary opera, we consider why the revival percentage is so low, and what gives a new opera staying power. Marc Scorca, president and CEO of Opera America, says that historically, few operas have ever entered the standard repertoire. "In the years of the 1780s, over a thousand operas a year premiered," he noted, but only a few, including Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, have withstood the test of time and continue to be performed. "Even though we see such a flowering of American creativity in opera, we still see a relatively limited number of new works." The Opera America study found that Mark Adamo's Little Women has been revived the highest number of times, with 66 revivals since its premiere at Houston Grand Opera in 1998. David Gockley, who was general manager in Houston when Little Women premiered, says its popularity is due to its recognizable title, modest scale and ability to be performed by younger singers. "It is a gorgeous gem of a piece," said Gockley, who is now entering his 10th and final season as general director of San Francisco Opera. Gockley encourages young composers to make their operas "more portable, more performable by different-sized companies." Cori Ellison, dramaturg at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, notes that some larger companies are developing adjunct, black-box-style venues where new works can get their start. "It's good if you can commission a good old barn-burning grand opera now and again," she said. "But I think that a lot of the future of new opera in this country has to do with small venues and more modest scale." Dead Man Walking, by American composer Jake Heggie, has received the second highest number of revivals, at 42, since its 2000 premiere with the San Francisco Opera. Gockley said he's looking forward to more new works by Heggie in the season ahead. He also maintains that the current season is nearly a golden age compared with 40 years ago, when he was starting out in Houston. "Compared with 1974, this is an immense amount of activity and to be thankful for." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and please share your thoughts below.

When George Benjamin's Written on Skin had its American stage premiere at the Mostly Mozart Festival on August 11, it became an unlikely summer blockbuster: a complex, contemporary opera with an abstract storyline and a dense, modernist musical language. The work got standing ovations from audiences and rave reviews from critics – but not all of them. This summer also saw another big premiere: Cold Mountain, by American composer Jennifer Higdon, at Santa Fe Opera. That work features a more accessible language, with traditional melodies and a conventional linear storyline, though reviews were somewhat more mixed. This week's podcast explores which approach works best in contemporary opera, and what has "sticking power." Joining host Naomi Lewin are Marc Scorca, president and CEO of Opera America, which represents North American opera companies, Cori Ellison, dramaturg at the Glyndebourne Festival in England; she also teaches at Juilliard and the American Lyric Theater; and David Gockley, who is entering his 10th and final season as general director of San Francisco Opera. From 1972-2005 he ran Houston Grand Opera, where he commissioned a lot of new work. Gockley is unconvinced by the popularity of Written on Skin. "It's a connoisseur's piece," he said. "Its musical language is extraordinarily complicated. I mean, are you going to sit down and play [a recording of] that at dinner?" As someone whose job includes filling a 3,200-seat house every night, Gockley says that he looks for works with a certain "bourgeois" appeal. "That is what we are – a bourgeois art form," he said. And if audiences don't immediately embrace a new work, "they're not going to come back." Ellison points out that a very different situation exists in Europe. On a list of some 60 notable modern operas recently compiled by Washington Post readers, only about 15 of them are by non-American composers. "Those 15 operas are in a much more modernist style or spectralist style," she said. European opera houses are generally smaller, benefit from government funding and can afford to take more risks stylistically. "It's a different landscape." A scene from Jennifer Higdon's 'Cold Mountain' (© Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera) But if traditional American opera audiences balk at a complex, modern work, how do we account for the warm reception Written on Skin received, and the cooler one for Cold Mountain? All three guests acknowledge that while Higdon's first opera wasn't perfect, it showed considerable promise. "I left Cold Mountain really wanting to hear Jennifer Higdon's next opera," said Scorca. He adds, "The challenge for today's composers is to find their own sweet spot between being truly contemporary, and writing in the moment of 2015, and finding a way to connect with the audience." And then there are regional tastes – and rivalries. "I think New York feels envious in one way and critical in another way of all the new operatic activity taking place outside of New York," said Gockley. "They are willing to dismiss it as being pap, and therefore, when something like the Benjamin comes along they can jump on that and think it's the bee's knees. As far as I'm concerned, it's just rehashing the modernism that has bit the dust again and again over the last 50 years." To hear our guest's comments on operas based on novels and films, and why that can help their success, listen to the full segment at the top of this page.

It's no secret that arts coverage has been slashed by many news media outlets looking to pare costs, and there are fewer writers and less space devoted to serious classical music criticism. This year has seen critics leave national newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News; last December brought the departure of long time New York Times critic Allan Kozinn. That's not to mention magazines; the age when Time and Newsweek had full rosters of arts critics have long since passed. This week's podcast explores the consequences of these changes for readers – and arts organizations – in a changing news environment. Joining host Naomi Lewin are Scott Cantrell, the outgoing music critic for the Dallas Morning News and Douglas McLennan, the founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com, which aggregates arts news stories from around the globe. Cantrell is not optimistic about the future of music criticism. Having been the music critic in Dallas for 16 years, he just accepted a buyout offer, which leaves a grand total of zero full-time classical music critics in the state of Texas. "There's no future in arts criticism as a full-time job with benefits as we have known it," he said. But if a newspaper critic as an influential arbiter of taste has declined, this hasn't led to less music criticism. Rather, a void is being filled by bloggers and other Internet pundits, who for the most part are unpaid. McLennan also believes that with the rise in non-traditional voices, the overall level of writing has improved. "I remember in the early years it was quite a chore to try and find 20 stories in a day that would be worth putting up," he said, referring to his site, which highlights noteworthy stories. "Let's not equate the golden age of criticism with the situation 20 years ago." Both guests estimate that there are currently about a dozen classical music critics at U.S. newspapers, down from about 65 only two decades ago. New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross recently compiled a list of remaining critics on his blog, The Rest in Noise. He lists 39 critics, but most of them are not solely dedicated to classical music. Even Cantrell had to do double-duty for several years, serving as a fill-in art and architecture critic. WQXR has created a map based largely on Ross’s data about newspaper critics (radio, blogs, music magazines and other media are not included). Please have a look and tell us if there's anyone we're missing: McLennan also believes that newspapers' current obsession with website clicks will exhaust itself, and new measurements of success will take over. In Cantrell’s experience, this may be a good thing. Even though his reviews are posted on his paper's website much earlier, many older readers will wait until they appear in ink. McLennan cautions about feeling nostalgic for the past as a golden age of classical music journalism: It wasn't necessary better, just different. Please listen to the full segment at the top of this page and share your thoughts below.

When Laurence Olivier played Othello in 1964, he would spend two hours a night coating his body with black grease, dying his tongue red and using drops to whiten his eyes. Such transformations have long since been banished from television and theater as racially insensitive, but some variations on this have doggedly continued in opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, up until this week. The Met has said that for its season-opening new production of Verdi's Otello the lead tenor, Aleksandrs Antoneko (from Latvia and white), will not wear dark-colored makeup. The company says it is "old-fashioned" and a "tradition that needed to be changed." Many would agree that at a time in which other symbols of racism are being discarded, that kind of makeup must go too. But some critics of the decision have argued that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Moor is problematic too. Some say the real issue involves the lack of African-American tenors currently who can sing Otello. Lawrence Brownlee (Dale Pickett/Courtesy of the artist) In this podcast, we get three views on this. Lawrence Brownlee, who is one of today's most in-demand tenors, and who frequently appears at the Met and other companies, says he doesn't personally have a problem with a colleague wearing blackening makeup if it serves the characterization. However, if a singer "feels they're being humiliated or they cannot accurately or appropriately portray that character with makeup on – and it takes them out of their zone when performing – then I don’t think they should be forced to do it." But Naomi André, co-editor of the book Blackness in Opera and a professor at the University of Michigan, suggests that if blackening makeup is used, companies should include a disclaimer in a program note. Naomi André, co-editor of 'Blackness in Opera' (University of Michigan) "Have it discussed," she said. "Say that 'we realize that this has a very difficult history and for these reasons we've decided to use it or for these reasons we've decided not to use it.'" She adds: "What I think is most damaging is when there's no discussion about it, and then you get a situation where the cover of an artistic brochure shows somebody in blackface and then the rest of us are thinking, 'what's going on?'" (The Met's decision came after an outcry from some subscribers who took issue with a photo in its season brochure.)        Vinson Cole, tenor (Robert Schraeder) Vinson Cole, a tenor who has sung with many of the world's leading opera companies and orchestras over three decades, believes that the issue can be overstated. He says the use of makeup can be done subtly and without the connotations of racist minstrelsy. "When somebody's singing Otello or Aida, you don’t have to use a great deal of makeup to make it so very heavily black," he noted. "You want to give the illusion" of a black or ethnic character.  Listen to our guest's views on Madama Butterfly and the future of audience expectations at the top of this page and leave a comment below: What do you think about the Met's decision?

"Art for art's sake?" Not any more. A growing number of economic impact studies conducted by arts groups suggest that music festivals have a big impact on local economies. "If you do these studies and show them to government officials, they might be more willing to invest in the arts in their own communities," says Timothy Mangan, the classical music critic of the Orange County Register, who recently reported on the issue in Southern California. Mangan found that festivals and venues in Orange County have sought to demonstrate how they create jobs, generate tax revenue, benefit hotels and cause a ripple effect to tourist businesses. A few years ago, arts groups in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts sought to make a similar case. They commissioned a study which found that the arts bring some 6,000 jobs to the region, and help sustain local restaurants and hotels. "The creative economy is incredibly important to this area at a time when manufacturing has moved out of the area," Julia Dixon, head of Berkshire Creative, tells Naomi Lewin. Dixon particularly cites cities like North Adams (home to MASS MoCA) and Pittsfield (which, for a decade, battled downtown vacancy with the Storefront Artist Project). But even as cultural tourism has evolved, festivals are not a surefire economic booster to regional economies. Their programming has to be unique enough that visitors will come in the first place, and communities must work to exploit their assets while also managing traffic, parking and potential environmental effects. Listen to the full discussion above and tell us: Do you travel to music festivals? How do you spend money outside of the arts events themselves? Please leave a comment below.

Scan through the websites and social media feeds of many orchestras, music festivals and concert halls and you'll notice a common theme: youth and sex appeal, especially when it comes to soloists. But it's more specific than that: Alluring young female violinists are everywhere – and brooding male conductors (or guitarists) with artfully-groomed stubble aren't far behind. These musicians may well be talented and accomplished but their prominence also raises some questions: Is there room for less attractive soloists? And, as with Hollywood, do older women get shut out of opportunities? Jessica Duchen, a classical music & dance journalist for The Independent newspaper and other publications, tells host Naomi Lewin: "I've heard some fantastic female pianists who might be overweight or they don't happen to look like supermodels, and they don't have the careers that they could. They literally do not." Duchen recently interviewed a cellist who said that colleges and conservatories are favoring attractive performers in the admissions process. "I find this quite a disturbing thought," Duchen said. Andrew Ousley, the head of the classical marketing and promotion company Unison Media (and formerly of Warner Classics), doesn't believe there's an epidemic of style trumping substance. While he admits that "sex appeal certainly can allow success to be amplified to a greater scale, it might be an oversimplification to say it's one of the main marketing tools that promoters use." But Jessica Hadler, director of artist programs at Concert Artists Guild, which manages and promotes rising classical performers, says that if an orchestra is presented with two equally accomplished soloists, it will likely hire the more attractive of the two. She frequently coaches artists on matters of wardrobe and styling – and fields occasional complaints from venues about artists' choice of attire. Whether attractive soloists' presence in concert halls is by design or happenstance – and whether it's a good or bad thing for the future of classical music – is an ongoing debate. But a question emerges: How many of them will have the sticking power of Martha Argerich and Mitsuko Uchida? Duchen notes that "what somebody does at 50 or 60 is probably going to be a lot more interesting and mature and insightful than what somebody does at 22. It does seem to me that weeds out the sheep and the goats, if you like." Listen to the segment above, look at the slideshow below, and tell us what you think in the comments: are standards of style changing on concert stages?

"The whole concept of streaming doesn't fit with the way people listen to classical music," says Kirk McElhearn, a technology writer and senior contributor to Macworld, in this week's episode of Conducting Business. The launch of the online streaming service Apple Music has raised hopes and reinforced some of the persistent complaints about Apple when it comes to delivering symphonies, concertos and operas to listeners' computers and mobile devices. In test runs, McElhearn found that Apple Music repeats a problem familiar to the tech company's iTunes store: it serves up individual movements from pieces rather than grouping them together in sequence. So a listener's encounter with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony might only involve the third movement, not the whole work in sequence. Apple is touting its streaming service, which launched on June 30 in 100 countries, for not only its depth – with more than 30 million songs – but its hand-picked recommendations. Some of its "curated" playlists are chosen by the company's editors – à la the old record store clerk. There is also a section called "for you," based on music you've previously purchased or rated. McElhearn complains that when he first opened this section he was given a playlist called "Classical Music for Elevators." Classical Music...for Elevators (Screenshot/mcelhearn.com) Craig Havighurst, a writer and broadcaster from Nashville who co-hosts the weekly show Music City Roots, also tested Apple Music and tells us that the service lacks sufficient contextual information about recordings, such as liner notes (a flaw he admits is partly attributable to record companies). Searching for artists also didn't go easily. "Fans of classical music want to be able to see who a soloist is or who a conductor is and the 'artist' catchall doesn't explain that," he said. Apple did not respond to requests for comment for this segment. But while streaming companies – including Spotify, Pandora and Google Play – inevitably make music of all kinds more accessible, Havighurst argues that "art" genres may always be neglected: "If classical and jazz listeners are 4 to 5 percent of the [total] market, they are the ones who get underserved." Listen to the full segment above and tell us below: Have you tried Apple Music? What did you like or didn't like about it?

Ronald A. Wilford, once classical music's biggest power broker, died on June 13 at age 87. Wilford was an artist manager of the old school, wielding major control over the business but keeping a very low profile. In 50 years at Columbia Artists Management, Inc. (CAMI), he was the power behind the thrones occupied by James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa and Herbert von Karajan, among other conductors. With his legendary client roster, Wilford was able to call the shots and secure bookings for lesser-known artists in exchange for one of his A-listers. But the classical music business has changed dramatically since Ronald Wilford's glory days – and so has the role of the artist manager. This week's episode looks at Wilford's legacy and the future of artist management with Bill Palant, the founder and managing director of Étude Arts, a new artist management agency; until last month he was a vice president at IMG Artists. Also joining us is David Middleton, a managing partner at Alliance Artist Management, and a onetime employee of Ronald Wilford's CAMI. "Mr. Wilford had the benefit of being in a position to shape and drive programming globally," said Palant, by essentially forcing orchestras to take the soloists his conductors wanted. But that style of deal-making has become far less routine. "It's no longer a quid pro quo where you say to the orchestra 'my conductor is coming and he or she wants this quartet for a Beethoven Ninth Symphony.'" Middleton agrees, noting, "In my days at CAMI, there was a sense of heavy-handedness, and that control wasn't felt so well in the industry, particularly on the presenting side." The management business may still exercise some hard-nosed tactics, but Palant and Middleton say that stealing other firms’ clients is a no-no. "In my experience, there is a respect for each other where we try not to poach artists if at all possible, particularly if it's from a manager that we respect," said Palant. But if a major artist approaches another manager, wanting to jump ship, "then it's fair play.” Listen to our guests' comments on the future of artist management at the top of this page and share your reactions below.

As this year's college graduates frame their diplomas, the job market is the strongest it has been in nearly a decade. The economy is improving and salaries are up in many fields. But how these developments impact classically trained musicians is a more complicated picture. In this week's episode, we explore career prospects for the class of 2015. First, we look at their earnings potential. A new study from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce used U.S. census data to analyze wages for workers from 137 college majors. It found that the popularity of majors doesn't always match earnings potential: Music ranks 36th in popularity among bachelor's degrees but 113th in terms of earnings (graduate music degrees rank 31st in popularity, and 121st in earnings). The median national income for a musician with a bachelor's is $49,000 (top-paying fields are in science and business). Anthony P. Carnevale, the lead author of the study, says that while music falls low in the pay scale, it is possible to make a solid middle-class living in the arts. "If you make 40 to 50 grand a year and you're married to someone who makes the same, that's 100, and if you get benefits that adds 30 percent of the value to your job," he said. "You can raise a family on that." Carnevale added that students should follow their passion but be mindful: "What you take in college is going to have a lot to do with what you do after breakfast for the 45 or 50 years after you graduate and go to work." Next, a reality check from two newly-minted graduates. Weixiong Wang, a clarinetist who just received a master's degree from the Juilliard School, says that while he has a budding performance career that includes a post in the Albany Symphony Orchestra, he isn't putting his eggs in one basket: he is also starting a recording studio in Brooklyn. "From second year of undergrad," he says, "I started to realize that even though I have so much passion for music, it's very important to make a living while you're in love with music. That's the problem a lot of us are facing after school." Maria Natale, a soprano and recipient of a professional studies certificate from the Manhattan School of Music, has already performed with the Sarasota Opera and other companies. Now, she’s facing an endless round of auditions. "I never once saw opera from the business side and now that is the most difficult part," she admits. "Everybody has their definition of a dream job....I want it all." We also ask whether conservatories are adequately preparing students for careers. Listen to the musicians' responses in the segment above and tell us in the comments below: What advice do you have for new college graduates?

When Reynold Levy became president of Lincoln Center in 2002, the organization was “a community in deep distress, riven by conflict,” according to New York magazine. No surprise that the title of Levy’s new memoir is They Told Me Not to Take That Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center. While much of Levy’s book offers an upbeat look at Lincoln Center's $1.2 billion redevelopment and its years of balanced budgets, he also surprised many with his scathing take on the management blunders at some of Lincoln Center's resident organizations, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera. On this edition of Conducting Business Levy tells host Naomi Lewin why he chose to write in such forthright terms – and name names: “When governance goes astray, when management is not being held accountable, they get themselves into deep trouble. Because this whole sector is relatively unregulated, it’s important to call attention to the public those that are not so well-governed or well-managed.” Levy, who stepped down from the Lincoln Center presidency last year, elaborates on the “self-inflicted wound” that led to the collapse of City Opera in 2013; the “shocking” lack of due diligence by the Philharmonic when it tried to merge with Carnegie Hall in 2003; and the still-uncertain outcome of last summer’s labor strife at the Met. He names five things the Met and its unions could do right now to improve the company’s finances, and he considers Alan Gilbert's surprise announcement to leave the Philharmonic. Levy also tells us what he is most proud of as he looks back at the redevelopment of Lincoln Center’s 16-acre campus. Listen to the full interview above and share your reactions in the comments box below.

It's hard to talk about Tchaikovsky these days without getting into, well, sex. That probably says less about the Russian composer, who was born 175 years ago Thursday, than it does about us, according to Simon Morrison, a professor of Slavic Studies at Princeton University.  Tchaikovsky's letters and journal entries leave little doubt that he was gay. But Morrison cautions against reducing his operas, ballets and symphonies to coded expressions of his private life. "Generally these works are very rich," said Morrison, who recently wrote about Tchaikovsky for the Times Literary Supplement. "And to some degree, I wonder whether the average gay person looking at the kind of things that are written about this composer – his suffering and his identity – would actually find them rather offensive." Homophobia has figured in some of the attacks on Tchaikovsky over the years, including criticisms that his music is overly emotional and sentimental. Things get murkier, too, when we consider Tchaikovsky's music in the context of contemporary Russia, where the church and state wield a lot of influence on cultural matters. In 2013, for instance, when a prominent Russian screenwriter, Yuri Arabov, set out to make a bio-pic about Tchaikovsky, with state funding, he announced that he wouldn’t be mentioning the composer's sexual orientation. It came on the heels of Vladimir Putin's newly enacted "gay propaganda" laws. And a recent conference at the Glinka Museum in Moscow featured a panel that took a sharply critical line on Western critiques of the composer.  "There's a broader agenda within cultural circles to look at a composer who's legitimately Russian," said Morrison, "and look at how his local legacy has been tarnished and distorted through an over-emphasis on his personal life and intimate matters. There's a pullback and a reaction against it. But to write articles saying he was not homosexual – that's not true." How should audiences come to terms with Tchaikovsky's love life? Listen to the full segment at the top of the page and please leave your thoughts below.

According to several recent studies, young musicians are still following traditional gender stereotypes when they choose an instrument. Girls at a young age go for what they perceive as "feminine" instruments, such as the flute, piccolo, violin, and clarinet; boys gravitate towards trumpets, tubas and percussion. Kids’ views of masculinity and femininity can lead to other problems; for instance, boys who take up the flute are more susceptible to social isolation and bullying. Hal Abeles, the co-director of the Center for Arts Education Research at Columbia University's Teachers College, cites several reasons that these gender perceptions persist: a lack of role models, the physical size of an instrument, and general societal pressures. "Adolescents, males in particular, get intimidated by not being with the majority," he tells host Naomi Lewin. "So if the majority of students in your middle school who are playing flute are girls, young boys feel 'I want to belong.'" Abeles co-authored a 2014 study in the journal Music Education Research, which found that choosing the "wrong instrument" can provoke young students to drop out of instrumental music completely as they face online "cyber-bullying" and other forms of harassment. But our guests note that instrument-based stereotypes vary from culture to culture. Sivan Magen, a New York-based harpist, said he experienced few harp stereotypes growing up in Israel, "Especially in the States, it has become a woman's instrument." Magen notes that among his eight harpist classmates at the Paris Conservatory, four were male. Being strong-willed and successful can lessen a student's risk for harassment. Carol Jantsch, the principal tuba of the Philadelphia Orchestra, says she never got grief from her classmates as a kid in Ohio. "If you're good at your instrument, your peers don't care what you play," she said. But today, she'll occasionally encounter conductors who use the phrase "gentlemen of the brass." "Usually I'll cough very loudly and they'll correct themselves after that," she noted (Jantsch appears in Part Two of this segment). Ricky O'Bannon, a writer in residence at the Baltimore Symphony, recently interviewed several teachers about this issue. Among his takeaways: It's better for teachers not to address the issue in the classroom. "The moment you start saying 'this instrument is not just for girls or not just for boys'" is the kiss of death, he noted. "Teachers are also playing YouTube videos in classrooms of counter-stereotypes," such as a beatboxing flutist. "It's about having a child find the instrument that they're going to enjoy and not having any extra pressures on that." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and please tell us what you think below: have you experienced gender associations with an instrument? What can be done to lessen these?

If you've ever looked out on an orchestra audience and marveled at all of the gray hair and empty seats, the next question that may enter your mind is, how will this picture look in 10, 20 or 30 years? And should I be alarmed? In this week's episode, Michael Kaiser, known as the arts world's "Mr. Fix-It," gives some less-than-rosy answers – as well as some advice for orchestras and opera companies. For 14 years, Kaiser was president of Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, and before that, he helped rescue faltering organizations including the Royal Opera House, American Ballet Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Kaiser currently serves as president of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. His new book is Curtains?: The Future of the Arts in America. Kaiser tells Naomi Lewin that the financial model of arts organizations has become unsustainable as aging audiences aren't replaced by enough younger patrons. He points to several related maladies: the lack of standard arts education, fatigued donors, and especially, cheaper online entertainment options that will continue to siphon away audiences. But Kaiser believes playing it safe is the wrong response. "As arts organizations have gotten more and more scared about the changing world, there's been a pressure to do 'what sells' and do 'the popular stuff' because that's what's going to bring in ticket buyers," said Kaiser. "The problem is, if everyone does Beethoven's Ninth or everyone does Swan Lake, a) we get very dull, and b) there are many versions of Beethoven's Ninth that you can get online. We compete less well with online entertainment and we look less interesting and surprising." Listen to the podcast to hear what Kaiser has to say about HD movie theater broadcasts – and what he would do if he were running the Metropolitan Opera.

Chicago Tribune chief theater critic Chris Jones tells Naomi Lewin that nothing lights up his e-mail inbox like an opera company staging a Broadway musical using full amplification. "It's full of disgruntled patrons," he said. "You get the natural hall acoustics working – and then you get a miked performer." The controversies go beyond acoustics and amplification – there's also the question of how to blend performers from the worlds of opera and Broadway in a single cast. On the other hand, there’s a huge potential upside for opera houses: the ability to reach new audiences clamoring for the sound of a full orchestra, which has all but vanished from Broadway pits. The trend has been particularly pronounced at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which in recent years has staged “Oklahoma,” “Show Boat" “The Sound of Music” and now, Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Carousel." Elsewhere, Stephen Sondheim's “Sweeney Todd” is coming to Houston Grand Opera next week and San Francisco Opera in September. Companies in Los Angeles and Washington, DC as well as the Glimmerglass festival have also been bit by the Broadway bug. James Jorden, editor of the opera website Parterre Box and a contributor to the New York Observer, notes that the now-defunct New York City Opera made a staple of musicals in the 1980s. And yet, "opera houses are not made for talking in," he said referring to the spoken dialogue. "Even with very excellent sound design, it's going to be difficult to do 'Carousel,' which is very talky." Jorden and Jones also weigh in on the decline of the Broadway touring circuit and how that has opened up a place for opera companies, and whether more musicals means fewer operas for major houses. Jorden also tells us what musical he believes would be particularly well-suited for the Metropolitan Opera. Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and tell us what you think of the trend in the comments box below.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra's decision to drop its piano soloist Valentina Lisitsa this week because of her Twitter comments about Ukrainians and other ethnic groups raises a crucial point: orchestras and arts organizations find themselves walking a fine line with protecting their brand when they engage an artist with controversial views. In this episode, Washington Post classical music critic Anne Midgette argues that the Toronto Symphony handled the Lisitsa situation poorly by not presenting its case properly to the public. "The orchestra decorously cited distasteful Tweets and Lisitsa, who is a very savvy social media person, went on the warpath and said 'free speech,'" Midgette said. "Because the Toronto Symphony didn't come out and cite the Tweets they were talking about – and because Lisitsa was able to marshal opinion on her side – this has developed into a kind of cause celebre and people are jumping to conclusions based on inadequate information." Peter Himler, a P.R. strategist who advises clients on crisis management, agrees that the TSO didn't get out ahead of the story. "There is not one Tweet from them bringing up this issue," he said. "I think they should be up front and continually communicating their point of view. That's one of the rules of thumb in crisis communication." [Listen to WQXR's interview with TSO president Jeff Melanson.] Himler believes that many of Lisitsa's social media supporters may in fact be paid trolls who operate on behalf of the Russian government. "Vladimir Putin has people that go out and bolster the posts that are in his court," he noted. Both Himler and Midgette agree that artists should be free to speak their minds, but orchestras should realize that guest soloists become the temporary representative of the symphony. "Your soloist is certainly your face that week in terms of marketing," said Midgette. "You are hiring somebody as an ambassador with the assumption that your organization is aligned with what they represent." Hear our guests' examples of successful crisis management in the full segment at the top of this page, and tell us what you think in the comments below.

Toronto Symphony president Jeff Melanson tells WQXR's Conducting Business that pianist Valentina Lisitsa's politics had nothing to do with the orchestra's decision to drop her from its program this week. "The concerns raised were not about a political perspective but were about directly offensive and intolerant comments directed at other human beings," he told host Naomi Lewin. Melanson disputed Lisitsa's contention that the orchestra had made the decision in December after a donor threatened to withhold funds if she performed as scheduled. The orchestra produced a seven-page list of the Twitter commentary it found most offensive and sent it to ask if the posts were made by her, or by a proxy. "A week-and-a-half ago she confirmed that these were her words and we had to make a decision," he said. Melanson continued that "a contract provision allows us to pay an artist her fee and remove them from the program. We tried to do it in a way that was protective of the artist, in terms of not publicly discussing any of this, and of course she's chosen to turn the story into one for the Twitter-verse." Lisitsa is an ethnic Russian who was born in Ukraine. Through her active Twitter account, she has been highly critical of the Kiev government, comparing its leaders to Nazis and dog feces. In one frequently-cited Tweet, she juxtaposed a photo of contemporary Ukrainian teachers wearing traditional embroidered shirts with a photo of black costumed dancers. The pianist has not responded to multiple requests by WQXR for comment on the Tweets, but she told the CBC that the Tweets were "satirical" and "there is a great space for exaggeration and hyperbole." Melanson said the Toronto Symphony does not habitually screen artists' social media before it offers them work, nor does take a side on political matters. "We are not taking a side here between Russia and the Ukraine," he noted. The orchestra president also implied that the decision to cancel the replacement soloist, Stewart Goodyear, was made out of concern for the musicians' safety. "We could not put an orchestra, an artist and a guest artist up on stage in the context of this week's discussions," he said. For more on how Melanson said the TSO's decisions were made, and who blew the whistle, listen to the full interview at the top of this page.

If you're a music fan of a certain age you’ll remember your first Walkman: likely a cassette player with a belt clip and possibly a built-in radio. Long before the smartphone and the iPod, Sony’s player defined portable audio. And it actually never completely disappeared: Last month Sony introduced a new model – a digital music player that promises high-res audio and costs a cool $1200. But how groundbreaking was that original Walkman? In this week's episode, we ask Robert Klara, a senior editor at Adweek, who recently looked back at this miniature marvel. "The iPod was extremely significant when it debuted in 2001," said Klara, "but it was really the Sony Walkman that ushered in the idea, which was radical at the time, that you could walk around and take your music with you. "It came with very, very good audio quality plus lightweight headphones, and that was a remarkable thing in 1979 when it hit the market." But Klara contends that the Walkman become "one of branding's cautionary tales," when the MP3 era arrived and Sony "became complacent." Listen to the full interview above to find out why. Plus, watch a slideshow of classic Walkman models below, and tell us: What do you remember about your first Walkman (or Discman)?

Virtual reality technology has revolutionized the way pilots train for flight, soldiers prepare for battle and surgeons learn delicate procedures. So it might be inevitable that musicians entering the cutthroat classical music world would turn to high-tech virtual reality equipment. A team at the Royal College of Music in London and the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland has developed a performance simulator that's intended to mimic concert hall and audition conditions. On this week's episode, we consider the potential of the Performance Simulator with two guests: Dr. Aaron Williamon, a professor of performance science at the Royal College of Music, who helped to develop the technology; and Holly Mulcahy, concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony and author of the blog Neo-Classical, where she's written about auditioning.  Segment Highlights According to Williamon, the simulator is designed to help performers learn to cope with the heightened pressures of a stage environment: a musician appears before a life-sized video projection of an audience, which can be appreciative (clapping, smiling) or downright hostile (coughing, sneezing and even booing). The room is fitted out like a concert hall, with spotlights, curtains, a back-stage area and stage furniture. The virtual audience's response can be manipulated by a stage manager behind the scenes. "Access to actual concert halls tends to be rare," noted Williamon. With the simulator, he says, "we've come up with one scenario that seems to be quite realistic." But Mulcahy questions whether a performer can suspend disbelief and buy into the simulated environment. She says that the interaction between musicians – or auditioners  – and audience is highly subtle and "the split-second timing of somebody's facial expression or how they perceive your playing can make or break you." Mulcahy adds that, for audition preparation, gathering friends to watch your performance is most effective. Williamon believes the Performance Simulator can be one tool among many. "I'm not proposing that this is everybody's solution," he said. "We're doing a lot of basic research into the physiology and psychology of performance. We will continue to chip away at that. What we have at the moment is a training facility which we can experiment with." Watch a video of the performance simulator below, listen to the full segment above, and tell us what you think in the comments.  

Last week, a Los Angeles jury found that the pop stars Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams copied Marvin Gaye's 1977 song "Got to Give it Up" in their song "Blurred Lines." The jury awarded the singer's estate $7.4 million. Gaye’s family celebrated the decision. But a lot of composers wondered if copyright is now being extended to cover not just song lyrics and melody but much else – tone, rhythm, tempo. On this week's episode, Naomi Lewin speaks with two experts about the case's implications: Mark Swed, the classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times, and Lawrence Ferrara, a professor of music at New York University. He's also a music copyright consultant for record labels, music publishing companies and film studios, and was briefly involved in the "Blurred Lines" case. Segment Highlights Add Caption Here Our guests have vastly different takes on the case's implications. For Swed, "the tradition in music, in most musical traditions, is to build one thing on another. Rhythmic patterns, bass lines, and things like this are generally thought of as common property." Besides, Renaissance composers such as Josquin des Prez frequently built "paraphrase" or "parody" masses on preexisting Gregorian chants. J.S. Bach lifted entire from Vivaldi. Debussy quoted Wagner's "Tristan" chord. "Everything is very vague and nobody is quite sure how this is all going to work out," said Swed, who recently wrote about the case. "Music works in a different way than the courts work. The arts are often about breaking rules and the courts are about maintaining rules." Robin Thicke (L) and T.I. perform the song 'Blurred Lines' at the The Grammy Nominations Concert Live. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images) Ferrara, however, believes that the rules around copyright enforcement are clear. "One can always find works with similarities," he said, but the "feel and vibe" of a composition cannot be monopolized by one composer. "Melody tends to be the meat in a copyright issue. That's what gets you at the musical expression that's ultimately the test of whether there's ultimately been an infringement." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and tell us what you think below: Is plagiarism a problem in music? Should copyright laws be more or less strictly enforced?

When Frank Music Company, the last store in New York City dedicated to selling classical sheet music, closed its doors last Friday, there was much dismay about its significance: yet another brick-and-mortar store was bowing to the pressure of online competition. So without a shop where one can browse and get advice, what digital options are there for the classical musician? On this week's episode we put this question to two digital sheet music converts: Todd Reynolds, a violinist and composer in New York who performs almost exclusively using digital formats; and Ron Regev, a pianist and head of Tonara, an "interactive" sheet music app for iPads. Segment Highlights: Sheet music is now accessible in a variety of digital ways, including through retail websites and online apps or free catalogs like the Internet Music Score Library Project. Downloads are instantaneous, which means touring artists are no longer forced to stuff their suitcases with fraying scores – their entire library fits onto a hard drive or the cloud. Turning pages isn't a problem when performing from an iPad either. Some programs involve foot pedals; Tonara can detect your position on the page via the microphone on your tablet, and flip the page automatically at the right moment. At the same time, traditional music publishers face a host of piracy concerns as scores can be downloaded and easily shared among musicians. "The question of ownership is changing," said Reynolds. "We don't have the infrastructure in place now to really serve composers and performers well enough in terms of protecting and having the music paid for." Regev agreed, adding: "There are a few publishers that understand the problem and are adjusting in the way that recording companies adjusted to the MP3 revolution. The problem is that many of them are trying to cling to their old models as they see their income dwindling. This is a tragedy because no one will produce this high-quality type of musical research that their editions will produce." Listen to the full segment above and tell us in the comments box below: Are you sad to see traditional sheet music stores disappear? What is lost or gained with digital formats?

The conductor an orchestra chooses says a lot about how it sees its mission in the 21st century. Factors to consider include taste in repertoire, age, nationality, race, gender, fundraising skills -- and of course, musicianship. The New York Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestras in Washington, DC are about to grapple with all of this as they look for successors to Alan Gilbert and Christoph Eschenbach, who are both leaving their music director jobs in 2017. This week, we ask three industry watchers what are – or what should be – chief considerations for these orchestras as they begin their searches. Joining us are Zachary Woolfe, a freelance classical music critic for the New York Times; Anastasia Tsioulcas, who covers classical music for NPR Music; and Nick Matthias, a senior vice president at IMG Artists, who manages a number of top conductors. Segment Highlights Christoph Eschenbach leads the National Symphony Orchestra (Scott Suchman/NSO)  For Matthias, "chemistry must be evident right from the word go, right from the point the conductor meets the orchestra in a rehearsal. Of course, no one has any control over the chemistry aspect at all. This is something very special. Once the conductor walks out on that podium, it's out of all of our hands." Woolfe emphasizes the importance of fundraising and outreach skills. "Especially with the New York Philharmonic," he said, "you're looking at the prospect of somebody who's going to have to be a key person in the raising of a substantial nine figures for the renovation of Avery Fisher Hall." That person must excite both the musicians and the board. Some observers have suggested that New York or Washington would benefit from a woman or minority conductor in order to better reflect their diverse communities. Tsioulcas notes that while women conductors have made particular strides among regional orchestras, "I'm not sure that anyone – aside from a couple very established [women] conductors – is established enough to pivot into such a prominent role as the New York Philharmonic. We may still be a decade or more away from that, I'm sorry to say." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page, take our poll, and tell us in the comments below: What qualities do you think are most important in selecting a new music director? .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "most-needed-next-ny-philharmonic-c", "survey_most-needed-next-ny-philharmonic-c");  

In the last week, two top violinists got a visit by the Repo Man…so to speak. Frank Peter Zimmermann was forced to give up his 1711 Stradivarius just days before soloing with the New York Philharmonic – and before his 50th birthday – after a contract on a loan expired. Meanwhile, a Pressenda violin played by Alexander Pavlovsky of the Jerusalem Quartet was sold by a syndicate that owned it, forcing him to look for another fiddle while he's out on tour. What do these cases tell us about the market for rare violins? And is there a stronger case to be made for modern instruments? In this week's episode, we get some perspective from Jason Price, the director of the auction house Tarisio Fine Instruments & Bows; and Ariane Todes, a writer, violinist and former editor of The Strad magazine who now writes for the website Elbow Music.  Zimmermann never owned his Strad. Rather, he leased it from a now defunct German bank WestLB AG, whose assets are now controlled by Portigon Financial Services. The contract dates to 2002 and expired on Sunday. The violinist, who has offered to buy the instrument, declined to comment to WQXR, as "talks are continuing." The Jerusalem String Quartet. (Felix Broede) Segment Highlights Todes finds it "sad in some ways" that banks or syndicates control a greater share of the rare instrument market. "If a museum or foundation is going to understand the needs of the players and the needs of history, then it's not necessarily a bad thing," she noted. "If you get syndicates that think of these investments in a really short-term way and as [pure] investments rather than philanthropic ways to help musicians, then it's not so good." Price acknowledges that there are problems with the current model. However, "there are so many creative solutions that allow the people who are the top of their field to be playing the top instruments." He points to the growth in foundations that buy rare instruments and lend them out to musicians. There also remains a larger question of whether old instruments really sound better than modern ones – or are they a product of their mystique. To hear what our guests think, listen to the full segment at the top of the page. Tell us what you think below: Do you associate Strads or Guarneri instruments with better quality? Leave your comments by clicking on the gray bar below.

After a long decline, RadioShack recently filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to shutter more than 1,700 stores. As many music lovers know, RadioShack was once the place to get speaker wire, headphones, adapters, or even a Realistic-brand stereo system. But how times have changed.  On this week's show, Christopher Mims, the Wall Street Journal's technology columnist, tells us about the cultural shifts that are behind Radioshack's demise. In a recent article he argued that the loss of RadioShack paralleled the decline of leisure time for would-be hobbyists and tinkerers. "The kind of leisure that we're engaging in has shifted," he tells host Naomi Lewin. "Apps and mobile devices are appealing because they let us snack during our leisure time. What we're missing is the loss of big, unbroken blocks of time that would allow somebody to be a hobbyist, to learn a new skill or repair something like a computer." Mims remembers getting his first Tandy computer at RadioShack during the 1980s, and being "totally blown away and feeling like I was looking at the future." What are your favorite memories of RadioShack? What will you miss or not miss about the stores? Please share your thoughts below.

Ethnic diversity remains a troublesome question for American orchestras. Just over four percent of their musicians are African-American and Latino, according to the League of American Orchestras, and when it comes to orchestra boards and CEOs, the numbers are even starker: only one percent. Ethnic diversity is also a rare sight among guest soloists and conductors. This issue was front and center during the third annual SphinxCon conference, hosted last weekend by the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization. Its founder and president, Aaron Dworkin, joins us for this week's Conducting Business, along with two active musicians: Weston Sprott, a trombonist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; and Melissa White, a violinist who performs in the Harlem Quartet. In this segment our guests discuss: The advantages and shortcomings of blind auditions, in which orchestra job candidates perform behind a screen. The challenges of developing a diverse audition pool in the first place. Where Dworkin believes orchestras fall short compared with other sectors. How orchestras and ensembles can broaden repertoire and formats beyond the traditional concert hall. Where subtle (and not-so-subtle) forms of racism emerge in the hiring process for orchestra players. Where signs of change are occurring (including in Nashville and New York). The graph below illustrates the percentages of black and Hispanic musicians enrolled in major music conservatories. Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and share your thoughts below.

Improvisation is a nearly obsolete art in classical music these days. But virtuosos used to improvise all the time. Mozart freely improvised on his own tunes, Liszt would strike up an aria from a Wagner opera and embellish it. Even legendary piano showmen of the 20th century made it part of their performance practice early in their careers – people like Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Leopold Godowsky. In this week's episode, Clive Brown, a professor of applied musicology at University of Leeds in England, explains why it's fallen by the wayside. He believes that modern recordings, music competitions and regimented conservatory instruction have all contributed to suppressing this practice. "One of the factors that makes classical music seem stuffy and less interesting to young people is this rigidity with which we play it now," said Brown. "More or less every performance is tied to the notation." Gabriela Montero, pianist (Colin Bell) There are a few performers who have taken up the improvisation mantle, including pianist Gabriela Montero. In both recitals and as concerto encores, she spins out elaborate original creations based on a given theme; sometimes she even asks audience members to sing melodies on which she elaborates. But she notes that despite public interest, this has become a double-edged sword, with some music executives mistakenly labeling her a crossover artist. "There are so few of us that do it on the concert platform that you become an oddity," Montero said. "The way the business is set up, people pigeonhole you and they have to find a label for you. So if you improvise, you're too creative or too free to be a classical concert pianist, which is absolute nonsense." Montero maintains that artists must resist "the pressures of careers or the imaginary limitations that people impose on themselves." Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and share your thoughts below: Do you think classical musicians should be freer with their interpretations and improvise?

A report published last week by the National Endowment for the Arts contained this telling statistic: 31 million American adults said they wanted to go to an arts event in the past year but chose not to. The study's purpose was to examine the motivations behind this data. Why do audiences participate in arts activities and what keeps them away? In this week's Conducting Business, Sunil Iyengar, the NEA’s director of Research and Analysis, walks us through a few of the key barriers including: Time: A significant proportion of the respondents to the survey were parents with young kids and who couldn't find family-friendly arts options (cited by 47% of respondents). Access: Another percentage of the survey participants said they couldn't get to venues or museums, whether because of disabilities, other health issues or simple inconvenience (cited by 36% of respondents). Lacking someone to go with: 73 percent of the people who went to an event said it was primarily socialize, which, said Iyengar, "was not something we were prepared to see." The NEA's General Social Study, as the report is called, also cited cost as a significant barrier (cited by one in three respondents). Some class distinctions appear to be tied up in these barriers. Americans who say they are in the "upper" or "middle" class were much more likely to have attended an artistic presentation in the past year, than those who say they’re "lower" or "working" class – regardless of actual income. Those who self-identify as lower or working class are more likely to attend events in order to "support the community" or "explore their cultural heritage;" upper classes often attend the arts "as a marker of their good taste, cultural capital and social identity." Iyengar tells us about trends in online access to the arts, and how the data can be useful for arts presenters and advocates. A Symphony Orchestra Rocks the Club In the second part of the episode, we hear about one orchestra's effort to reach a completely new audience. Earlier this month, the National Symphony Orchestra played a concert in a packed nightclub of around 2,000 patrons in Washington DC – and totally rocked the joint. At least that's according to our guest Greg Sandow, a music consultant, Juilliard faculty member and blogger at Artsjournal.com. Sandow said the NSO developed the project while "looking to do something new to engage a new audience." It included an electric cellist's riff on a Bach cello suite that became an exercise in audience participation: "When it came to a notable rising passage that's right out of Bach," said Sandow, "the crowd started shouting and their shouts rose with the music. So you could tell they were really, really into this." The event wasn't without its shortcomings but as Sandow notes, "maybe, and this is scary for people in our field, [traditional] Kennedy Center concerts become more like this." Listen to the full segment above and tell us in the comments below: What are the major barriers to attending arts events in your view?

Usually, a polite discourse pervades arts journalism, but two recent cases underscore the tricky relationships between classical music organizations and the media that covers them. After Opera House Revokes Critics' Tickets, Examining Practice of 'Freebies' Last month, Opera Australia removed a music critic for the Sydney Morning Herald from its complimentary press ticket list after the company's artistic director was reportedly "very offended" by a piece on the newspaper's arts website. This was followed Jan. 2 by a similar “comp” list ban against a critic for the publication Stage Noise. And in New York, a theatrical press agent blacklisted Wall Street Journal writer Joanne Kaufman, after she admitted to "bolting" from Broadway shows during intermission. These cases together raise ethical questions about the relationship between critics and the organizations they cover, and especially, the practice of providing free press tickets to reviewers covering a performance. Joining us to look more closely at this practice is Kelly McBride, a media ethicist who is vice president for academic programs at the Poynter Institute. "In the ideal world, I think journalism organizations would pay for their own tickets all the time," McBride tells host Naomi Lewin. "But we do not live in an ideal world," she added, referring to the difficult financial environment at many news organizations. That being said, "the audience does expect those journalists to put their loyalties with the audience. If journalists don't do that, and it becomes apparent to the audience, they'll lose credibility." Listen to the full segment above. Colorado Symphony and Radio Station Part Ways Colorado Symphony at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver (©Jedediah Liddell) The complex relationship between arts organizations and the media was brought to light in another recent case. Late last year, Colorado Public Radio announced that it will no longer carry broadcasts of the Colorado Symphony, ending a 15-year partnership. The reasons are varied, but the key sticking point was editorial: specifically, the orchestra wanted a lot more positive coverage on the radio. Ray Rinaldi, the fine arts critic of the Denver Post, tells us what was at the heart of the split. "Basically the orchestra wanted the radio station to collude with it in turning the live broadcasts into marketing for the symphony," he explained. "The station didn't want to be promoting the symphony. They were happy to be a neutral party in bringing the concerts to the community, but they didn't want to appear to be doing marketing in favor of one organization over the other." There were other issues in the breakup as well. The Colorado Symphony also bought underwriting on the station, anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 worth, and expected more preferential treatment as a result. Rinaldi tells us where things went off the rails and why this is significant in an age of Internet distribution. Listen to the full podcast above and tell us what you think by clicking on the gray comments bar below.

New York's Department of Cultural Affairs is embarking on the first comprehensive effort to measure diversity at the city's museums, venues and performance groups. The survey, announced on Monday, will collect information on the demographics of employees, boards, and visitors at arts organizations. The goal: to determine if these groups are keeping up with the increasingly multicultural makeup of New York. "The statistics that we've seen elsewhere show that a very large sector of the employees and boards at cultural institutions are white," said Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs. "We're in a city now where 60 to 65 percent of people do not describe themselves as white. This is about the future and what the place of cultural institutions in New York City should be in the future." The city agency plans to survey about 1,200 arts organizations and use the data to draw profiles of various professions, be it orchestra administrators, museum curators or choreographers. "Then we'll know where the most work needs to be done," said Finkelpearl. Tom Finkelpearl, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in the WQXR studio. (Kim Nowacki/WQXR) Previous studies have shown that the classical music field particularly falls short when it comes to participation among Blacks and Hispanics, and the League of American Orchestras has found that these groups represent less than four percent of orchestra players. Finkelpearl says this points to a larger "pipeline" problem, of getting young minority musicians on a career track (and providing resources to manage student debt). "It's all fine and good to get kids in high school playing instruments," he notes. "What gets them into conservatory? What gets the kids in conservatory to stay on and have a classical music career?" In the interview Finkelpearl also talks about: Plans for re-integrating the arts into the New York City Public Schools. Where music education figures into these plans. Why New York City is tough for artists (it's not just about high rents) but why he isn't as pessimistic as some are. Listen to the full interview above and share your reactions by clicking on the gray comments bar below.

A pianist recited Yiddish poetry during a Washington, DC recital, the Seattle Symphony premiered a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece about the environment, and Anna Netrebko made a surprising transformation as Lady Macbeth – these were a few of the high points of 2014, according to three top music critics. Joining host Naomi Lewin for this discussion of the year's highs and lows of classical music are Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post; David Patrick Stearns, classical music critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer and for WQXR's Operavore blog; and Zachary Woolfe, freelance classical music critic for the New York Times. Segment Highlights Midgette noted that Evgeny Kissin's poetry-infused recital was part of a larger trend of artists making more personal, introspective statements in concert halls. But she also lamented the way in which classical music in America seemed disconnected from broader national discussions of race and social change. And when debates did turn up in classical music, they proved one-dimensional. Midgette was particularly "saddened at the level of discourse" around John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer, which drew protests at the Met. Our other panelists agreed. "I thought the [Klinghoffer] debate was such a straw man," said Stearns, "because most of the protesters didn't know much about the piece." All of the critics agreed that serious pros and cons about the opera needed to be raised but often weren't. The Met's eventful year also featured an epic struggle to cut costs and to reach contract deals with its unionized employees; the eventual outcomes didn't entirely solve the company's financial challenges, said Woolfe.  Poor labor-management relations were an ongoing national story in 2014. But the year saw many causes for optimism, say the panel, including some inventive programming at Philadelphia and Seattle orchestras (the latter of which premiered John Luther Adams's much-discussed Pulitzer Prize winner Become Ocean); new leadership at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; and the continued emergence of China on the orchestra landscape. Listen to the full discussion above and tell us in the comments below: What were your highs and lows of 2014? Bonus audio: Our guests consider the changing marketing of classical concerts:  

There are still hoops to be jumped through, but it looks like, as Monty Python would say, New York City Opera is not dead yet. Last week, the bankrupt company's board of directors voted to approve the sale of its remaining assets – minus the endowment – to a group, called NYCO Renaissance, headed by Michael Capasso and Roy Niederhoffer. Capasso is general director of the Dicapo Opera Theatre; Niederhoffer is the founder of R.G. Niederhoffer Capital Management, Inc., and a former City Opera board member. Both join us on this episode to talk about their plans. NYCO Renaissance is, in fact, one of several suitors who have been angling to take over the City Opera name and assets, and the group still has to win approval from a bankruptcy judge. But Capasso and Niederhoffer have raised $2.6 million in pledges, garnered support from former City Opera musicians, and have planned an all-star tribute gala to the late City Opera maestro Julius Rudel in March. The event is to feature singers that Rudel worked with over the years, including Plácido Domingo, Frederica von Stade and James Morris. Nevertheless, these plans have drawn skepticism from some observers, in part because of the checkered financial past of Capasso's company. Host Naomi Lewin asks him about that, and also speaks with James Jorden, the editor of the opera website Parterre.com. "No one will be happier than I if New York City has another major opera company," says Jorden, who also writes for the New York Observer. He also cautions: "But I just can't understand how such a plan might work, especially when right now, the Metropolitan Opera is hurting for ticket sales." Listen to the full segment above and tell us in the comments below: what you think of the plans to revive City Opera?

For any artist, glowing reviews and standing ovations are great – but they don't pay the rent. A big-money prize can serve as an early-career springboard, a mid-career boost, or a way to fund the next big project. But just because there's a lot of cash, does that make the honor meaningful? And how many big-money awards are given because of altruism and how many are, to put it frankly, good marketing gimmicks? On this week's episode, we explore the efficacy of awards with two guests: Jacob Harold, the president and CEO of Guidestar USA, an organization that tracks nonprofits, and Holly Williams, an arts and features writer for The Independent in London, who recently examined one of Britain's notable arts prizes, given by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Assessing the Impact of Big-Money Awards Pulitzer Prize Medal (www.pulitzer.org)  The question of who receives awards comes as recent large prizes have gone to some very established recipients. The 2015 Grawemeyer Award for music composition, valued at $100,000, was given on Monday to Wolfgang Rihm, a proven composer of hundreds of works. In October, the Vienna Philharmonic won the $1 million Birgit Nilsson Prize. By contrast, Warner Music Group recently established a $100,000 award that's expected to be given out annually to classical musician between 18 and 35 who shows strong career potential. "There may be an argument sometimes for getting your prize in the news," says Harold, "to raise it to the level of a Nobel Prize or a MacArthur 'Genius Grant,' so that it has its own cachet. But I would hope that funders are really thinking about supporting artists, and they're thoughtful about what is the point in an artist's career where they want to intervene." Williams noted that she spoke with several artists who are concerned that the arts become privileged or elitist if only people with lots of money behind them can advance their careers. "These awards can be really valuable in broadening who gets to pursue a career in the arts," she said. "It's a very expensive business." Listen to the full segment above and tell us below: What's the most effective kind of award? Should they focusing on rewarding early-career potential or artists who are already established?

With the recent announcement that Lincoln Center will release Avery Fisher Hall's naming rights, the question of brand recognition comes into sharper focus. Duane Reade Hall? JetBlue Hall? It remains to be seen which private donor or corporation is willing to shell out the millions of dollars needed to renovate the New York Philharmonic's aging concert venue. But how much does a name really matter to the average concertgoer? And what accounts for brand attachment in the arts? Wall Street Journal columnist Ralph Gardner Jr. questioned the business of naming rights in a recent column. He joins us in this podcast to talk about it. Segment Highlights On Brand Loyalty: "Someone gets their name attached to a building like Avery Fisher Hall and it becomes part of the zeitgeist or the subliminal architecture of New York City, and it's almost like the rug is swept out from under you [when a hall is renamed]. It's like a favorite restaurant going out of business. You've grown used to the place." On Corporate Naming Rights: "It's one thing naming a baseball stadium after a corporation – and maybe it's just snobbism on my part – but you think of Lincoln Center as somewhat more highbrow. It would just stick in the craw if you named it McDonald's Hall or Chipotle Hall." On Permanence of Naming Rights: "We know you can't buy immortality but you somehow think that the closest you're ever going to get is your name chiseled in stone on the side of a major cultural building." Please listen to the full segment above and take our poll below: .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "what-name-do-you-use-when-attending-avery-fisher-h", "survey_what-name-do-you-use-when-attending-avery-fisher-h");  

The sacred choral works of J.S. Bach are regularly performed on secular stages, and are enjoyed by people of many religions, as well as atheists. Yet there is no getting around the fact that Bach, a devout Lutheran, saw his passions, cantatas and other pieces as an outgrowth of his personal faith. With that in mind, do the best performances of Bach – or of any sacred work – come from musicians who identify with their spiritual message? And how do your personal spiritual beliefs impact how you listen to a piece of sacred music?On this week's show, we put these questions to three choral music experts. Segment Highlights: K. Scott Warren, who directs the music programs at the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola and Temple Emanu-El, says that he encourages performers to connect the music's texts to their everyday lives. "We do have some Jewish members of the choir of St. Ignatius Loyola," he notes, "and anyone who is Jewish or Muslim has the same human experiences that a Christian would, or a non-believer. Those are the experiences we tap into." But John Nelson, the music director of Soli Deo Gloria, finds that a personal religious background can certainly motivate a performer. "I think atheists who have a great voice and a love for the repertoire can sing just as well as believers," he said. "But if you put them on the same artistic level, I think that the believer will bring something because his heart is there." Nelson's organization, which promotes and presents sacred choral music, will be presenting interfaith concerts at the Church of St. John the Divine and Temple Emanu-El on Nov. 21 and 23. Mark Shapiro, music director of the Cecilia Chorus and artistic director of Cantori New York, notes that all performing is a form of acting. "Sometimes, if you have a deep commitment to a particular message of a text, you may find that to be constricting in your delivery," he said. Rather than deal with theology in rehearsals, Shapiro says he'll explore concepts such as the seasons, the passage of time and charity for the poor. Nelson notes that, in the final analysis, "music of the sacred tradition should be music full of love. I think we can all enter into this completely whether we agree technically or theologically." Our guests also consider the question of the St. John Passion, one of Bach's most controversial works, because of its content. Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and share your comments in the box below.

In 2010, the Croatian pianist Dejan Lazic played a recital in Washington, D.C., and got a mildly critical review. Somehow that stuck: It's the second item that comes up when you Google Lazic's name, after his own website. Now he wants it permanently removed from the search engine in Europe, citing the European Union's new "right to be forgotten" ruling as legal justification. The review, titled "Sparks But No Flame," is by Washington Post classical music critic Anne Midgette. It describes Lazic's performance as technically well-played but a little superficial. In this WQXR exclusive, the two parties involved – Anne Midgette and Dejan Lazic – join host Naomi Lewin to make their cases. Anne Midgette For his part, Lazic expresses his frustration that a four-year-old review ranks so high in Google search results, giving the public what he considers an unbalanced view of his musicianship. He calls Midgette's column "slightly defamatory" and argues that such criticism can have damaging effects beyond his own career. Midgette counters that she does not write reviews for musicians but for the benefit of her readers, and she hopes that her criticism will spark enlightened discussion. She notes that there is even one paragraph where she calls Lazic "prodigiously gifted" and says there's no way the Post itself would ever pull such a review. She and Lazic also come to some agreement. Listen to the above segment and tell us what you think in the comments box below: What do you think of Dejan Lazic's argument?

Last week, Michael Tilson Thomas was conducting the New World Symphony in Miami when he stopped the concert in its tracks. A fidgety child and her mother were in his line of sight, and he reportedly asked them to change seats. Some details remain unclear but the mom and child did more than that – they left the hall. The incident caused quite a sensation on the Internet and raised questions: What is the appropriate age for kids to start attending grown-up concerts? And how do you prepare them for the experience? In this podcast, we get three views, from Orli Shaham, a pianist, mother of twins and artistic director of Baby Got Bach, a concert series intended for kids ages 3 to 6; Sedgwick Clark the editor of Musical America and a steadfast concert-goer around New York; and Susan Fox, a founder and publisher of the online forum Park Slope Parents. In the first part of the segment we ask whether young children should attend concerts: Clark says an affirmative "no." Fox contends that "you need to be willing to jump ship" if your child can no longer sit still through the music. And Shaham notes that concert-going requires careful preparation. Host Naomi Lewin also asks for tips for parents who are considering bringing their children to a concert. Responses include "find an aisle seat near a door," "give them some chewing gum," "start with shorter concerts" and simply, "teach them to sit with boredom." Listen to the full segment above and tell us in the comments box below: how do you prepare kids for a concert? Would you want to sit next to a young child at a concert? Orchestra Minimum Age Requirements | Create Infographics

Vladimir Jurowski just finished a four-city North American tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where he's been the chief conductor since 2007. Last month, the Philharmonic renewed his contract through 2018, and critics have frequently praised his artistic bond with the ensemble. But along with his London ties, Jurowski also has some strong feelings about his native Russia, whether it's parsing the political subtexts in Soviet repertoire or speaking out on present-day civil liberties. We caught up with Jurowski before a recent Carnegie Hall performance and the conversation turned from Shostakovich to a daring Moscow performance of Britten’s War Requiem that he led this past April. The concert, which was intended to celebrate British and Russian cultural ties – and reportedly attended by many high-level dignitaries – was nearly called off because of Russia's invasion of Crimea. But it continued, and Jurowski viewed the Requiem – written by and dedicated to gay artists – as a way to honor victims of persecution. In this podcast he tells Naomi Lewin how his potentially incendiary remarks were received. Interview Highlights: On Shostakovich: I'm absolutely certain that there are political messages in his music but it doesn't make him by definition either a dissident or a brave Soviet citizen. He was neither. I think Shostakovich was the last great symphonist of the 20th century. On Dissent in Russia: The interesting thing is that you can still say a lot in Russia unpunished if you do it in the right way. The problem is that it can hardly influence the political situation because people who are at the helm of the politics don't give a damn about any criticism coming from below. Like Owen said, 'All that poetry can do is but to warn.' On The London Philharmonic: We're mainly harvesting the fruits of a long-standing relationship. Now there is this real chemistry and trust on both sides. It's a difficult life we lead there but an extremely exciting and artistically satisfying one. Bonus Audio: On the art of conducting:  

The United Kingdom is blessed with any number of top-flight orchestras – the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, umpteen BBC orchestras, and specialist groups like Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. But among connoisseurs, there's one group that has often batted above its league: The Ulster Orchestra. Considered one of the jewels in Northern Ireland's cultural crown, it was founded in 1966 and has since released nearly 100 recordings and worked under many respected conductors, including JoAnn Falletta, Sergiu Commissiona and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Now comes word that the Ulster Orchestra faces bankruptcy and possible shutdown by the end of the year due to a funding crisis. For some perspective on this, host Naomi Lewin speaks with Oliver Condy, the editor of BBC Music Magazine. "It beggars belief," said Condy. "I can't quite understand how an orchestra can go from operating at full tilt to being told it's going to be offered 28 percent cut in its public funding." Condy describes how the Ulster Orchestra has been the ultimate "show-must-go-on ensemble," having played for years against a backdrop of social unrest in Northern Ireland. "This is an orchestra that played every single concert during the Troubles of the 1970s and '80s when all of Northern Ireland was threatened with bombings either from the IRA or loyalist groups," said Condy. "The Ulster Orchestra's offices were threatened daily with bombings and they never cancelled any of their concerts." The Ulster Orchestra has also championed many lesser-known composers including the works of the Classical Czech Jan Ladislav Dussek (WQXR's Album of the Week), and a number of British composers like Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge and Arnold Bax. Condy notes that the ensemble recently began an "exciting new chapter" under a new music director, Venezuelan Rafael Payare. But perhaps what's most surprising is why there hasn't been more outcry among the Ulster public. To find out why, listen to the full segment at the top of this page.

Protests in the concert hall are nothing new: think of the riot-inducing premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in 1913 or the backlash at the 1861 premiere of Wagner's Tannhauser. Recently, protesters for a variety of causes have picketed the Metropolitan Opera, the Israel Philharmonic and the Valery Gergiev's Mariinsky Orchestra, among others. It happened again on Oct. 4 at a St. Louis Symphony concert, when a group of demonstrators protesting the police shooting of Michael Brown began to sing, chant and unfurl banners from the balcony, moments before the Brahms Requiem. Beyond the sensational headlines, is there something deeper at play? And can a political demonstration actually shed light on the music that audiences have paid money to hear? Our experts thought so. They are: Sarah Bryan Miller, Classical music critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who witnessed the St. Louis Symphony protest. Philip Kennicott, Art and architecture critic of The Washington Post Kenneth Woods, a conductor, cellist and author of the blog, "A View from the Podium." Some highlights of the podcast: Concert halls can either be an inappropriate forum for demonstrations or "a vehicle for creating empathy and connection." How a 1968 protest at a Mstislav Rostropovich performance made a powerful statement about the Prague Spring. Why "music is most effective and engaging with political challenges when we step beyond politics and look at the universal human ideas." Listen to the full podcast above and tell us in the comments below: Have you ever witnessed a demonstration in a concert that was effective or ineffective?

Classical music's ability to soothe the weary soul has been used to market everything from yoga classes to an endless supply of albums like "The Most Relaxing Classical Music in the Universe" and "Nature Sounds with Classical Music." Some promoters say this is a good thing, and should be embraced in our distracted, stressed out world. But others argue that the recording industry and even radio stations have oversold the stress-buster angle, which feeds a misperception that classical is benign and boring. We debate this marketing strategy with two guests. Patrick Castillo, a Brooklyn-based composer and writer, says that the relaxation message discourages engaged listening, and marginalizes great music that doesn't always soothe. "Active listening should be encouraged as a means of inspiring a visceral connection," Castillo tells host Naomi Lewin. "But I don't think 'classical music for relaxation' CDs are branded in that way. I think they are marketed more in the spirit of, 'this whole swath of music can exist unobtrusively in the background as you're going about your daily chores.'" Dmitri Shostakovich Castillo recently stirred up strong reactions on this topic in an editorial for Minnesota Public Radio. He argues that newcomers to the artform are given fewer opportunities to discover challenges like Shostakovich's string quartets, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time or Schulhoff's Sonata Erotica. But Michael Morreale, a producer and blogger at CBC Music in Toronto, says that millions of listeners are actively seeking out relaxation in classical music. Morreale programs the CBC's Serenity Stream, a mix of calming classics that is among the network's most popular channels. "Classical music can be so many different things – it can pump you up, it can intrigue you, it can challenge you, it can introduce you to some new ideas," Morreale says. "But yes, a small piece of that pie is that classical music is great for relaxing you or helping you focus on something." Morreale sees the Serenity Stream as a kind of "gateway drug" and notes that listeners who are turned on to Debussy's Clair de lune may go on to explore contemporary works by Arvo Part, Philip Glass or Steve Reich, for example. Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think below: How do you most listen to classical music? Is it okay to play it for relaxation?

As the lockout of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians enters its third week, the two sides appear to be digging in for a fight that threatens to get more acrimonious before it's resolved. "We're into the third week and the two sides haven't even sat down together," says Howard Pousner, a cultural reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in this podcast. The orchestra management cancelled its opening night gala celebration, scheduled for Thursday, and musicians instead plan to stage a moment of "deafening silence" in a plaza across the street from the orchestra's home at the Woodruff Arts Center. All other performances through Nov. 8 have been called off as well. ASO president Stanley Romanstein said in a statement this week that the decision to cancel the performances was made "with a great deal of reluctance." On Wednesday, music director Robert Spano told the New York Times that "this is a dire and critical juncture for the city of Atlanta, which is in danger of losing the flagship of its culture." Spano also revealed that he put up $50,000 of his own money to fund the ASO's appearance at Carnegie Hall this past spring. Pousner reports that ASO management was caught off guard by Spano's comments, which broke a tradition of silence by music directors during labor disputes (14 composers too weighed in Thursday). The ASO's second lockout in two years follows strikes and lockouts at major orchestras across the U.S., including San Francisco, Detroit and Minnesota, as rising costs, shrinking endowments and sluggish or declining attendance have threatened their finances. In this podcast, Pousner also explains: Why this dispute hinges on bigger issues than a reported $2 million deficit. Why the orchestra has been experiencing budgetary woes for the past 12 years. How the public sentiment has shifted in this dispute. The challenges of arts fundraising in a "new money" city like Atlanta. Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think about the dispute in the comments box below:

Nostalgia, force of habit, and sometimes sheer laziness play a significant role in the kinds of music, movies and books that people consume, according to a growing body of consumer and academic research. While the latest cutting-edge art and entertainment are now clicks away, audiences instinctively seek out the familiar, and for many reasons. In this week's podcast, Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, talks with guest host Jeff Spurgeon about his recent article outlining some of the main theories. "Even as people like to think we want to be clued in to the hot new music, the hot new movie and the hot new book, frankly, we prefer the old stuff," Thompson says. He cites one study which found that for every hour of music-listening in the typical person's lifetime, 54 minutes are spent with songs they've already heard. There are various factors at play. Repetition breeds affection, whereas seeking new experiences can require mental exertion. And old works often acquire new layers of personal meaning apart from their intrinsic values, something that Thompson calls the "existential therapy of nostalgia." "When we re-read a book we haven't read for 20 years, sometimes re-reading it allows us to see ourselves and see how we've changed," he notes. We ask how this relates to the classical music field, known for its strong emphasis on the past. For example, the results of WQXR's annual Classical Countdown listener survey reliably place Beethoven symphonies at the top of the chart year after year. In part, says Thompson, people are swayed by the reputations of great composers. Being told that Beethoven wrote a piece may be enough to convince some listeners of its greatness. "When something is presented to us as famous, we tend to consider it good," he said. "But when we don't know if something is famous, our opinions can be totally different." Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think below: Why do you return to the same pieces over and over? And how do you discover the new in classical music?

Many of us have posted things online that we wish we hadn’t. The question of how unfiltered classical musicians should be on Facebook and Twitter re-emerged recently with the controversy surrounding American bass-baritone Valerian Ruminski. His contract with Opera Lyra, a Canadian company, was cancelled after he posted a rant on Facebook about seeing a man on a bus with diamond-studded fingernails. The man turned out to be a drag queen and Ruminski's post – which was screen-grabbed by other social media users – attracted a barrage of criticism. Ruminski later apologized for his remarks but the damage was done. As he tells host Naomi Lewin in this podcast, "You are lulled into complacency after years and years of doing spur-of-the-moment posts. It's like you're in your living room talking to your friends. I thought these nails were worth commenting on. It turned into a conflagration." It's no secret that Facebook and Twitter can help classical musicians promote their work outside of traditional news media outlets. But when artists cross certain boundaries or get overly political, they can quickly find their careers at risk. Tamar Iveri, a Georgian soprano, was dropped from productions in Australia and Belgium earlier this year after she allegedly made homophobic remarks on Facebook about a gay rights parade. Another soprano, Deborah Voigt, received some angry responses after writing on Twitter and Facebook in July that she hoped a compromise could be reached in the Metropolitan Opera labor talks. In the second part of this podcast, guests Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post, and Michelle Paul, a director of product development at Patron Technology, offer advice on social media dos and don't's for those in the public eye. Listen to the segment above and weigh in by clicking on the gray bar below: What classical musicians do you enjoy following on Facebook or Twitter?

• Share your thoughts below by clicking on the 'Show Comments' button The refined world of classical music is not usually linked to addiction. But a documentary airing on Channel 4 in England this week opens the door to a lesser-known side of the business. "Addicts' Symphony" took ten musicians whose lives have all been plagued by drug and alcohol addiction, and prepared them for a one-off performance with members of the London Symphony Orchestra. The project's mastermind, composer and filmmaker James McConnel, is himself a recovered alcoholic. He notes how addiction frequently starts in response to performance anxiety. "Quite a few musicians use either a pill or a drink just to steady their nerves and keep calm," he tells host Naomi Lewin. "Unfortunately, what happens is the cure then becomes the curse. It's such a competitive world that no one is likely to own up to it out of fear of losing their jobs, and understandably so." Little data is available on the percentage of classical musicians with substance abuse problems, but anecdotal evidence suggests it's not uncommon. Rachel Lander, a London-based session cellist, is one of the ten musicians profiled in the film. "People don't imagine that under the surface of the refined world of classical music there is an element of fear, and medicating that fear," she said. The film shows the musicians – all recovering addicts – through a mix of rehearsals, personal back-stories, group therapy sessions, and a climactic performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Lander emerges as a central character. Some years ago her promising career came to a temporary halt due to the vodka and prescription drugs she used to ward off panic attacks in the concert hall. She now believes better treatment and awareness is needed at the college and conservatory level: "I felt like I was asking for help and it was falling on deaf ears." (Above: James McConnel, creator of Addicts' Symphony.) Listen to the full segment above and tell us: have you experienced or witnessed addictions in the classical music world?

Memorization is ingrained in the protocol of classical music performance. Singers, solo pianists and concerto soloists are usually expected to play "by heart." However, trios, string quartets and larger ensembles almost never play from memory (with occasional exceptions). But these rules, which evolved over time, may not stand up to close scrutiny. Some musicians find memorization liberating, but others say it inhibits, creating an unnecessary fear of forgetting the music. On this week's episode, we get two views on the topic. The concert pianist and writer Stephen Hough says he thinks it's time to reconsider the conventions around memorization. He asks, "Isn't it most important that we play our best? And if we really play our best with a score in front of us – or these days an iPad in front of us – perhaps we shouldn't pay too much attention to this." Hough notes with some amusement that audience members will frequently approach him backstage and express amazement at how he remembered all of the notes. But not, "'how did you find the musical meaning behind those notes, how do you pedal, how do you find nuance,' or all those thousands of things that we musicians work on all the time." Also joining us is Nicholas Collon, the conductor and founder of Aurora Orchestra, a London-based chamber orchestra that recently performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 at the BBC Proms, without using scores or sheet music. The performance proved to be controversial, first dismissed by some pundits as a gimmick (reviews, however, were overwhelmingly positive). Collon says that some players found the preparation "stressful" at first, but ultimately it was liberating. Segment Highlights Hough on memorization's historical place: "In Chopin's time, it was considered disrespectful to play without the score. At that time, if you played from memory, you were improvising." Collon on memorizing Mozart's 40th Symphony: "To be honest, the musicians said yes to this eight months ago and thought, 'this will be easy.' Then about a month ago, they started thinking, 'oh dear, we've actually got to do that.'" Hough: "There are artists like Myra Hess or [Sviatoslav] Richter or Clifford Curzon who played all the time from music and have so many wonderful things to say. Who am I to say to Richter, 'I'm sorry, you can't come and play in public because you're not playing from memory?'" Collon: "Memorization is not the goal. It's part of the journey to get there and something that we'll do on the way." Listen to the above segment and tell us what you think below: Does memorization matter? Do you enjoy performances that are memorized more than those that aren't? .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "it-time-stop-expecting-musicians-memorize", "survey_it-time-stop-expecting-musicians-memorize");  

Members of the stagehands union were advised this week to prepare for a picket at the Metropolitan Opera in anticipation of a lockout. And according to one union source involved in the current talks between the Met and 12 of its unions, "there's virtually no chance of a deal" this week. The Met has pushed its contract deadline to Sunday night while a third-party financial analyst has been examining its books for over a week. But sources independently confirmed that the parties remain far apart on monetary and philosophical issues. If talks break down, a lockout could happen as early as Monday. So where will the Met labor dispute end up? And how are the different parties making their cases? In this podcast, three views: James Jorden, editor of the opera blog Parterre Box and a contributor to the New York Observer. Drew McManus, an arts consultant who writes the blog Adaptistration. Lois S. Gray, a Professor of Labor Management Relations Emeritus at Cornell University. Subscribe to Conducting Business on iTunes Segment Highlights: Why not continue to talk and prepare for the season without a contract? McManus: "All of this circles around using deadlines as bargaining leverage. There's no way that playing and talking can continue indefinitely." Gray: "One of the reasons why the Met is forcing an early deadline before the season starts is that during the season, the leverage would be on the part of the union, to call a strike while the production is on." Why haven't the company's stars been more vocal in the dispute? Jorden: "From what I hear, there's a real division in AGMA [the singers' union] between the principals and chorus, stage managers and other groups. AGMA is basically a chorus union. I don't think there would be that much enthusiasm on the part of the principals to say, 'oh yes, we really need to support AGMA.'" How is the union's P.R. strategy of attacking general manager Peter Gelb working for them? McManus: "It's worth pointing out that the animosity that's being directed toward Gelb has not been directed towards the organization's board of directors. They've been pretty much been off-limits. You have to have a way for either side to save face. In this case, by not attacking the board and focusing on Gelb instead, it doesn't target the board's reputation for governance. If they decide to meet the musicians on Gelb's management style, that's more oversight." Has the Met effectively made its case to the public, that it needs to save money through cuts to labor costs? Gray: "Does the Met have to cut costs or does it have to raise more money? This is an issue for symphony orchestras throughout the United States and it's true of the whole cultural sector." McManus: "The Met's strategy so far has been a zero-sum bargaining strategy: 'Here's the percentage of cuts and we're willing to talk about where the cuts have to happen.' If the Met continues to adopt that policy, the likelihood for a lockout is very high." Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think of negotiations in the comments box below.

Last month, John McCauley of the band Deer Tick was preparing to fly to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island when he was told by the airline, US Airways, that he'd have to check his guitar. Knowing what can happen to instruments that get checked on planes, he wound up taking a train to Rhode Island instead. U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) heard about the incident and decided to get involved. Reed wrote to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, calling on his department to finalize and enact a 2012 law that stated that passengers can take instruments on planes as long as they can be safely stowed. In this exclusive interview with WQXR, Reed says that without clear regulations, airlines will operate in a gray area and musicians will face more troubles. "We want the rules spelled out so a musician or anyone bringing an instrument will know exactly what his or her rights are when they board the aircraft," he said. Reed also says: Why he believes the law hasn't been finalized yet. What musicians flying with carry-on instruments can do in the meantime. What kinds of practical measures he hopes will be covered by the legislation. Jack Reed (D), Senator from Rhode Island  

For the past 20 years, some psychologists have made an appealing argument: that it's possible to achieve success or expertise in your craft by putting in lots of practice time. It's a nice idea: work hard enough and you have a shot at becoming, say, a great violinist. But this is an active debate among psychologists, and a new statistical analysis of 88 studies suggests that the exact opposite is true: that success mostly reflects other factors, like innate talent. The new meta-analysis finds that practice only accounts for only about 12 percent of performance differences across all areas of expertise. For games like chess and scrabble, practice mattered the most (26 percent). In music, it was less important (21 percent). In sports, it accounted for 18 percent and in education, four percent. This week's podcast features a debate over the findings of the new meta-analysis. Our guests are: Dr. Brooke Macnamara, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and one of the three co-authors of the analysis. The paper appears in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. Dr. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State University. He authored a pivotal 1993 study which found that made a strong case for the importance of practice in determining success. It has been featured in best-selling books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us. Segment Highlights: Macnamara: "We concluded that deliberate practice is undeniably important – it's just not as important as proponents of the deliberate practice view have claimed." (Deliberate practice is high-quality practice, and often refers to one-on-one lessons in which a teacher pushes a student continually.) "Basic cognitive abilities, other types of experience such as competition experience, the age at which a person begins their training, and personality factors are all likely to play a role above and beyond deliberate practice alone." Ericsson: "When I looked at the studies that Dr. Macnamara included, virtually none of them had training that was individually supervised by a teacher. It's interesting that our original study, when they analyzed it, they found that 80 percent of the variance was explainable by practice, but they decided to throw out that observation because they claim that it was an outlier." Macnamara: "We actually did not throw out the 1993 study. It came out as a statistical outlier so we curbed it down a bit. Even if we look only at the studies where Dr. Ericsson is an author, the overall amount of variance comes out to about 10 percent." Weigh in: How much do you find practice matters in achieving success? How much do other factors play a role? Listen to the segment above and share your comments below.

Mother Nature is unpredictable, as WQXR was reminded last summer in a broadcast of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Central Park. Heavy rain arrived halfway through a Haydn symphony and musicians and station recording engineers were forced to pack it in quickly. Of course, outdoor summer concerts present many hazards: relentless mosquitoes, noisy airplanes, chatty audiences, and stages baked by the afternoon sun. Bad weather can also lead to substandard performances, with wayward intonation and unfocused playing. It can occasionally be dangerous for players and their instruments (varnish on string instruments turns sticky; seams can come unglued). Last year, the New York Philharmonic performed only half of a concert at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx due to the heat, and the crowd got ugly, booing and chanting "We want Dvorak." Despite these challenges, many orchestras say the concerts absolutely necessary. In this podcast we look at the challenges of al fresco performing with these three guests: Robin Pogrebin, culture reporter, New York Times, who recently covered the New York Philharmonic's parks concerts Nardo Poy, a violist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Tito Muñoz, conductor and music director of the Phoenix Symphony The New York Philharmonic at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on July 17, 2012 (Kim Nowacki/WQXR). Segment Highlights: Pogrebin on the value of outdoor concerts: "Something that seems bucolic and relatively simple actually has a complex operation that enables it behind the scenes. Speaking with Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, he said 'it's one of the most important things we do.' There is this real emphasis now on culture for the people." Poy on extreme heat and humidity: "For the musicians, the most difficult part is if it rains or if it's so hot and humid, it makes it really difficult to play. The extreme humidity, I've experienced anywhere including when Orpheus was in Cartagena, Colombia. We had so much condensation on our instruments, it made it impossible for the bow to  grab the string and get the tone out." Muñoz on bug infestations: "I don't know if you've ever seen fish flies but they just swarm. We unfortunately got hit by that during one of our concerts. We actually had to stop the concert because it was getting so bad. Every page that I turned I was crunching about a hundred of these bugs." Poy on a particularly heavy rainstorm: "The sound of the water hitting the top of the tent literally wiped out the sound of any music. Poor Mark, having learned this concerto, basically half of it was inaudible. We refer to it as the Marcel Marceau performance." Muñoz on the upside of an outdoor dance performance: "As the lights were coming up, [the dancers] were hearing the crickets and that set the scene even more realistically for them. In a way, it sometimes adds to the performance." Pogrebin on rain policies: The Philharmonic does not call off a concert for rain until the musicians get in the van to go to the venue. So it's really down to the wire because they want the show to go on." Weigh in: Listen to the segment above and share your outdoor music war stories in the comments box below:

We're halfway into 2014 and opera has already worked its way into three of the year's biggest athletic events. For those keeping score, there was Renée Fleming's pop-tinged version of the national anthem at the Super Bowl; Anna Netrebko's take on the Olympic Anthem during the opening the Sochi Olympics; and on July 11th, two days before the finale of the World Cup, longtime soccer fan Placido Domingo will perform a concert in Rio de Janeiro with soprano Ana Maria Martinez (and pianist Lang Lang). This is reportedly Domingo's sixth World Cup appearance, the first being at the 1990 World Cup in Rome with the Three Tenors (with Jose Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti). Other famous examples in the sporting canon include baritone Robert Merrill's regular anthem performances with the New York Yankees and soprano Montserrat Caballé's gaudy tribute to her hometown at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. So who gets the medal for best operatic performance in this year's stadium events? And just how did this happen? In this week's podcast we talk with two experts: Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post Joseph Horowitz, a veteran concert programmer and author of 10 books including Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall Segment Highlights On the Similarities Between Opera and Sports Fandom: Midgette: I would say opera and sports are a natural pairing. Being an opera fan is very much like being a sports fan: you're looking for the highs and lows, you're rooting for your favorites, you're waiting to see if they're going to trip up. There's a real element of fandom, as everyone who love opera knows.      Anna Netrebko at the Olympics vs. Renee Fleming at the Super Bowl: Horowitz: I was kind of surprised that [Fleming] sang with such exaggerated sincerity. I thought the whole thing was pretentious and over-the-top... I was reminded of seeing Pavarotti at Madison Square Garden. I thought they both sounded a little dutiful and self-conscious. Midgette: I was of two minds. In a way, [Fleming] pulled it off but in a way I do agree that it certainly wasn't her best self. Neither was an example of those singers at their vintage best. They were fine at what they did but neither struck a great blow for classical music.   The impact of the Three Tenors: Midgette: Whatever you thought of the Three Tenors phenomenon, it had a lot of spark and oomph and it was fun and irreverent and a little trashy. That's why the Three Tenors took off the way they did.   On whether televised sporting events can take over the role of promoting opera to the masses: Horowitz: There was a time when NBC and CBS had their own orchestras. NBC had an opera company, very different from what we associate with Great Performances on PBS. It did opera in English, it did adventurous stagings, it commissioned operas. So if you're looking back as far as the '40s and '50s, it's a different world and in many ways, a much more inspiring world for culture. Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think: What's been the greatest stadium performance by an opera singer? Please leave your comments below.

The Metropolitan Opera's decision last week to drop its HD and radio broadcasts of the John Adams opera The Death of Klinghoffer continues to draw strong responses – from newspaper editorial boards, anti-censorship groups, and music critics around the world. But this is only the latest chapter in the fraught history of this work. The opera's January 1991 premiere at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels took place in a tense atmosphere around the launch of the Gulf War, and patrons were greeted with metal detectors in the lobby (a rarity at that time). After the U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 1991, two co-commisioning organizations – the Glyndebourne Festival and Los Angeles Opera – decided to drop Klinghoffer from their schedules. And in 2001, the Boston Symphony dropped a scheduled performance of choruses from the opera.  But in recent years, performances have gone off as scheduled, and with mostly minimal debate; many critics have lauded the work's music and drama. The dialogue ramped up again when the Met cancelled its HD broadcasts, citing fears by Jewish groups that it could incite global anti-Semitism. In this week's podcast, Mark Swed, the classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times and longtime Adams-watcher, tells us what he thinks is behind the outcry. Segment Highlights: What's driving the recent outcry over the opera "It's a lot of hearsay. The people who have only reacted very superficially to the opera have been very loud. There has been a lot of misinformation. It's very easy to drum up outrage these days. You have opinions that are being promoted through social media and all the ways that you can now make a lot of noise without knowing anything and without having any ability to create a context."  On whether concerns of anti-Semitism are justified "Not at all. The problem with the opera of course is that there are anti-Semitic lines that are said by the terrorists. But that's what terrorists say. It would be highly unrealistic if they didn't have anti-Semitic attitudes and were hijacking the Achille Lauro. It would be like making a movie about Hitler in which he only said nice things about the Jews... "It's easy to hate your enemy. But to understand your enemy, to understand where your enemy is coming from, and to even have some feeling for that, and then be horrified by that person – that is so much stronger than a simple good guy, bad guy movie."  On the production itself "I actually didn't think this Klinghoffer production would be a problem. It treats the opera almost like a thriller. It's the least controversial of any production I've seen. And in fact, once people see it, I don’t think that there's going to be a problem." Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think about the opera and its reception below: .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "what-do-you-think-mets-decision-cancel-klinghoffer", "survey_what-do-you-think-mets-decision-cancel-klinghoffer");  

The Metropolitan Opera's decision to cancel its global HD and radio broadcasts of John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer has stirred up heated responses from around the classical music world. Some have called the decision sensitive and sensible given the real-life subject matter. Others have said it showed a lack of courage of artistic convictions and principles. The Death of Klinghoffer centers on the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists, who murdered the Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The Met cited an "outpouring of concern" from Jewish groups that the HD transmission, scheduled for Nov. 15, might incite global anti-Semitism. In this podcast, we get opposing views on this from two Met-watchers: James Jorden, editor of Parterre Box and a contributing writer to the New York Post Tim Smith, classical music critic of the Baltimore Sun Segment Highlights On the Met's decision Jorden: My problem with losing the HD [broadcast] is there's a very large audience who have the opportunity to see and make their own decisions about this work that are now being cut out of the process. There are about four to five times as many people who see the HD as see the performance in the theater. In a sense, the Met is cutting out about 75 to 80 percent of the total audience for this piece. Smith: Part of me says, I think I know what they're talking about. It may be overstating things. But if you do believe that something is going on that is so dangerous for Jews right now, then I think it's at least sensitive to say that maybe this particular piece right now...we don't want to be a part, if there is truly a chance that it could somehow be exploited by people who are already looking for excuses anyway. How the Met could have handled the objections differently Jorden: There's a teachable moment here that's going un-taught. There's something we can learn about the racial politics of the situation that could be approached by handling the HD Broadcasts in a sensitive way. In other words, by including supplemental materials during the intermission, before the broadcast, so that people can come into it with an informed point of view. Smith: When you read some of the less emotional but still very serious analyses by people who really dislike this opera, you can at least understand where they're coming from. They can cite chapter and verse about parts in the libretto that really they find offensive, starting with the title: they don't know why it's not called "The Murder of Klinghoffer." I didn't think that that kind of objection was driving this decision but merely the fact that this is going out into a world that isn't so easy to have a dialogue with. Should Art Ever Be Silenced for a Perceived Social Good? Smith: Not everybody is thinking of this [opera] as a masterpiece, which it may very well be. It's a fabulously written piece and it's full of deep thought and all that stuff. But it doesn't mean that everybody's hearing it that way, or is even interested in it as a work of art. They're interested in other things about it. Jorden: As the saying goes, information wants to be free. The more knowledge people have, the better capable they are in a potential sense of making a good decision. Weigh in: Listen to the full podcast above, and tell us what you think about the Met's decision in the comments below. .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "what-do-you-think-mets-decision-cancel-klinghoffer", "survey_what-do-you-think-mets-decision-cancel-klinghoffer");

June 11 is the 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss's birth—an occasion to celebrate and also to raise questions about the composer and his actions during the Nazi era. In 1933, Strauss accepted a high-profile job from the Nazis, when propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels named him president of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau. Strauss wrote pieces for the Nazis including "Das Bächlein," a song dedicated to Goebbels. And he even wrote at least one letter pledging his loyalty to Hitler. But Strauss's defenders note that he eventually lost the Nazi post for insisting that Stefan Zweig – the Jewish librettist of his comic opera Die Schweigsame Frau – should appear in the program at the premiere in Dresden, in 1935. And Strauss may have helped save several Jewish lives later in the war. He emerged from his postwar de-Nazification hearing with no official taint. So was Strauss a hero, a bad actor, or something else? In this week's episode, we’re joined by two Strauss experts to sort through these questions: Erik Levi, author of Mozart and the Nazis and Music in the Third Reich, and a professor of music at Royal Holloway, University of London. Bryan Gilliam, a professor of humanities at Duke University and author of several books on Strauss including Rounding Wagner's Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera. Segment Highlights On Strauss's relationship to the Nazis Levi: Initially he was an enthusiastic advocate [of the Nazis]. Remember that we were experiencing in the 1920s a period of tremendous economic fluctuation and a lot of composers on the bread line. What Strauss wanted to do was bring stability to the composing profession, and this was what was promised to him. Gilliam: I wouldn't say he was pro-Nazi ideology; he was pro-Richard Strauss ideology. He was an opportunist. I don't think he was excited ever about any government. He'd be excited over a government that gave him opportunities for work and commissions and the like. His ideology was Richard Strauss. There's an exception here: his son, Franz, was enthusiastic...   The Music That Strauss Composed for the Nazis Levi on the Olympic Hymn of 1936: He didn't share much enthusiasm for the idea of writing something for the sporting event. But he was keen to promote himself and a big event like the Berlin Olympic games was an event where he could occupy center stage. It's a piece of jobbery really. Gilliam: The Olympic Hymn poem was by a half-Jewish poet. He sat next to Hitler at the ceremony.   On the Moral Implications of the Music Strauss wrote under the Nazi regime Levi: We have to divorce the music from the man. Some past composers in history have been terribly unpleasant people with unpleasant views. It is a thicket. We need to mention a piece like Metamorphosen, written at the end of the war, where you really sense the agony and the grief for the destruction of Germany. The destruction of Germany was wrought by Hitler and his gang, and this music really speaks to the heart that few other works of the 20th century do. Gilliam: I don't find anything heroic about Strauss, but as a musician, I am absolutely mesmerized by one of the most brilliant artistic individuals of the 20th century. Listen to the segment above and leave a comment below: Should Strauss have spoken out more forcefully against the Nazis? Do you find his Nazi-era works problematic?

The graying of audiences is a perennial, if growing concern for symphony orchestras. Recent data from the National Endowment for the Arts shows that senior citizens are the fastest-growing segment of the classical music audience, while 35- to 54-year-olds are turning way. One presumed reason for younger people's reluctance is the price of entry. Four years ago, the Cleveland Orchestra saw this as a significant problem and set itself an ambitious goal: to have the country's youngest symphony audience by the time it turns 100, in 2018. Central to its effort is an all-you-can-hear "Fan Card," which, for $50, allows students to attend as many concerts they want in a season. There are also $10 student tickets, and concert-goers under 18 can attend summer concerts at the Blossom Music Festival for free. The entire initiative is supported with a $20 million grant from Milton and Tamar Maltz, longtime orchestra benefactors. As we hear on this week's episode, Cleveland seems to be making some headway: In 2010, students made up 8 percent of the audience. Last year, according to the orchestra’s figures, the number was 20 percent. Joining us is Craig Duff, a journalist and producer who teaches at the Medill School at Northwestern University. He reported on Cleveland's initiative this week with a story and a nearly six-minute video for the New York Times. Segment Highlights: Can Cleveland really verify that they have the country's youngest audiences? "When I buy a ticket they don't ask me how old I am. But they can track student tickets. Since orchestras don't all count their people the same way with the same metrics and data, there's really no way for them to know for sure. But they plan to prove by, for anyone looking into the hall to see that they have a very young audience." On the orchestra's attempts turn weekend evenings at Severance Hall into date nights: "The evening that I was there, there was a program of Rachmaninoff and some Strauss waltzes. Then you walk out [into the lobby] and you're greeted by the New York Gypsy All-Stars playing, with colorful lights and a bar. It was very vibrant with people dancing...There were definitely some couples on dates." Adding outreach concerts in bars and neighborhood porches: "It's hard to measure the impact of these. But it does give the orchestra a larger footprint and helps people know that music is not just the stuffy people in tuxedos on the stage, that it can come into your community, on your porch or in your neighborhood." Listen to the full segment above and tell us in the comments: what do you think would most draw younger people to orchestra concerts? Below: Cleveland Orchestra musicians perform a "porch concert" in Cleveland:

When news broke that Anthony McGill would be the New York Philharmonic’s next principal clarinetist, much of the attention centered on the political intrigue – that he was filling a longstanding vacancy and the perception that he'd been "poached" from the Met Orchestra. But there's also this fact: McGill, a widely respected musician, will be the Philharmonic's first African-American principal player – and part of the roughly two percent of U.S. orchestra musicians who are black. In this podcast we ask why efforts by the orchestra world to improve minority representation remain slow in producing results – and whether McGill's hiring could set a broader example. As we hear, racial and ethnic diversity is good for orchestras not only ethically, but also potentially financially: Funding is increasingly attached to programs that feature minorities and the communities where orchestras perform. Guests: Aaron Dworkin, the president of the Sphinx Organization, which gives opportunities for young black and Latino string players through an annual competition, scholarships and study grants. E. Tammy Kim, a writer for Al Jazeera America who recently wrote a major feature about diversity in orchestras. Burt Mason, the principal trombonist of the Chamber Orchestra of New York; he's also subbed in the New York Philharmonic and is starting Ovations Concerts, a project aimed at promoting diversity with musicians of color and emerging artists. Segment Highlights: On McGill's Hiring: Dworkin: It is a great step forward in the field. From Sphinx's perspective, we want to make sure that this isn't just the rare occurrence that it currently is but the beginning of what hopefully is a groundswell of building inclusion in our nation's orchestras – especially the top orchestras. We have not just a minor, but a significant under-representation of our communities within the ranks of our major orchestras.     Lack of Resources and Role Models for Young Black Musicians Mason: For a lot of minorities, you'll either see them being more interested in jazz or marching band. It's an interesting thing. When I was in high school, playing trombone was not the most popular thing you could do. When you're studying and dedicating your time to this, and you look around you, it can be sort of isolating sometimes, and that can be discouraging if you're not into what you're doing. Kim: Socioeconomic reasons are often proffered to explain why there aren't many minorities in classical music. That holds to a point. It is also true that people without access in their families and communities, if they're exceptional, can also draw on other kinds of resources. Nevertheless, that initial moment of the public school experience is still cited by so many people who have succeeded in classical music today.   How the Hiring Process in Orchestras Can Change Dworkin: We believe there should be additional criteria in the audition process [beyond the performance itself]. We think that innovation, creativity, cultural background, repertoire knowledge, teaching ability – additional criteria such as these should be part of the audition criteria. If you do have two equal candidates and you're looking to see what you want to bring into your orchestra, then you can look at these additional criteria.   What Will Motivate Orchestras to Become More Inclusive: Dworkin: From our perspective, orchestras need to make a financial commitment, a resource commitment to tackle this issue. That may come in the form of recruitment, it may come in the form of fellowships for musicians of color, it may come in looking at the repertoire of orchestras: Less than one percent of the works performed by orchestras in America are by any composer of color. So it's not just membership onstage, but it goes deep into the ranks of the music directors, the staffing of orchestras. Kim: Having a diverse orchestra is also a business decision. It's about saving your orchestra from demise at the hands of a market that is not kind to classical music right now by many estimates, and by appealing to your community, and your community is increasingly diverse. So it's good for the New York Philharmonic musically, but it's good for them perhaps economically.   Listen and weigh in: What, if anything, should American orchestras do to become more inclusive?

Every concert-goer has experienced this at one time or another: a performance that is so exhilarating or so transcendent that after the final notes, the audience cheers, leaps to its feet and demands to hear more. But what follows can be maddeningly routine, insipid and uninspired, says David Oldroyd-Bolt, a writer and pianist who recently covered the phenomenon for the Telegraph. "I think it's not only what has gone wrong with encores, it can be seen as a wider symptom of what's gone wrong with recital programs in general," he tells Naomi Lewin in this podcast. He feels that recitalists, especially pianists, have become safe and predictable in their choice of repertoire. And this starts with conservatory training. "When you come to your professional career you think, 'what would someone like?' And unfortunately, it seems to be the same three, four or five pieces. It's a failure of imagination and it's a failure of artistic expression." Particularly overdone are chestnuts like Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat Major, Schumann's Traumerei and Liszt's La campanella etude, Oldroyd-Bolt argues. Too often missing are the "party pieces" that used to make encores delightful and surprising – opera transcriptions, jazz arrangements and other novelties. Other Highlights of this Segment: A Pianist Who Bucks the Trend: Not everyone falls into a routine. Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin explains that the point of an encore should be to "delight, perhaps amuse, intrigue and maybe even astonish if that's your bag." He often doesn't know what he'll play until he returns to the piano and gauges an audience's reaction. Among his current favorites is Chopin's "Minute Waltz" – but with a twist: The Opera Encore: The encore has also come in for renewed scrutiny lately in the opera world, after Javier Camarena delivered one in the middle of La Cenerentola at the Metropolitan Opera on April 25. The tenor was only the third singer to do that at the company in 70 years. Tim Smith, the classical music critic of the Baltimore Sun, tells Lewin that he generally finds opera encores "disruptive," although not in relatively light fare. "If you're doing a comedy, I don't think it's going to destroy the evening," he said. "I think you could even make a case for an encore in one of the bigger bread-and-butter operas – a Tosca, for example." Smith recently reviewed a performance of Verdi's Nabucco by the Lyric Opera of Baltimore in which the company was so intent on taking a customary encore of the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves ("Va, pensiero") that it even turned up the house lights, switched the surtitles to Italian and rehearsed the audience to sing along. Both Smith and Oldroyd-Bolt argue that such encores should be used sparingly or they become routine. "If the audience is wild with enthusiasm, then I think there's a case for it," said Oldroyd-Bolt. "If you're going through rehearsing choruses and tenors going on and off stage like a jack in the box simply for tradition's sake, then I think it becomes rather stale and hackneyed."          Both audiences and performers may also think of the missed trains home, car services idling outside theaters and unions demanding overtime. "If you see some of them leaving for their train, maybe it's not such a good idea to press the issue too much," said Hamelin. "And that's fine." Listen to the full podcast above, which includes our guests' all-time favorite encores. And tell us what you think: Have encores grown stale? Do you have any memorable encore experiences?

The Berlin Philharmonic announced last week that it is launching an in-house record label, starting on May 23 with concert recordings of the complete Schumann symphonies conducted by Simon Rattle. Days later, Daniel Barenboim said that he's getting his own record label – a digital-only venture called Peral Music – which starts with the conductor's third Bruckner symphony set, recorded by the Staatskapelle Berlin. That same week, the Seattle Symphony released the first CDs in its new in-house label, consisting of music by Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Gershwin, Ives and Dutilleux, recorded in concert at its home, Benaroya Hall. The artist-led recording phenomenon has had mixed results since it took hold in the orchestra world more than a decade ago, and some observers have suggested that both Berlin and Barenboim aren't exactly showcasing neglected repertoire. But these and other ventures arrive in a shifting landscape. As major labels have retrenched or disappeared, orchestras seek new revenue streams and record sales have moved almost exclusively online. Anastasia Tsioulcas, who covers classical music for NPR Music, says in this podcast that in-house labels potentially lack the checks and balances of a traditional record company and "lead to a more myopic view of the universe." "One thing that's come up since the Berlin announcement," she added, "is 'do we need another Schumann set – or in the case of Daniel Barenboim, a third Bruckner cycle?' Is the market, is the audience really crying out a need for those things?" At the same time, Tsioulcas noted, the Internet has helped level the playing field and allowed budget-conscious orchestras to cut out the middle man in getting recordings of their performances to the public. Marc Geelhoed, who manages the Chicago Symphony house label CSO Resound, said that it's extremely difficult to avoid replicating repertoire. But a goal of any recording is to document how an orchestra sounds at a given point in time: "What we try to do is say, 'what do we do as an orchestra that's distinctive?'" CSO Resound has released 15 albums since its launch in 2007, among the most successful being a rendition of Verdi's Requiem conducted by Riccardo Muti. It won two Grammy Awards in 2011, for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance. Geelhoed declined to cite specific sales figures, but noted that "it has vastly exceeded the hopes and goals of selling maybe 10 to 15 thousand copies." Successful orchestra-led labels are designed to build an organization's brand, not make a profit, said Matt Whittier, the senior marketing manager at Naxos of America. And while digital sales grow, orchestras must also think about "merch sales" – using CDs as souvenirs for patrons to pick up as they're leaving the hall. "Those audience members would like to walk away with a tangible memento of a concert," he noted. "It's very possible that we can chart a record from the sales of one concert or one weekend of concerts for an artist." While orchestras in Chicago, San Francisco and London have maintained a steady recorded presence, other in-house labels have faltered because they lack sufficient marketing and distribution, say all three guests in this podcast. The Berlin Philharmonic should benefit from having a distribution platform already in place with its Digital Concert Hall. It just shouldn't expect to make lots of money. "An orchestra with its own record label in this day and age is about creating memories," said Geelhoed. "It's not just the here and now...but that an album's going to be around." Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think in the comments box below. Do you buy orchestra-produced recordings? Do you care if an ensemble is recording the same repertoire over again?

When Colorado legalized pot this year, millions of music fans fantasized about the far-out musical experiences that will take place in the "Mile High" city of Denver. Now, the Colorado Symphony may have answered their wishes. In a bid to attract a new and younger audience, the Denver-based orchestra has announced "Classically Cannabis: The High Note Series," four pot-themed fundraising concerts from May through September. The orchestra has partnered with Edible Events Co., a Denver pot promoter, for three shows of chamber music at a downtown gallery. The series culminates with a concert at Red Rocks, an amphitheater outside Denver where the symphony and pop and rock groups play. Each concert, which is open to audiences 21 and over, will have a special themed program. Ray Mark Rinaldi, the fine arts critic at the Denver Post, says in this podcast that the orchestra's initiative is less desperate than obvious. "Pot is big money here," said Rinaldi, who broke the story. "For the symphony, which has been struggling, it's a pretty smart move." Colorado's pot industry has been touted as a significant revenue source for the state, expected to generate $98 million in tax income in the upcoming fiscal year, and helping to balance its budget. The Colorado Symphony is selling sponsorships to marijuana-related companies; in return, they get to enjoy the legitimacy of being associated with the state's only full-time orchestra. There is also the prospect of luring new audiences, particularly fans of art rock or jam bands who are looking to explore a new musical genre. But Rinaldi believes that many classical music fans are already marijuana users. "I saw some people getting stoned at the symphony concert last weekend," he noted. "They're already out there." He adds that the Colorado Symphony has previously played concerts at Red Rocks where musicians detected the scent of marijuana smoke wafting in from the audience. It remains to be seen whether other Colorado classical music organizations follow suit. A local youth orchestra is reportedly pondering a marijuana-themed gala benefit in place of a traditional wine tasting this spring. But so far, blue-chip music festivals, including Aspen and Vail, are keeping their distance: A spokesman for the Bravo! Vail festival told WQXR that "we don't have any plans to reach the marijuana user segment." Rinaldi says he's currently assembling a "stoner playlist" for the Denver Post. Selections may include Mahler ("his music is such a journey"), Dvorak ("where you can pick out all of those ethnic melodies") and maybe some Chopin ("for the mellow high") or Scriabin ("now that could be a good time"). WQXR listeners have also suggested a few possibilities on Twitter (see below). Listen to the full podcast and tell us what you think of the Colorado Symphony series in the comments box below. @WQXR @CO_Symphony Some repertoire suggestions: Britten - selections from Billy Budd, John Cage 4'20" (abridged) — Michael Picton (@michaelpicton) April 29, 2014 @WQXR @CO_Symphony you should program lots of Ives. That will blow everyone's minds apart. 3 places, 4th symphony, orch set no. 2 — Jake Cohen (@smoothatonalsnd) April 29, 2014  

New Federal rules aimed at protecting Africa's endangered elephants are sending shock waves through parts of the music world. Under new regulations that began to take effect in February, musical instruments that have even the smallest amount of ivory are banned from entering the U.S. unless it can be proved that they were purchased before 1976. That includes any violin bows with a small piece of ivory at the tip, and also some bassoon bells and piano keys. “In the string world, it’s the hottest story around,” Yung Chin, a bowmaker who lives in New York, tells Naomi Lewin in this podcast. “The suddenness of the ruling that came out on February 25 has really caused a problem.” The ruling came in response to a dramatic increase in elephant poaching in Africa. Some 30,000 elephants per year, over the last several years, have been slaughtered to supply the global demand for ivory, said Craig Hoover, who heads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) wildlife trade and conservation branch. He admits that the demand "is not to put small pieces of ivory at the tips of violin bows but for whole tusks and for large carvings and other products." But, Hoover added, "We are limited by the laws that Congress gives us. It becomes very difficult to say, 'We are going to cover this commodity but not this commodity when you’re trying to protect a species.'" Ivory is used to protect the head of violin bows and support the plug that holds the hair into the stick (right). After an international treaty was enacted in the 1970s, most of the string trade switched from elephant ivory to that made from the tusks of long-extinct mammoths. For musicians who can prove any ivory in their instrument was legally acquired before 1976, it’s possible to obtain a travel permit through the USFWS, Hoover said. That process takes 30 to 45 days and costs $75. Still, there is concern among musicians who are scheduled to perform abroad, and then re-enter the U.S. Zachary Lewis, the classical music and dance critic of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, spoke with several members of the Cleveland Orchestra who fear that their instruments will be confiscated when the group travels to Europe in September. "I’ve talked to a couple violinists, a bassoonist, and they’re concerned about it,” he said. Hoover says that the USFWS is currently gathering feedback from musicians' trade groups, including the American Federation of Musicians and the League of American Orchestras. Potential amendments to the rules could start to take shape this summer. Meanwhile, Chin and his fellow bow-makers are developing synthetic tips that can be exchanged for ivory in order to facilitate travel. But the complications may not end there. “This material is an ivory imitation – totally a synthetic,” he said. “But this thing looks very close to ivory. I would be nervous. Hopefully we will work on this so people won’t have the fear and trepidation of traveling around with their materials.” Chin, Lewis and Hoover have a lot more to say about the complications around this law in the full podcast above. Take a listen and please share your thoughts in the comments box below: How do you feel about the new regulations concerning ivory?

Last week, J&R unceremoniously closed its store in Lower Manhattan after 43 years in business. The iconic electronics and music retailer is vowing to reopen “totally reimagined and redeveloped.” But for now at least, it has gone the way of Tower Records, HMV, Virgin Megastore, Sam Goody and other brick-and-mortar shops that used to make New York City a music superstore haven. Steve Smith, a freelance music critic for the New York Times, believes that online shops have filled much of the void, but the communal aspect of record-buying has largely gone by the wayside. "What's really missing now is the social element of shopping for CDs,” he tells Naomi Lewin in this week's podcast. “That's a very real thing. If you went to a show any given night at Lincoln Center, you could tell whether it was a success or not by going over to the Lincoln Center Tower Records afterwards and see how many people were hovering around the bins in the classical section." Saturday is Record Store Day, an annual retail promotion started in 2008 to help struggling independent stores. The event’s organizers – a consortium of independent stores and trade groups – hope that it can trumpet the benefits of stores where opinionated clerks give advice and point you to special deals. As in past years, this Saturday’s event brings collectible rarities and limited-edition pressings to serve as draws for shoppers at some 1,200 stores around the country.   “Record stores don't sell food, they don't sell water, and things you need to live,” said Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton. “But there's something that makes life a lot better when you love it. I think it's best to have a physical place for human interaction." Colliton isn’t discouraged by J&R's closing, or of Rizzoli's plans to leave its longtime 57th Street location (the bookstore carried a small selection of music). “Of course it's tough,” she said of the real estate environment. “And the larger you are in a more expensive city, the more difficult that can be, no matter what it is that you sell inside the store.” So where does Smith suggest shoppers go to find classical music? For used product, Academy Records satisfies the urge to “get carried away by the experience of flipping through CDs." There are small but select offerings at the Met Opera Shop and the Juilliard Bookstore. And if you’re not too picky, the Barnes and Noble locations on East 86th Street and in Union Square in Manhattan still have modest selections. For deeper tastes? "Arkivmusic.com caters to a clerk-like mentality,” said Smith (disclosure: Arkivmusic has a retail partnership with WQXR). But often, Facebook, Twitter and blogs are the best places to seek advice on recordings, something you can't find as much on iTunes. "I think you are looking at a scenario that's split in two, where you get your advice in one place and then you go shop in another place." Listen to the full podcast above and subscribe to Conducting Business on iTunes. And tell us below: where do you go most often to buy recordings?

Barber’s Violin Concerto, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Copland’s Appalachian Spring are among a small handful of American works that have become staples of the orchestra repertoire. Since the United States has nurtured a good century-and-a-half of orchestral compositions, there are those who feel that this is not just an oversight, but a disgrace. Earlier this month, a group of composers and academics decided to confront the issue where it starts: with the major orchestra in their city. They wrote a letter to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer accusing the Cleveland Orchestra of “blatantly ignoring music of its own country” by programming only one work by an American composer next season. “We looked at this and said, this is approximately one percent of the programming and really, we have to say something about this,” said Keith Fitch, head of the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, who was one of the letter’s co-signers. Fitch argues that the problem is not limited to Cleveland, nor is it even confined to living composers. There is a wide swath of “diverse and compelling” American repertoire, he says, that is seldom represented on orchestra programs, including pieces by William Schuman, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Walter Piston and even Charles Ives – “the music that has defined us as a culture.” The Cleveland Orchestra did not respond to invitations to participate in this segment, nor did it respond to the letter, which has been widely circulated on social media. Ed Harsh, the president and CEO of the advocacy organization New Music USA, notes that a number of orchestras are making an effort to program American works, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and Albany Symphony. The upcoming Spring for Music festival of American orchestras at Carnegie Hall is due to feature major works by Hanson and John Adams (WQXR will broadcast the six-concert festival live). "It’s by no means a blanket problem,” Harsh said. “But in some ways this is such an old, agonizing story.” In 2011, the League of American Orchestras, a national service organization, reported that just two out of the top 20 most-performed composers were American that year: Barber and Leonard Bernstein (at numbers 17 and 20, respectively). A ranking of the top 20 works performed did not bring up a single American piece. Harsh believes that living American composers should be essential to orchestras' community outreach and audience-building efforts; they can personalize and talk about the music in a way that long-dead composers can't. “It may seem expedient to become a museum of immutable masterpieces that everyone loves,” he said. “That’s long-term suicide.” To some extent, orchestras must persuade audiences to try unfamiliar music of whatever era or nationality, said Simon Woods, the executive director of the Seattle Symphony, in the second part of this podcast. Seattle has recently launched an in-house record label with an album of music by Ives, Gershwin and Elliott Carter. But Woods also believes there are no absolutes. "I start getting nervous when I hear discussions about whether there should be some kind of moral imperative to play American music," he added. "What's interesting about orchestras in this country is this huge diversity of repertoire that they play, and each one has a different personality." Listen to the full segment above and share your comments below: should orchestras program more American works? Why or why not?

When San Diego Opera recently announced its plans to fold after 49 years in business, a wide swath of the California arts community was stunned, including the musicians of the San Diego Symphony, which doubles as the opera company’s pit orchestra. “It surprised everyone,” said James Chut, the music and art critic for U-T San Diego, the region’s major daily newspaper. “People were reading it online and there wasn’t even an announcement.” On Monday, facing an outcry from employees, fans and politicians, the company’s board voted to delay the planned April 13 shutdown by two weeks while it considers its options. General artistic director and CEO Ian Campbell had previously said that it’s important to “go out with dignity, on a high note with heads held high,” rather than witness a prolonged downsizing and cutting back on quality. Ticket sales have declined 15 percent since 2010, ticket revenue has dropped about 8 percent, and big donors are harder to lure. On Tuesday,  the American Guild of Musical Artists, the singer’s union, filed the second of two unfair labor practice charges against the company. Chut tells Conducting Business that San Diego Opera has declined to consider alternative business models to stay afloat, relying instead on "a paradigm of grand opera that probably is from the ‘70s or ‘80s, in which regional companies represented a miniature version of the Metropolitan Opera, where you bring in big sets and big stars and have a big orchestra. If they’re going to do that business model or that artistic model, it’s probably not viable over the long run.” Chut believes that the future of regional opera lies in nimbler alternatives, whether it’s using black-box theaters or collaborating with theater companies. He cites the Opera Theater of St. Louis and Fort Worth Opera, two regional companies that reinvented themselves as spring festivals after decades as main-season enterprises. Chut also questions the need to stay in the San Diego Civic Theater, a plush 1965 venue with seating for nearly 3,000 patrons. “It seems like they’re tired,” Chut said of the board and administration. “The opera is in the black. They have cash reserves. They don’t have an accumulated deficit. But they are facing fundraising challenges of maybe having to raise $10 million next year." The company has given no indications yet of next steps. But whether they can attract investors after raising doubts about the Opera's viability remains a significant question. "San Diego is the eighth largest city in the United States," said Chut. "What does it say about us if we can’t have an opera company?” Listen to the full podcast above and please leave your comments below: What do you think is the right model for small opera companies in 2014?

When Sharleen Joynt, a coloratura soprano from Canada, was selected to be a contestant on ABC's reality dating show “The Bachelor," she knew it had the potential to be more bizarre than many opera plots. One of the show’s pivotal scenes, after all, has her stepping out of a limousine, dressed to the nines, to meet someone who ostensibly could propose to her within a few weeks. But, as she discusses on this edition of Conducting Business, there was a “fear of missing out” when the opportunity arose. "You know it's once-in-a-lifetime even if it's not highbrow once-in-a-lifetime." Joynt was among 27 women selected to move into a mansion and gear up to attract Juan Pablo Galavis, the titular bachelor of the show. She stayed through seven episodes before deciding he wasn't for her and – uncharacteristically for a contestant – left of her own accord. Besides being surreal – with cameras trailing her at every waking moment – the experience pointed to larger questions of how pop culture visibility can impact a career that's usually considered highbrow. And it illustrates the difficulties a young singer faces in balancing an all-consuming profession with extracurricular interests and a personal life. Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post, is among many observers who suggested that Joynt didn't fit the typical profile of the show's characters. “She seems to have made a splash on ‘The Bachelor’ by being kind of genuine and maintaining her dignity,” said Midgette, who recently wrote about Joynt. “She certainly didn’t hurt her career with the way she behaved on the show. She appears to have been completely dignified throughout.” "Taking a larger view of it, there are worse things in the world than getting a little mainstream exposure for the opera world,” Midgette added. But Midgette also thinks the singer may be viewed suspiciously by some casting directors and agents. Despite the fact that Joynt is currently an understudy at the Metropolitan Opera, and studied at the Mannes College of Music, Midgette notes that she was turned down for an audition at one “B-level American house” on the grounds that she was too “junior league.” Says Joynt, "I think that the opera world is very wary of me at the moment. It's not easy. Everything I've done so far in my life has been for [my opera career].” Joynt describes how she has sought to keep her opera career separate from the show, which was largely necessary during the filming itself. "When you're in 'The Bachelor' mansion, you're drinking a lot and staying up late a lot," she said. A few times she practiced in a bathroom with the door locked and the blinds shut. "Basically, I tried to keep it private, but it's really hard." The producers, however, wanted her to spotlight her singing. “I was like, 'I don't want to sing in interviews.' I was like, 'I'm not singing when I get out of the limo,'" said Joynt. (She did eventually sing a few bars in one scene, as Juan Pablo "wasn't taking no for an answer.") Would she do it again? "I would be lying if I said I didn't have moments where I said, 'maybe this was a huge mistake.' But it was a fun experience. I'm a 29-year-old girl. And honestly, the people I met were the best part – the girls in the house, the producers – many of whom I consider friends now. I only have good things to say about it overall." Listen to the full segment above and please share your reactions in the comments box below. (Photo: ABC)

In the current violinist-eat-violinist atmosphere for graduates of conservatories and university music schools, some institutions of higher musical learning are trying to bring academic training closer to the realities of the job market. "Curricula that might have been relevant in 1890 or 1990 might not be as relevant today,” Richard Kessler, dean of the Mannes College, The New School for Music, explains in this Conducting Business podcast. Mannes, one of New York’s three big conservatories, is in the process of revamping its entire curriculum, adding required courses in music entrepreneurship along with studies in technology, composition and improvisation. It is aligning itself more closely with its parent institution, the New School, while scaling back traditional music theory and history coursework. The idea: to broaden the range of skills music students have to compete in the real world. “If you’re really committed to learning, you can assess these programs, no matter how traditional, no matter how long-standing and in some cases no matter how revered,” Kessler added. New for-profit models are also being explored. The University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Universal Music Classics, the world’s largest recording label, last month announced a partnership designed to “grow the next generation” of classical music artists and audiences. A new curriculum requires all of the school’s undergraduates, regardless of major, to take classes in music business, technology and entrepreneurship. Elizabeth Sobol, the president and CEO of Universal Classics, said that the venture "addresses a bigger problem we’re having right now: we’re not training the next generation of industry impresarios and industry business leaders." Conservatories, she said, are also not reflecting a growing desire for nontraditional concert experiences in spaces like bars, clubs and parks. Performance opportunities for classically-trained musicians have long been limited in a pop culture world. A 2010 study by Indiana University underscored that point, finding that 49 percent of recent music conservatory alumni are doing work “somewhat” or “closely” related to their training, while just 19 percent spend “a majority of their work time as musicians.” But curricular reform can be difficult for tradition-bound conservatories, where elite private teachers have considerable clout and a business course may seem like a distraction. What's more, young artists may not have an aptitude for formulating marketing plans or booking tour dates. David Cutler, author of The Savvy Musician, and director of music entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina, argues that there are ways to fold entrepreneurial training into an existing school curriculum. “An example of this might be the traditional degree recital,” he explained. Most undergraduate performance majors are required to do a recital as a requirement for their degrees. "If it’s important for us to attract new audiences, maybe we can use this as a playground for doing actually that. So perhaps part of the recital requirement might be: you need to get 200 people there to get an A, or 150 people there to get a B." Students might also be graded on how they can rethink the presentation to include multimedia or other visual elements. Cutler added, “There’s some good news here in that more schools are changing their model to include more 21st century skills.” Listen to the full segment above and tell us what you think in the comments box below: How should conservatories better prepare students for the realities of the job market?

As the Los Angeles Philharmonic arrives in New York to give a pair of concerts on March 16 and 17 at Lincoln Center, its music director, Gustavo Dudamel, faces an increasingly difficult political situation back in his native Venezuela. It’s been a month since violent clashes between opposition demonstrators and government forces in Venezuela first grabbed global headlines. Protests rage on with no sign of ending. Dudamel himself has been pressured to speak out on the situation, notably by a fellow Venezuelan musician, pianist Gabriela Montero. Montero and others have said that Dudamel should use his global stature – and exercise his ethical responsibility as an artist – to take a stronger stand against what they see as a repressive government. But others argue that Dudamel can’t afford to get involved in partisan politics because of his close ties to El Sistema, Venezuela’s vast, state-funded national music education system. Tricia Tunstall, author of Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music, says that El Sistema’s mission has always been “to stay out of partisan politics and to continue in the work that is their highest priority, which is to work with hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan children, giving them safe haven, musical training and an environment where they can learn to be productive citizens.” El Sistema was founded in 1975 by Jose Antonio Abreu, a musician and economist, and it has flourished under eight different governments while aiming to keep many impoverished kids on the straight and narrow. “Yes, they are funded by the government but [Abreu] does not identify the Sistema with any political program and that is why the Sistema has been able to flourish, survive and grow from eleven kids in 1975 to almost 600,000 kids in 2014,” Tunstall added. Mark Swed, the classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times, interviewed Dudamel after the conductor led a controversial concert in Venezuela on February 12, the same day that three people died in anti-government protests there. Dudamel told him that he was unaware of the nearby protests, and insists that he’s firmly opposed to any violence from either side of the conflict. “Ultimately, we have no idea how Dudamel, maestro Abreu and others are functioning in El Sistema,” Swed said. “Abreu’s way of working has always been to try and influence the politics subtly from the inside. The second he takes a public stand, he can’t do that anymore.” Meanwhile, other musicians are taking a firm political position, albeit from a distance. Venezuelan conductor Carlos Izcaray is organizing a “Concert for Peace and Liberty” in Berlin this Sunday, which will feature a number of fellow expats including Gabriela Montero. Izcaray says that the goal of the concert is to raise awareness for victims of political violence, including several musicians who he says have been “detained, beaten, tortured and threatened by the national police.” Izcaray says he doesn’t hold any bad feelings towards Dudamel or other Venezuelan musicians who aren’t speaking out, noting that being a musician in Venezuela means usually relying on the government for support. “I’m pretty confident a lot of this has to do with fear of losing support for the institution, maybe they’ll cut their funding or be fired.” He adds: “As far as artists go, we do have to defend each other.” Listen to the full podcast above and tell us what you think below: what is the responsibility of artists in times of political unrest? Should art and politics remain separate or do creative people have a duty to speak out? Photos: 1) People shout slogans as they protest against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in front of riot policemen outside the Cuban embassy in Caracas on February 25, 2014 (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images) 2) Gustavo Dudamel, Jose Antonio Abreu and Venezuelan president Nicholas Madura.

Graphic: How Four Arts Disciplines are Taught in NYC High Schools New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has put education reform at the top of his agenda, with a particular focus on universal pre-kindergarten, charter schools and after-school programs. But last week there was other news about the city's schools that may trouble education advocates: high school students aren’t getting nearly enough arts. An audit by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that two-thirds of students don’t meet state guidelines in the arts. Many students last year did not receive the required amount of hours of instruction while others were taught by non-certified teachers. The state sets these guidelines as conditions for funding. The Department of Education disputed some findings of the audit but agreed with the comptroller's recommendations that it needs to do a better job at monitoring arts instruction. The audit also underscored trends that date back to the 1970's budget crisis in New York City, when money for arts education was eliminated. Over the next 20 years there was no system-wide arts education; many schools relied on outside nonprofit groups to fill in the gaps. In the last decade, some arts programs have been restored, but quality varies from school to school, depending on the commitment of principals, teachers and parent body and the involvement of outside providers. Ben Chapman, the education reporter at the New York Daily News, called the state of arts education "a mixed picture." He noted that the city's own annual Arts in Schools Report finds that the level of arts instruction has been flat or slightly improving over the past several years. But some educators, parents and students believe that the arts are being cut, or at least being ignored. "I think that some schools are doing fine and other schools are struggling to include arts education as they focus on the core subject matter of math and reading," said Chapman in this podcast. Mayor de Blasio campaigned on a promise to establish a four-year goal to ensure that every student receives arts education that meets the state's guidelines. The new audit provides a template as well as added pressure to deliver on this front. Arts advocates, meanwhile, will need to convince the public and policy makers that their work matters. "Up until this point they haven't really done that," said Chapman. "It's a tough sell, but that's what they need to do." Below: This chart shows the percentage of New York City high school students who received arts instruction in four different discplines between 2008 and 2013. While visual arts instruction largely held steady between 2008-2013, music, dance and theater instruction declined. According to the Comptroller's audit, some schools lack certified arts teachers. In 2012-13, 72 percent of high schools reported having at least one full-time and/or part-time certified visual arts teacher; 44 percent reported having at least one certified music teacher; 22 percent reported having at least one certified theater teacher; and 16 percent reported having at least one certified dance teacher.

Possibly no orchestra has prompted more hand-wringing and ambivalence than the Vienna Philharmonic. The 172-year-old orchestra is recognized the world over for a very specific sound that’s changed little over the decades, and a playing style that has been passed down from generation to generation. But critics charge that it’s just that exclusive philosophy that may explain why there are few women and virtually no minorities in its ranks. Indeed, 16 years after the Philharmonic became one of the last big European orchestras to admit women, they are still an exotic sight onstage. Despite a blind audition policy, in which candidates are not visible when they play, the orchestra currently has just seven female members out of 130 total (four other women are serving a probationary period, standard for incoming members). At the same time, the Vienna Philharmonic has shown progress by acknowledging its complicity during the Nazi era. After a team of historians looked into its World War II-era activities, the orchestra in December quietly revoked awards it gave to six Nazi leaders. Some observers wonder if this reckoning with the past may signal a broader policy of reform. “I think it’s a question of an institution genuinely trying to evolve and how quickly you can evolve,” said James Oestreich, the retired classical music editor of the New York Times, who has been closely covering the orchestra. “I don’t think anyone is taking the position that there is nothing wrong with [its lack of diversity]. Of course there’s a problem.” But Joshua Kosman, the classical music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, contends that the orchestra is not working hard enough to address its membership issues, in part because the classical music field mostly gives it a pass. “This has been an ongoing issue for a very long time and one that I’ve been surprised not to see any discussion of or any reckoning of it,” said Kosman. "It would be worth it if at least these matters were openly discussed." In the 1990s, women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, held protests outside of concert halls when the VPO toured the U.S. and music critics (including Oestreich and Kosman), have periodically challenged the orchestra on its policies. Many orchestras, of course, besides Vienna have struggled with diversity issues of their own. As Oestreich notes, “you will not find a major American orchestra that has more than one, two or maybe three blacks. This has been going on for years and years and I don’t hear a lot of uproar about that.” But Kosman says that is a concern rooted in the supply chain: historically, African-Americans haven't been encouraged to pursue careers in classical music as much as whites. “There’s not an analogous supply problem for minorities in European orchestras," he notes, "particularly for Asian musicians, as you can tell by comparing the roster of the Vienna Phil with any other comparable European orchestra." Joel Bell, chairman of the Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, believes that change is a priority but it won’t happen overnight. “I find a struggling with the balance of speed of change to achieve what we would like to see as an end result, but without jeopardizing tradition and quality in the process,” he said. Bell believes the VPO should be judged not by the total number of women and minorities in the ensemble but by the percentage of women added since it opened its membership in 1997. On Twitter, New York Magazine critic Justin Davidson observed in December that the VPO is “dodging the present by correcting the past” – comparing the Nazi-era revelations with the alleged lack of interest in diversification. Kosman hopes that the Philharmonic will take a harder look at itself. “I’m greatly hopeful that one self-examination is connected with many," he said. "One can only hope." Listen to the full segment above, subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and please take our poll or share your thoughts below. .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "hows-vienna-philharmonic-doing", "survey_hows-vienna-philharmonic-doing");

Leonard Bernstein, Paul McCartney and Osvaldo Golijov all wrote high-profile music that wasn't entirely theirs. They used orchestrators (Bernstein in West Side Story), musical collaborators (McCartney's concert works) and assistant melodists (Golijov’s Sidereus) to help get their thoughts on paper. But while many composers farm out tasks to students and assistants with full transparency, the scandal surrounding the Japanese composer Mamoru Samuragochi goes far deeper. The man known as “Japan’s Beethoven” — because he supposedly continued to compose despite a profound hearing loss — admitted last week that he’d been paying someone else to write his music for nearly two decades. What’s more, his ghost writer also came forward to reveal how little he had been paid, and to claim that Samuragochi’s deafness was all an act (Samuragochi on Wednesday offered an apology and an explanation that his hearing had partially returned). And it’s not only Japanese musicians who have expressed outrage over the revelations. On this episode of Conducting Business, Francisco J. Núñez, director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City (YPC), tells host Naomi Lewin that his chorus is currently in a bind, trying to determine whether to go ahead with a long-scheduled performance of Samuragochi’s choral piece Requiem Hiroshima on March 26, alongside two visiting Japanese choruses. The YPC, whose core program serves 1,300 New York City children from ages 7 to 18, performed the requiem in Tokyo last summer and briefly met with Samuragochi. “I was very sad,” Núñez said when asked about the revelations. “I’ve been receiving texts and snap-chats from all of our singers actually. He had won our hearts with the story. It seems to me, music is always about the way you paint the picture around the actual music and a picture was painted around Samuraguchi.” The piece in question is a choral tribute to a 15-year-old boy who died from the effects of radiation from the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. “If anyone else had given me this piece of music I would not say, ‘Wow, this is an incredible piece of music,’” Núñez admitted. “But it was because it came from someone who we thought couldn’t hear.” Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post, agrees that the outrage is not over his use of a ghostwriter, but the fictional persona he developed to create the ruse. “I feel the outrage is about the personal fraud – the deception, the pretending to be deaf, pretending to be a genius,” she said. “If he had been open about the collaboration, I think there would be no outrage at all because this kind of collaboration is a normal part of the artistic process these days.” The case comes as a culture of borrowing and collaboration has opened up new gray areas in music, says Richard Elliott, a cultural musicologist at the University of Sussex in England. “In popular music it’s become kind of accepted that what we’re hearing is a fabrication," he noted. "Authorship goes far beyond the composer and the lyricists and involves all kinds of technologists – engineers, mixers, producers." Núñez said his choir is still debating whether to perform the Requiem Hiroshima with a correct attribution – or pull it from the program altogether. “I have received many e-mails from Japan asking me to no longer perform this piece of music,” he noted. “Even I don’t understand what actually happened here – that someone is able to deceive so many people for so long.” Listen to the full segment above, subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and share your own thoughts on this case in the comments box below. Photo: Takashi Niigaki, ghost writer of deaf composer Mamoru Samuragochi dubbed 'Japan's Beethoven,' leaves a press conference in Tokyo on February 6, 2014.

Despite efforts to keep the content of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics under tight wraps, a few details have emerged about the musical lineup planned for Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi, Russia on Friday. Several Russian performers have been linked to the ceremony, including conductor Valery Gergiev, violist Yuri Bashmet, and Mariinsky Theater ballerina Ulyana Lopatkina. They'll join a parade of athletes and other pageantry to create what is reportedly the most expensive opening ceremony in Olympics history. To help explore the cultural significance of the Sochi games, host Naomi Lewin speaks with Simon Morrison, a professor of music history at Princeton University who specializes in Russian music and dance. He’s currently writing a book on the history of the Bolshoi Ballet.   What is conductor Valery Gergiev’s role and why was he chosen to participate? President Vladimir Putin named Gergiev as an official ambassador of the Sochi Olympics "because he is really the leading cultural export of Russia," said Morrison. Gergiev has a well-publicized friendship with Putin, and "can basically pick up the phone and get a hold of the president." This has made Gergiev a lightning rod. In recent months, his concerts in the West have been targeted by protesters against Russia's law that criminalizes the dissemination of "gay propaganda" to minors. "Naturally, given his jet-setting, his prominence and his panache, he's an emblem of Russia today," added Morrison.   Along with the celebrity performers, there are plans for a 1,000-voice children’s choir. What do we know about this? Gergiev has been making the rounds with a newly-formed, national children's chorus. Morrison believes it’s an effort to project an inclusive, diverse image for the country. "I think they’ll sing some big hymn," he said. “I don’t think it will be a nationalist hymn like ‘Slava’ from [Glinka’s] A Life for the Tsar since that’s a hymn that deals with Russia suppressing Poland and that wouldn’t be very international and cosmopolitan.” The chorus is reminiscent of the "Friendship of the Peoples," an old Soviet mantra referring to cooperation among Russia's ethnic and social groups. "Plus, a thousand children really suggests they want to rival with Beijing,” Morrison adds, referring to the grand spectacle of the 2008 Beijing Olympics ceremonies. Below is a video of the enormous Russian choir performing last month at the Mariinsky Theater: What other types of music can we expect? This has been a closely-guarded secret, but the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow may provide a few clues to current thinking. Expect Tchaikovsky ballet music, perhaps some Rimsky-Korsakov and grand choral numbers. “For choral music, maybe something that reaches back to the Catherine the Great era since, in many respects, this current regime would like to see itself – and the public would like to see it – as a sort of more benign imperialism,” said Morrison. "So I think the opening ceremonies will be a reinforcement of that.”   Any surprises in the works? "One of the things that’s rumored – and if this happens, it will be truly sensational and a real stick in the eye to the West – is that there is this pop duo named t.a.T.u.,” said Morrison. The duo consists of two young women whose stage show involves Lesbian schoolgirl imagery. “That’s part of their shtick. They were notorious as well as popular with the younger set." If that happens, argues Morrison, it will be a subversion of Western protests against the anti-gay law. Last week, several Russian news outlets reported that the duo Tweeted about their involvement in the ceremony (the alleged Tweet was later deleted and doubts persist about the post's truthfulness). Photo: Wikipedia Commons.   What other figures from Russian culture or entertainment may take part in the opening or closing ceremonies? The soprano Anna Netrebko will sing the Olympic Anthem in the Opening Ceremony and has also been rumored to sing in the closing ceremony. There have been suggestions that Sergei Filin, artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet who was the victim of an acid attack last January, will have a role. “So I’m sure we will see the elite cultural representatives,” Morrison said. A spokesman for pianist Denis Matsuev told WQXR that he will be performing not in the opening ceremonies, as has been reported, but in the closing events.   Any bets on a grand musical finale? Says Morrison: “My money is on Swan Lake.”   The opening ceremony to the Sochi Olympics will be televised on NBC this Friday starting at 7:30 ET. (Updated 2/7.)

Sunday’s Super Bowl will feature 55 commercials and chances are, some of them will feature a symphony or an opera aria embedded in the soundtrack. Classical music in advertising goes back decades but its purpose has changed – becoming more self-referential, ironic and often comedic in its use. "Classical music is very serious in its nature and so often the use is polarized,” said Randall Foster, the director of licensing and business development at Naxos, which supplies recordings to advertisers. "Either it’s taken on its face value... or, on the far spectrum, there’s a great irony in placing something very classical and rigid under a very funny storyline.” Foster cites an ad for Herbal Essences shampoo, which premiered during the Grammy Awards telecast. The cheeky spot features a snippet of soprano Ana Maria Martinez singing "Je veux vivre" from Gounod's Romeo and Juliette. A voiceover quotes lines from Shakespeare's play while a male character follows the female protagonist around (and into a shower) with a handheld camera. Advertisers have sought to contrast everyday products with classical music’s "upscale" associations, at least since Kellogg's introduced a Rice Krispies campaign in the 1960s touting "great moments at breakfast” and featuring reworked versions of Pagliacci and Carmen. But as piracy and illegal file-sharing cut into album sales over the last decade, advertising is increasingly viewed as an important revenue stream for musicians and labels. "People are up for it,” said Jerry Krenach, the managing director of global music production at the agency McGarryBowen. “It’s evident too in the way that labels and publishers promote the uses of songs," he said. In 2012, McGarryBowen won the account for United Airlines, which had just finished a merger with Continental. Among the holdovers through the acquisition was United's signature Rhapsody in Blue theme. Krenach and his colleagues wanted to give the piece a reboot, so they commissioned a recording of a new arrangement played by the London Symphony Orchestra. “Part of what I wanted to do was approach it from a cinematic perspective,” said Krenach. “I wanted to get as much as we could out of that piece.” The campaign launched with a 60-second spot called “Orchestra,” featuring a full symphony on the plane, complete with timpani in the business class seats (some commentators noted an irony in this given the well-publicized troubles some musicians have faced carrying their instruments onto planes). Rhapsody in Blue remains under copyright, so United pays a licensing fee to the Gershwin estate (Krenach declined to cite a specific figure, though United’s initial layout in 1987 was $300,000). But much of the classical canon is in the public domain. “If I’m working with someone on a strict budget it tends to help the bottom line to stick with public domain music,” said Foster. “The creative drives everything and if the entire ad is built around modern music, Mozart won’t fit the bill.” For advertisers who shell out $4 million for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, licensing fees may not be a major concern. But for Doritos, a classical soundtrack has become a signature of its annual “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. The chip maker invites people to submit 30-second, homemade Doritos television commercials. Two Super Bowl ads will result – one selected by the votes and one by the Doritos marketing team. The winning creator receives $1 million in prize money. Below is one of the five finalists (the rest can be viewed here): Some pieces like Carmen or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony have a timeless appeal. But are there overlooked pieces that advertisers should consider? “If I have to pick anything that I’m just dying to get placed, we release an awful lot of recordings of modern composers,” said Foster. “I would love to see their music utilized in the advertising space. It’s not a win for classical music now; it’s a win for classical music in the future." Below are a couple more examples. The first is a Verizon spot that Krenach helped produce using Philip Glass's score to "The Fog of War." Foster helped secure a performance of Orff's Carmina Burana for this Google Play spot: Listen to the full podcast above and tell us below: what do you think of the use of classical music in commercials?

So, what comes next for the Minnesota Orchestra in the wake of the contract agreement that ended the bitter 15-month lockout and returns the musicians to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis on Feb. 7? Short answer: a considerable amount of work. Settling the lockout is only the first mountain in a series of precarious peaks that the Minnesota Orchestra has to climb on its way to a healthy future, says Graydon Royce, classical music critic of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Somehow the social fabric between the management and musicians has to be repaired and that’s a big, big question here of whether that can happen,” Royce tells Naomi Lewin. “There are still people who write letters to the editor who say, 'We'll come and see the players because I like the players but I’m not donating to the orchestra anymore,’” added Royce, who has chronicled the labor dispute since it began in October 2012. Relations between players, management, donors and audiences are such that “you have an orchestra that is still mad at itself.” At the heart of the lockout was a dispute over the size of pay cuts aimed at reversing a multi-million-dollar deficit that had peaked at $6 million in 2012. After musicians refused to accept pay cuts of up to 40 percent, and the two sides failed to agree on on new contract terms, management locked the musicians out on Oct. 1, 2012. The new contract cuts base pay by 15 percent. Minnesota announced its 2014 season on Friday, one that includes 39 classical concerts, plus educational and family programming. A series of guest conductors are to take the podium including Yan Pascal Tortelier, Mark Wigglesworth and Eric Whitacre. Osmo Vänska, who resigned as music director in October, will return to conduct an all-Sibelius program in March, followed by a single performance with soloist Joshua Bell in April. Despite the new season plans, the lockout has taken an enormous toll, said Royce. Not only did the orchestra lose millions in ticket income with more than a season cancelled, but each musician lost over a year's salary. Whether Vänska will return full-time is a long shot. “There are certainly board members who feel that Vänska was not a perfect soldier – that he should not have made a public ruckus that he would quit if there was not a deal by October 1,” said Royce. "At the same time, I think that he felt really personally hurt by that, and felt he was a put in that position where he felt he had to stand up and say something.” It could take a long time to woo back alienated audiences and donors; other orchestras that have lived through debilitating strikes have found that recovery can be frustratingly slow. Yet there is a model to be found: in the Detroit Symphony. Three years after its six-month strike, it has been on a roll, performing at Carnegie Hall last season, streaming its concerts online, and balancing its budget for the first time in six years. Last week, the musicians ratified a three-year contract. "I think Detroit is actually really instructive,” said Royce. “They got out into the communities and did a lot of concerts basically intended to repair the personal capital."

Today's Throwback Thursday looks at the continued strength of the vinyl revival. Tune in during the 8 am hour when Jeff Spurgeon plays a special vinyl track. The numbers are striking: CD sales declined nearly 15 percent last year. But vinyl sales moved in the opposite direction: up 32 percent from 2012, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Trendy retailers such as Urban Outfitters and Whole Foods are stocking vinyl records. Sales of turntables are up and artists like conductor Gustavo Dudamel, pianist Valentina Lisitsa and the Brooklyn Rider string quartet are releasing LPs. While the black disc never went away among purist deejays and audiophiles, it has made a broader comeback, especially among hipsters, college students and nostalgic baby boomers. “The whole idea of actually holding a piece of music in your hand has become sort of a quaint concept because you can carry thousands of songs around in your pocket," said Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story Of Recorded Music. However, "if you are going to have a material object, it may as well be something that’s so far removed from digital formats.” Brooklyn Rider violist Nicholas Cords believes that vinyl records put a listener in a physical space, such as a living room or bedroom. For the quartet, "it connects us to a past, a heritage of string quartet playing that we very much admire. It was a symbolic connection to something we really love." When Brooklyn Rider released its 2012 album “Seven Steps” on vinyl (as well as MP3 and CD) the group invoked past greats like the Capet, Rosé, and Busch String Quartets, who first became known to the world through their pioneering 78 rpm releases in the 1930s and '40s. Cords dismisses the suggestion that LPs are a gimmick, noting that their creation can be painstaking and costly given the different mastering processes involved. What's more, a vinyl release is a way to connect with a specific fan base. Detractors argue that vinyl has plenty of drawbacks: it's not portable, it scratches, it warps and player needles wear out. But its advocates point out that, unlike MP3s, the sound of vinyl is not compressed and any surface noise actually adds warmth to the listening experience. “One of the reasons why people like vinyl is it imparts a kind of unreality to the sound,” said Milner. “People think of it as real but it actually gives you this thing that maybe you don’t hear in real life because in real life you’re not hearing things through the veil of hiss and noise.” But despite the love heaped on vinyl and its reported comeback, it barely moved the needle for the music industry in 2013. "Vinyl is only about two percent of total album sales, so when you talk about a revival you have to talk about it in the context of everything everyone is listening to,” said Claire Suddath, a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. In October, Suddath reported that the number of LPs sold in the U.S. represented only 1.4 percent of all albums sold. While vinyl may not save a troubled industry – one that saw even download sales drop last year – Cords notes that it represents a link with tradition in an age when music formats can seem overly disposable. "I just don’t see vinyl going away," added Milner. “It’s a good format, it’s durable, it will last a long time.” Listen to the full segment above, take our poll and leave a comment: Do you listen to vinyl? If so, why? .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "vinyl-comeback", "survey_vinyl-comeback");

The year 2013 saw plenty of headline-making moments in classical music. Protesters came to the opening night of the Met, while a stagehands strike cancelled the opening night at Carnegie Hall. There were heated debates over women conductors and some complicated celebrations for Richard Wagner. It was another tough year for some orchestras but a good one for Benjamin Britten fans. In this edition of Conducting Business, three experts talk about the past year: Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post; Justin Davidson, classical music and architecture critic for New York magazine; and Heidi Waleson, a classical music critic for the Wall Street Journal. High Points: Anne: In the year that Van Cliburn died, Anne was particularly excited to hear the 22-year-old Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov: “Trifonov is a pianist whom I find totally exciting. I hear a lot of great concerts in the course of a year but I find that Trifonov has something really special and is a really interesting artist and somebody I look forward to hearing again and again.” Justin on Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra's staging of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at the Mostly Mozart Festival: “One of things I really liked about it was it was one of these really portable productions. It was done in a concert hall with the orchestra on stage, no sets, minimal props, costumes that were taken off a clothes rack that was sitting on the stage…With minimal resources they produced one of the most effervescent and inventive productions I’ve seen of that opera. What it said to me is how much you can do with how little.” [Read more of Justin's picks at NYMag.com] Heidi: George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, given its U.S. premiere at Tanglewood in August: “So often you see these new operas and you think, ‘Why did they bother? Why did you turn this movie or this book into an opera?' This was a completely new piece of writing and it had a tension to it from beginning to end. It has a fantastically colorful and intricate orchestration, which includes a solo moment for the viola da gamba." Listen to Written on Skin on Q2 Music   Low Point: The closing of New York City Opera in October after a last-ditch campaign to raise funds for its 2014 season fell through. Anne: “It is not a sign that New York can’t support two opera companies. It is a sign that, due to poor decisions on behalf of the board and a whole sequence of events, this particular thing happened that really didn’t need to happen.” Justin: "One thing that you can take away from that is it is really the product of a classical music and operatic infrastructure that, over the years, got overextended. While we have learned how to expand, trying to do planned shrinkage and figure out how to contract” is tougher for the classical music business. "If you have union contracts and have a season that establishes a kind of baseline, it’s very, very difficult to say ‘we need this to be smaller.’” Heidi: “It was unable to come up with a convincing audience strategy, opera house strategy or even artistic strategy. They did try a few things that I thought were quite interesting – doing for example A Quiet Place, a Leonard Bernstein opera that had never been done in New York… They were in fact trying to reestablish themselves as something that was alternative to the Met, that was a little more forward-looking, and I think it’s really a shame that they couldn’t.” Trends: Anne: The spotlight in 2013 turned to women – women conductors, women composers. “Classical music has proven to have a particularly thick glass ceiling. People are looking at the situation and saying, ‘It’s been years people, why do we still not have very many female conductors on the podium? And when we do, why is it such a big deal?’ There’s still that funny ambivalence about how far we should look at this as a phenomenon and how far we should pretend we’ve all been equal all along.” Justin: The lack of women on major podiums is “a sign of the difficulty that the whole establishment has in adapting at all. What happens is these institutions are very rigid and brittle and when they come up against an obstacle they know that they’re going to splinter and so they avoid the obstacles. It’s a very inflexible set of relationships… Heidi: “The New York Philharmonic seems to be about 50 percent women these days – so why not on the podium?” Justin on the arrival of alternative opera and non-traditional performance venues, as seen in events like the Prototype Festival: “With the cost of real estate in New York, companies are finding cheaper venues and the technology has matured enough so all that you really need is a pretty small room and a fairly minimal investment in machinery to be able to put on a pretty sophisticated multimedia event." Heidi: “There are other organizations doing similar kinds of things: The Gotham Chamber Opera put on a Cavalli opera [Eliogabalo] in a burlesque club... It attracts a different kind of audience. You can break through some of the formality of going to the opera house and sitting in the velvet seat and watching the gold curtain go up."   Surprises: Justin: Caroline Shaw, a 30-year-old New York composer, violinist and singer (right), became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music for her Partita for 8 Voices (heard at the start of this segment). “It has a quality that almost no contemporary music has, which is joy. It’s something that we’ve forgotten is part of the classical music tradition and an important one.”  Anne: “It’s interesting in that [Shaw] doesn’t even self-identify as a composer but as a violinist. The Pulitzer has been very eager to expand its reach and get outside of the norm of what had been deemed Pulitzer-worthy over the years and I think this is a sign that this is happening.” Heidi on Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s musical of “Fun Home” at the Public Theater: "I see a lot of new operas, and so many of them are overblown, trying so hard that they feel stillborn. 'Fun Home,' based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, tells the story of a critical juncture in Alison’s life: she came out as a lesbian in college, and several months later, her father, whom she had just found out was a closeted gay man, killed himself by walking in front of a truck. The piece uses music in the way that you wish these new operas would – to deeply explore feelings in a raw, immediate way." (Note: this "bonus pick" did not make it into the podcast.)   Listen to the full discussion above and tell us: what were your high and low points in classical music in 2013? Photo credits: Shutterstock; Caroline Shaw by Piotr Redliński, 2013

We've all had moments when our mind has wandered during a Wagner opera, a Bruckner symphony or perhaps a long Mozart recitative. Some of us have even dozed off. But maybe we shouldn’t beat ourselves up when our thoughts drift to a grocery list or an e-mail we forgot to send earlier. Boredom in the concert hall may actually be a good thing, says John Crace, a features writer for the Guardian newspaper. In a recent article he argued that the slow, tedious moments in classical music make the exciting ones that much better. Among the works Crace cited is Wagner's six-hour Parsifal, which puts extremely high demands on modern listeners. "There's an hour-and-a-half of absolutely sublime music, which makes it all worthwhile," he told host Jeff Spurgeon. "And then there are bits, especially in the second act, when my mind starts to wander." It probably was the fault of Wagner – not the listener or the performer. "He expected his audiences to come along for the ride with him," Crace continued. "And I don’t think audiences are always prepared to do that." But other industry-watchers disagree that the blame rests with the composer. "Before I would go attacking the repertoire per se, I would first take a look at the performance," said Ben Finane, editor-in-chief of Listen magazine. "I think it’s incumbent upon the singers to establish good chemistry on stage for those [Mozart] recitatives. It’s incumbent upon the conductor to keep things moving, and when that happens, I’m not dosing off." In 2011, BBC Music Magazine asked 10 leading music critics to name the most boring masterpieces in classical music. Responses included Mahler's Eighth Symphony, Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, Vivaldi's Gloria and several operas: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Puccini's Madam Butterfly and Rossini's Cenerentola, among others. "There was no common thread, which shows that one man’s meat is another man’s poison," said Jeremy Pound, the magazine's deputy editor. Wagner has frequently come in for criticism, and some critics say it's a rare opera of his that couldn't be improved by taking 20 minutes (or more) off the running time. "That’s the trouble with Wagner is there’s so much good stuff in there but you have to sit through the dreary stuff in between," noted Pound. Crace believes that opera is a challenge because, unlike a play, it's difficult to cut in performance. "No one would dream of performing Hamlet at five hours," he said. "But there is a feeling in opera that somehow there’s an irreverence attached if every note of every bar is not included." Perhaps the media has unfairly hyped epic works and created unreasonable expectations in audiences, said Pound. But just as important to realize is that, with age, a listener's concept of time starts to change. "What was boring to me 20 years ago now I absolutely adore," Pound added. Listen to the segment above and tell us: Are there pieces that sometimes make your mind wander? Leave your comments below.

It’s that time of year again, when orchestras across the land are dusting off their holiday pops programs and choruses are warming up for Messiahs and sing-a-along carol extravaganzas. But for the recording industry, Christmas music has changed. The big orchestral albums of the sort that conductors like Arthur Fiedler or Eugene Ormandy used to make have fallen by the wayside. So have the grand star vehicles, with a sequined opera diva belting out Christmas songs backed up by a choir and orchestra. But as we hear in this edition of Conducting Business, what remains are plenty of smaller-scale recordings that either attempt to make a cozier or refined spiritual statement (as with many early-music groups), or round up a bunch of stars from different genres to perform the standards. The changes are partly driven by economics, said Anastasia Tscioulcas, who covers classical music for NPR Music. “Where did the recordings go? They’re very expensive to make,” she told host Naomi Lewin. “The big star-studded album with the full symphony orchestra behind them and maybe chorus thrown in for good measure is extremely expensive to produce.” The new realities are a reflection of changes in the classical music business. “The number of stars that have that sort of appeal has descended dramatically,” noted Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post. “Renee Fleming and Anna Netrebko are the only opera singers who have that sort of mass appeal.” Of course, Christmas is not a time for snobbery or strict adherence to high-minded artistic ideals, say the panelists. Nostalgia is a big part of what drives the business. Listeners are often attracted to a holiday album by their favorite star, which sticks with them later in life. Steven Epstein, a multi-Grammy Award-winning record producer, says a simpler aesthetic has come to dominate. “The most successful Christmas albums are those where the arrangements are not complex and that the melodies don’t get lost,” he said. Epstein’s imprint can be found on several albums that follow an increasingly popular template: gather together stars from different genres and try and capture some of their respective fan bases. The most recent recording of this sort is “Musical Gifts from Joshua Bell and Friends,” which was released last month, but Epstein cites a similar effort from back in 1989: "Crescent City Christmas," for which Wynton Marsalis was joined by singers like Jon Hendricks and Kathleen Battle. “That is what really brings in the consumer are the additional guest artists,” Epstein noted. Midgette sees no loss in the decline of the diva Christmas record. “Artistically these things are negligible – and I say that as somebody who has my favorite Christmas albums, which have been basically the same since I was about seven." Listen to the full podcast above and tell us below: What are your most and least favorite holiday albums? Sidebar: A Few of our favorite Christmas Recordings Anne Midgette:Christmas from a Golden Age (Naxos) (singers including Victoria de los Angeles, John McCormack, Rosa Ponselle and others)The Messiah Remix (Cantaloupe) (featuring remixed versions by Paul Lansky, Eve Beglarian, Phil Kline and others) Anastasia Tsioulcas:Vince Guaraldi: "A Charlie Brown Christmas"Robert Shaw Chorale: "The Many Moods of Christmas" Steven Epstein:Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Naomi Lewin:Britten's Ceremony of Carols (Philadelphia Singers, Benita Valente, Maureen Forrester, David Gordon)...And an honorable mention for worst Christmas collaboration: Michael Bolton and Placido Domingo sing "Ave Maria" from "Merry Christmas from Vienna" .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "which-piece-classical-holiday-music-most-overexpos", "survey_which-piece-classical-holiday-music-most-overexpos");

It stopped just short of promising eyesight to the blind or rain from dry skies. But disciples of the 1993 "Mozart Effect" study made impressive claims: Listening to music, they said, could boost Junior's math scores and maybe even get him into Harvard. The idea sparked a cottage industry of CDs, classes and books for babies and toddlers. But the now-famous study was vastly misconstrued, and 20 years and many studies later, neuroscientists are giving us a broader understanding of how musical training can impact brain development and cognition. The latest addition to the body of research came with a study published on Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience. It showed that people who took music lessons during childhood seem to have a faster brain response to speech much later in life – even if the child musicians hadn't picked up their instruments in decades. “What happens when we get older is that neural responses slow down, especially in response to very fast and complicated sounds like consonants,” Dr. Nina Krauss, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University tells Naomi Lewin. The study included 44 adults, aged 55 to 76, who listened to a recorded speech sound while the researchers measured electrical activity in the auditory brainstem, the region of the brain that processes sound. The more years that a person spent playing instruments during childhood, the faster their brains responded to the speech sound. Kraus’s lab has been a driving force in research around music and brain development. Among her other recent studies is one involving the Harmony Project, a program providing free instruments and instruction to at-risk kids in Los Angeles. Students there were tested on their ability to identify rhythmic patterns. "After a year of training, the kids who have been in the music training are better able to synchronize to the beat and to remember the beat,” said Kraus. This can serve to promote other cognitive skills, such as reading and speech. Virginia Penhune, a psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says there's a "sensitive period" when musical training most interacts with normal brain development. Earlier this year, her lab published a study in the Journal of Neuroscience in which 36 adult musicians had their brains scanned while performing a simple movement exercise. Half of these musicians began musical training before age seven; the other half began at a later age. “What we found is that the younger you start your training, the stronger the connection between the two motor regions of your brain,” she said. Crucial to this phenomenon is the high level of hand coordination involved in playing a violin or piano, for instance. So, according to Penhune, "We think it’s that part of what you practice that changes these connections [in your brain]." And what of the Mozart Effect? Do those "Mozart for Babies" recordings haunt scientists today, misrepresenting music’s intrinsic capabilities? Or did the 1993 study raise the overall awareness for cognitive research involving music? "One of the difficulties of the Mozart Effect was it was associated with the passive listening of music,” said Kraus. "The work that Virginia and I have been talking about is really in stark contrast to that. It is the active engagement with an instrument.” Penhune agrees. “It also brings up this idea of, what do you expect music to do for you? Really why we take music lessons is we want kids to learn music and enjoy music and have social benefits of music. Thinking of it only as a way to change other things is a little bit of a mistake.” Listen to the full discussion above and weigh in: Have you studied music or prescribed musical studies specifically to boost brain power? Has it worked? Leave your comments below.

The absence of women conductors at the world’s top orchestras is no longer news, but it stands out more every year, as women scale male bastions in business, sports and entertainment. Of the 20 largest orchestras in the U.S., only the Baltimore Symphony has a woman music director: Marin Alsop, who last month made history as the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms concert in its nearly 120-year history. In New York this season, women conductors are noticeably scarce, their scheduled appearances countable on one hand. A similar male-to-female ratio can be found in London. But that’s not to say that there's a lack of women conductors in the field. Recently, the British journalist and author Jessica Duchen compiled a list of more than 100 women conductors. “It’s quite clear to me that there are plenty of women conductors but they’re just not getting the top gigs,” she tells host Naomi Lewin in this podcast. Many of the women on Duchen’s list are not recent college graduates or newcomers, but mid-career conductors, well at the point where a major podium is theoretically in reach. Some, like the conductor and harpsichordist Emmanuelle Haïm, have found that the niche of early-music remains an easier entry point. “Early music is more of a collaborative effort,” said Haïm (right), who this Saturday conducts her ensemble, Le Concert d’Astrée, at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. “Therefore you shock fewer people maybe in that field.” By contrast, when faced with 19th century masterworks, the principal of male power is deeply ingrained in the conductor mythology. “If I had gone that path it would have been much harder for me to conquest those bastions." Some recent, highly-publicized remarks suggest that prejudice is alive and well in the business. The young Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko told a Norwegian newspaper, perhaps ironically, that orchestras simply play better for men, and that “a sweet girl on the podium can make one’s thoughts drift towards something else.” And Bruno Mantovani, the head of the Paris Conservatory, recently made headlines when he said in a radio interview that conducting is too demanding for women: “The profession of a conductor is a profession that is particularly physically testing. Sometimes women are discouraged by the very physical aspect – conducting, taking a plane, taking another plane, conducting again. It is quite challenging.” Duchen believes that this reflects wider obstacles in music schools and conservatories. “Several of the women conductors that I have interviewed say they were deliberately deterred at college level,” she said. “There were people at the institutions where they wanted to study who actively tried to put them off.” Charlotte Lee, a vice president and artist manager at IMG Artists, sees less evidence that sexism is widespread in the classical music business, and believes that hiring boils down to questions of supply and demand. “I don’t feel that female conductors tend to get hired or not hired based solely on anything other than their talent,” she said. “The artistic programmers that I work with, at least, tend to hire you based on your talent.” While many in the classical music business prefer not to talk about gender prejudice, Lee and Haïm both acknowledge that double standards exist. Orchestras have been known to ask woman conductors to change their hairstyle or tone down a style of dress. But Haim believes there are deeper societal questions at work too. “Behind a great man, there is always a great woman – or another great man,” Haim said. “It’s somebody helping out. As a woman, it’s more difficult because it puts the man accompanying you in a difficult position. Socially speaking they are looked at as weird.” Lee believes classical music will ultimately be forced to keep in step with society at large. “As time goes on we’ll have fewer firsts in general,” she said. “I should hope in 10 years we won’t be having this conversation.” Listen to the full discussion above and tell us below what you think: has there been adequate progress for women conductors?

All the people clamoring to get into Broadway shows like "Wicked" and "The Book of Mormon" – or museum shows like the Rain Room at MoMa – are apparently the exception, rather than the rule. That's the conclusion of a new survey of public participation released last week by the National Endowment for the Arts. It shows an overall decline in arts consumption by Americans, with a particular drop-off in museum and theater attendance. There were smaller dips in classical music and ballet audiences too. But it wasn't all gloom and doom: Audiences are growing more racially and ethnically diverse.  And there are hints that technology is playing a larger role in how we consume culture. On Oct. 3, Conducting Business brought a group of prominent arts leaders to The Greene Space to explore these recent findings and their implications. Joining us were Oskar Eustis, artistic director of New York’s Public Theater; Robert Battle, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; Jesse Rosen, president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras; Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post, and Graham Parker, general manager of WQXR. Naomi Lewin hosted the event, of which the archived video is below.   What do you think is behind the decline in audiences? What can arts organizations do to attract new patrons? Please leave your comments in the box at the bottom of this page, or Tweet us at @WQXR. Below are three salient findings from the NEA's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts: Please leave your questions in the comments box below, or Tweet us at @WQXR #NEASPPA.

When times are tough, a lot of arts groups go for the sure thing. For orchestras, that means a Beethoven symphony cycle over Schoenberg or Cage. For an opera house, it's Carmen and La Boheme over a risky modern opera. But some companies think differently. In the face of all its hardships, New York City Opera planned a season that includes J.C. Bach's Endimione, Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, and the U.S. premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole – hardly proven audience bate. So what’s the proper balance? Does safe programming equal more "butts in seats?" Or do you need to take risks, even in tough times? Philip Kennicott, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of the Washington Post, tells host Naomi Lewin that arts organizations often get into trouble by neglecting more serious-minded audiences in an effort to chase niche listeners. "Orchestras very often think that their audience falls into two categories: there's a conservative, old audience that only wants Beethoven and Mozart and Haydn, and then there is this ideal audience that’s interested in everything," he said. "I argue that there is another audience out there." Kennicott recently wrote an article for The New Republic, in which he chastised orchestras for an over-reliance on star soloists, a handful of over-familiar concertos, and a cookie-cutter mix of "special events" – video game music, crossover tenors, Broadway crooners and movie screenings. Lost in this mix, Kennicott tells Lewin, is the listener who is "open to new pieces, open to obscure pieces, interested still in the traditional repertoire. The panic response of reflexively programming familiar works that you see in orchestras actually doesn’t serve the serious listener very well." Krishna Thiagarajan, the executive director of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, notes that many orchestras don't want to take risks with unfamiliar programming because "the funding isn’t there to back it up," he said. "When you’re being very creative and breaking the mold, you have to know that’s an area where you have to invest.” By investment, Thiagarajan means that an orchestra must take the long view and condition audiences to leave their comfort zone. As an example, he points to Esa-Pekka Salonen's tenure as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009, where he premiered 120 works, including 54 commissions. "If you initially get a poor reaction from your audience, if you pull back you won’t know what the full effect was," he said. Marc Scorca, president of Opera America, a national service organization, says there are no surefire hits anymore. "There are fewer and fewer safe pieces," he said. "Operas that used to be reliable box office producers are no longer pulling the way they used to." Scorca adds that he's seen an audience fatigue with La Traviatas and Carmens, whereas new works can energize an organization and create excitement. To some observers, the performing arts are mirroring the homogenization of mass media and popular culture as a whole. "There is something going on in this country at large, and what we’re seeing in the arts scene is a symptom," Thiagarajan cautioned. But Kennicott is more optimistic. "I think there are audiences out there," he said. “I call them countercultural audiences that are really eager for stuff that doesn’t fit that homogenized cultural model. That’s the great hope of any organization that’s producing live art.” Listen to the full discussion in the audio link above and take our poll below: .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "classical-music-programming", "survey_classical-music-programming");

Before the Minnesota Orchestra locked out its musicians in a season-long labor dispute, the orchestra's administration had already locked down a large number of domain names – buying up at least a dozen website addresses that were variations on "Save Our Minnesota Orchestra." The bulk purchase was uncovered by Emily Hogstad, a Wisconsin-based blogger who was trying to set up a website to rally support for locked-out musicians. She quickly discovered that many of the obvious URLs had already been taken — several months before the lockout began, by the orchestra itself. (She eventually found one, which launched this week.) The incident is the latest example of political-style web advocacy that's moved into the realm of classical music and the arts. In this podcast, we get three views on the trend, including that of Hogstad, who writes the blog Song of the Lark. A Minnesota Orchestra spokesperson told NPR Music's Anastasia Tsioulcas that the organization reserved the URLs to protect the orchestra's name, knowing well that the labor talks would be contentious. Such purchases are a standard business practice, although they're usually masked by a third-party buyer so that it's not quite so obvious what's taking place. Even so, the revelation drew a wave of negative commentary and the orchestra had to acknowledge Hogstad's blog, which she said it had previously ignored. Tsioulcas believes the rise of "save our symphony" advocacy websites signifies a new level of audience empowerment, giving fans "a foot in the discussion," as she put it. "It used to be that for a ticket buyer, a fan, really the only agency they had was: would they buy tickets or not?" She further notes that the musicians themselves had bought up their own domain name two years earlier. Ryan J. Davis is a vice president of the new-media start up Vocativ, and has worked on social media at Blue State Digital and the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. He notes that arts organizations have been generally slow to understand social media. However, he said, "we're seeing this shift from the power of institutions to dictate policy and the top-down way they’ve been doing for generations for an ability for people to using social media to express their opinions and filter information up." Another recent example of fan-driven advocacy involves an online petition aimed at pressuring the Metropolitan Opera to dedicate its opening night gala to the gay community. The gala features the two stars – Anna Netrebko and Valery Gergiev – who are supporters of Vladimir Putin, who recently passed anti-gay legislation in Russia. Davis believes that whether or not the petition can influence Met policy, it has succeeded in stimulating a conversation about the issue of gay rights. "It's just another piece of bad P.R. for Russia," he said. Arts organizations must also learn better ways to harness social media, and not only from a defensive stance, said Tsioulcas. Two years ago, it was enough to stage a flashmob and that would spawn a viral YouTube video. "That’s not quite enough," Tsioulcas said. "They really have to spend the time and effort and learn how to spread them. "It's a multi-way conversation. It's not there as a megaphone to broadcast your next press release." Weigh in: How can the Internet give fans a greater voice in performing arts companies? Listen to the full discussion above and share your thoughts below.

Anyone who has had to give a speech at a wedding or deliver a Powerpoint presentation at the office knows the symptoms: sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, even nausea. That age-old curse, stage fright, is nothing new. But for classical musicians it's come with a considerable stigma. Despite the fact that famous artists like Vladimir Horowitz, Renee Fleming and Glenn Gould have all experienced crippling performance anxiety, a hush-hush attitude has long prevailed. "The reason people don't talk about it is because it would affect your opportunities,” Diane Nichols, a psychotherapist who calms a stage-fright class in Juilliard's evening division, told host Naomi Lewin (listen to the full discussion above). “How seriously is someone going to look at you if they're auditioning you, if they know you have a history of choking or of panicking?” But in an age when people broadcast details of their daily lives through social media, there are also signs that the taboo may be lifting. Holly Mulcahy, a violinist who won the job of concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera in May, says there’s a greater openness than even a decade ago, and new methods of coping. "Some of my teachers in conservatory days would gladly carry around a flask of Scotch and take it before they went on stage," she said. “But I don’t see that in any of the orchestras that I've played in recently.” Instead, Mulcahy and other orchestra musicians increasingly turn to beta blockers. According to Mulcahy and other musicians who spoke with WQXR, in some backstage areas, they're passed around like chewing gum or mints. Mulcahy recalls panicked colleagues calling "Oh my God, does anybody have any Inderal?" Beta blockers have been common in classical music since the 1970s. Originally prescribed to treat high blood pressure, they became performance enablers when it became clear that Inderal (the brand name) controlled stage fright. As long ago as 1987, a study of the 51 largest orchestras in the U.S. found one in four musicians using them to improve their live performances, with 70 percent of those getting their pills illicitly. But there are new stresses since a generation ago. Fewer jobs and heightened competition mean less room for error. For opera singers, looks are becoming as important as voice. A 2012 study from the University of Paderborn in Germany found that 30 percent of orchestra musicians suffer from stage fright; 13 percent said it was severe. Mulcahy finds that not taking beta blockers puts an aspiring orchestra player at a competitive disadvantage. “When I’d get to the finals of orchestra auditions and I wouldn’t be winning, the people that would be winning were the ones that had the beta blockers,” she noted. Even so, she cautions that Inderal does not "enhance" a performance, nor is it a cure-all: "It doesn’t help your concentration. It doesn’t help your confidence. All it does is it keeps the shakes down and keeps the panic to a minimal level." Some musicians still find other means of managing nerves. Lev "Ljova" Zhurbin, a violist and composer, was once steered towards everything from psychotherapy to eating bananas. He eventually overcame stage fright by taking a non-traditional career path that didn’t involve constant auditions. "I’ve become heavily invested in the music that I play,” said Zhurbin, whose ensemble, Ljova and the Kontraband, combines gypsy, folk and chamber music. Nichols believes that stage fright will never go away entirely, and maybe it shouldn't. “I do think that it can be managed and careers are not devastated because of stage fright right now, because of Inderal.” .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "coping-stage-fright", "survey_coping-stage-fright"); Photos: 1) Bo Huang 2) Anna Rozenblat

When a new production of Wagner's Ring Cycle is planned, opera administrators bank on a significant portion of their audience coming from the ranks of Wagnerites or "Ring Nuts," a breed of Wagner-lovers known for traveling globally to feed their unrelenting hunger for opera's greatest epic. Wagnerites are classical music's super-fans. They gather in Wagner Societies, sign up for group ticket offers, attend conferences and debate finer points of productions and recordings. Many are enthralled with the ritual aspects of attending a Ring Cycle, which typically takes place over the course of a week. And in this, the composer's bicentenary year, there have been plenty of opportunities. This represents a degree of fandom that one seldom finds with Puccini or Verdi, says Will Berger, author of the book Wagner without Fear and a producer at the Metropolitan Opera. "Just by the resources you need to produce Wagner, it’s going to be a different sort of experience,” he told host Naomi Lewin. "It is a destination. It has to be. It’s meant to take up a week of your life and be a thing apart." Like Deadheads or Trekkies, Wagner fans are drawn together by a shared expertise, said Joli Jensen, a communications professor at the University of Tulsa who has studied fans and fandom. "Fans are misrepresented as crazy people trying to compensate for something missing in their lives,” she noted. “But in fact they’re really experts. They’re experts who don’t have institutional credentials but are eager to enact and display and share their expertise and their passion." One such fan is Andrew Zacks, a self-professed Wagnerite who estimates he has attended nearly 50 Ring Cycles, including one in the Amazon jungle. "To me Wagner signifies the 19th century," he said. "If I want to have a time transport to the 19th century I go see a Wagner opera. It changes your perception of time, the politics – everything is tumultuous in the way the 19th century was." Zacks embraces the social rituals, starting with elaborate intermission meals and post-performance gatherings with fellow fans and occasionally, performers. Avoiding the usual "business casual" dress, he enjoys wearing black tie to some performances and even Lederhosen when attending a show in Germany (no horned helmets, however). “The conviviality of experiencing it in that fashion is beyond compare," he notes.  But how does one become obsessed with a composer who is also known for his nasty anti-Semitism and misogyny? "I think you have to put him in his historical context," said Zacks. "A lot of people would like to ban Wagner's music and blame him for the people who liked his music in the future, which I think is a little unfair. There was a lot of anti-Semitism in the 19th century." Of course, Hitler became a Wagner fan of sorts, too. But the composer’s admirers have also included many who are eager to understand and confront his darker side head on. Jensen believes that such fans can serve as a model for others. "That’s why I want fans to have a voice, where they can share their enthusiasm and their passion and their experience," she said. "We can all learn to become richer aesthetically by learning through fans what we’re missing when we’re not fans." Weigh in: Are you a Wagnerite? What draws you to the composer's music? Leave your comments below.

A symphony orchestra gets a gleaming new concert hall. It’s a symbol of cultural ambition, civic pride and even a centerpiece of urban renewal. Or, is it an albatross and a money pit whose costs ultimately come back to bite the organization? As we hear in this edition of Conducting Business, the recent history of orchestras in Philadelphia, Detroit and now, Nashville, has led to questions about the "build it and they will come" philosophy. Some argue that, in the push to build or renovate halls, orchestra administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that proved particularly disastrous when combined with the 2008 financial crisis. This week, the Nashville Symphony narrowly averted a foreclosure on its concert hall, the $123.5 million Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Only with the help of a major donor was it able to reach a last-minute deal to pay off its lenders and keep the hall out of the banks' hands. Nashville's situation is particularly unique in that it experienced a natural disaster on top of man-made ones: in 2010, a severe flood caused some $40 million in damages. But at times, orchestras sometimes build or significantly renovate halls when they aren't sure what else to do, said Adrian Ellis, principal of the firm AEA Consulting. "You often find museum extensions and new facilities are not so much the result of deep imagination but the result of actually thinking 'well, here's something we can all get around.'" Arts organizations can also suffer from delusions of grandeur. Some orchestras have looked to the example of Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, which used award-winning architecture (by Frank Gehry) as a way to lure tourists and economic development while generating excitement around the orchestra. "But what you can do in an L.A. or a New York or a global city you can't necessarily do in a Nashville or a Minneapolis," said Ellis. The Minnesota Orchestra is currently undertaking a $50 million renovation of Orchestra Hall, the ensemble's home in Minneapolis, in an effort to improve onstage acoustics as well as public amenities like an expanded lobby. But the orchestra just lost an entire season to a lockout of the musicians, who are balking at steep pay cuts demanded by management. Photo: Design for the renovated Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (KPMB Architects) "[Management's] argument is this is important to their strategic plan because they need a better facility to generate more money, to monetize more off-nights, to bring in more community events and concerts from outside," said Graydon Royce, the classical music critic of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "The hall is supposed to open in August. But what are they going to open with?" The orchestra also runs a real risk "of completely alienating their audience and you're going to have this new hall and I'm not sure what the value of that will be," added Royce. Ellis sees a pattern in the U.S., "around a lot of civic ambition and very expensive concert halls combined with either static or declining audiences, and critically, patterns in philanthropy." In Nashville, the immediate crisis is past but the orchestra has told subscribers that it needs to take aggressive actions to improve its finances. "What we have seen in the last few days is a reprieve, not a solution," said Nina Cardona, a host and reporter at Nashville Public Radio, who covers arts and culture. "Yes, they keep their hall now and that is great for them. But they've still got to operate the hall. They've still got to pay for the staff that it takes to keep a place of your own running. That's the real expense. The debt payments are not what have driven them into the ground. It's operating the building." Weigh in: have orchestras over-invested in concert halls? Or do halls bring in audiences who might not otherwise attend a concert? Share your thoughts below.

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art said it will name its newly remodeled plaza and fountains for David H. Koch, the billionaire conservative activist who gave $65 million towards the renovation. Koch has his name on a few prominent buildings around town, including the former New York State Theater at Lincoln Center and the American Museum of Natural History's dinosaur wing. Koch presents one of the most visible examples of naming rights, a trend that some say is a necessary part of philanthropy. Yet others argue that giving should be a selfless, anonymous act. In this podcast, we consider what's driving the trend and what it signifies. "With the fall-off in giving from the government, corporations and foundations, the private sector is even more essential than it was in the past," said Robin Pogrebin, a culture reporter at the New York Times. "In the past there was perhaps a nobility in giving anonymously. But now if donors are interested in seeing their names on things then organizations do need to make the tradeoffs involved in making that available to them." Naming rights for major buildings generally go for about $100 million in New York, as seen in recent gifts by Stephen Schwarzman (to the New York Public Library), Koch (to the New York State Theater), Henry Kravis and Ronald Perelman (both to the Columbia University Business School). Smaller gifts may fund a hallway, a lobby or even a toilet. Joan Desens is the director of institutional advancement at the Glimmerglass Festival, a summer opera festival in Cooperstown, NY. She says that patrons were once reluctant to have their name associated with a gift, but society has become more open. "People are very blatant with Facebook exposure," she said. "We’re all out there. So I think that people are more comfortable with having their name out there. It’s increasingly becoming an attraction." Patricia Illingworth, an editor of Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, believes that naming rights are a mixed blessing from an ethical standpoint. To some degree, "the arts seem to be a place where people from all walks of life and all social classes can gather together in solidarity," she noted. "So if billionaires are branding institutions and organizations with their names," that can alienate some people. Nevertheless, Illingworth believes that named buildings can serve as an example and encourage increased giving from others. Does an arts institution risk alienating patrons by associating with a major donor who holds a controversial personal agenda? "The point is, [patrons] are going to walk in anyway," said Pogrebin. "They may object but it’s not going to keep them away. Time passes and people get used to things." A more complex picture emerges if a donor feels at liberty to dictate programming. According to a recent New Yorker piece, a documentary film was halted because of pressure applied on PBS from David H. Koch. Opinions differ as to whether this occurs within performing arts organizations. "We like to think that the democratic process is what determines the social agenda," said Illingworth. "And yet when philanthropists start acting like governments, in a sense they can determine the social agenda. Naming rights can exacerbate that."  But according to Pogrebin, "there is a pretty bright line when it comes to cultural organizations and artistic interference. That's the real cardinal sin. A donor cannot meddle in artistic choices and once you go down that road it's a slippery slope." Weigh in: How do you feel about naming rights in the arts?

Last week, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf cancelled a Nazi-themed production of Wagner's Tannhäuser, when the premiere performance prompted booing, mass walkouts and even reports of audience members getting sick. With scenes that reportedly showed Jews being murdered and dying in gas chambers, it certainly shocked — but it was hardly the first revisionist opera production. In this podcast, Naomi Lewin asks three prominent opera-watchers whether Düsseldorf was right to cancel the production, and what radical updates can bring to the art form. To some commentators, the Dusseldorf Tannhauser was a stretch: the opera is set in the Middle Ages and based on a ballad about a bard called Tannhäuser. Yet the intention of the director, Burkhard Kosminski, had a logic that many could understand. In the month of Wagner’s bicentennial, he wanted to link the opera to the Holocaust – an event which the composer’s own ardent anti-Semitism seemed to presage. John Berry, the artistic director of English National Opera, called the Düsseldorf company “extremely well established” and he praised its talented leadership. But a company should also prepare its audience for a provocative concept. "Usually, in an opera house, you receive a model and an outline of the ideas a year, two years, sometimes even longer [beforehand] so the Düsseldorf management would have had a good idea of the overall vision for the piece,” he said. “On the face of it, it does seem shocking that the whole production has been pulled due to the audience response," he continued. "I haven’t heard of that anywhere. But I haven’t seen the piece.” James Jorden, opera critic of the New York Post and editor of the blog Parterre Box, took a sterner view of the company’s cancellation. “The job of opera management is to present the vision of people who create opera – the director, the conductor and the singers,” said Jorden. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing and a cowardly thing to send the message to these artists that we’re not going to support you. If someone complains about your work, we’re out of here. We'll drop you like a hot potato." Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post, noted that Nazi references are not uncommon in German Wagner productions, typically as a way of exploring issues around German nationalism. But what may have ignited the Düsseldorf controversy was the fact that "it actually showed people being killed." Still, Midgette believes that opera has the power to confront and challenge. "You’re dealing with an art form that many, many people approach with a sense that it's safely distant," she said. “A production that puts people being gassed on stage is going in there wanting to grab the audience by the collar."  (In a statement, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein said that although it knew that the production would be "controversial" it did not expect the extreme reactions that followed the premiere.) But when does a strong directorial concept (aka "Regietheater," or "director's theater") lose focus and cross over into what detractors label “Eurotrash?" Berry believes modern updates can be highly successful if essential ingredients are in place. "In the end, whether it’s a modern updating or not, is it well-sung, is the director telling the story, does it have a dramatic and musical power?” Sometimes a concept will completely miss the mark. Jorden recalls seeing a Carmen in Stuttgart where the title character "died six or seven times in the course of the opera – but not at the end." Yet he also remembers Calixto Bieito’s staging of Wagner’s Parsifal, set in an apocalyptic landscape inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. "Not only did this make me question completely my ideas of what the opera was about, it still to this day has me wondering what the purpose of religion in human existence is," Jorden said. "I don't think you could ask for a more profound meaning in an operatic performance." Weigh in: What modern updates of operas have you seen that did or didn't work for you? Tell us about it in the comments box below. Photo: Piotr Beczala as the Duke and Oksana Volkova as Maddalena in the Met's "Vegas" Rigoletto (Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)

On May 29, 1913, the Paris premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring provoked a riot: whistling and booing, catcalls and fisticuffs overran the performance and the police were called in to quiet the angry crowd. It became one of the most celebrated scandals in music history. Today, The Rite of Spring is practically an audience favorite and rioting in concert halls is unthinkable. But is this a good thing? Does classical music need more shock value, more scandals? In his latest column for BBC Music Magazine, music critic Richard Morrison argues that classical music needs more Rite-style uproar. "Never in my 30 years as a critic have I witnessed that kind of reaction," Morrison tells host Naomi Lewin in this podcast. "It just struck me that maybe we’re a bit too polite these days and composers aren’t provoking us enough." Composers today rarely seek the label enfant terrible, added Morrison. "I think they rather like to be liked rather than creating an uproar." Leon Botstein, the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College, believes the reason audiences were shocked by the Rite of Spring was a sense of ownership over a received musical language. Classical music signaled respectability to audiences "and these young composers were sticking their proverbial finger in their eye." But Botstein believes that many of today's concert-goers lack a frame of reference for challenging new music. "The problem is the audience is musically illiterate and therefore if you want to do something very daring and sophisticated you’re presuming a literate audience," said Botstein, who will devote the 2013 Bard Music Festival to Stravinsky. "So there’s very little for a composer to push back on. That’s the dilemma they face." To some extent, it isn't possible to shock audiences because everything seems to have been done. By the 1960s, composers had explored the outer extremes of total Serialism, computer music and John Cage-style chance. The hybrid, postmodern styles embraced by composers in the last two decades, by contrast, are seldom driven by a need to provoke. Even Minimalism, a style that provoked an uproar with the 1973 premiere of Steve Reich's Four Organs, is now part of the mainstream, featured in film scores and TV commercials. Morrison believes that classical music has long shifted between radical and conservative modes. "If you look at the history of classical music, it’s a very fine balance between tradition and revolution," he noted. "You had Haydn and Mozart, who were craftsman in an established tradition. But then you had Beethoven who came and turned everything upside down. You need both polarities." But Botstein doesn't believe that headline-making disturbances are what's needed to move classical music forward in the name of progress. "I don’t think classical music should be about scandal or riots," he argued. "Leave it to football matches, leave it to political rallies. This is an entirely different art form and I think we should walk away from the way Hollywood makes success." Weigh in: Should classical music do more to shock audiences? Is it possible to shock anymore? Take our poll and leave your comments below. .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "music-shocks", "survey_music-shocks");

POLL: Should classical music be used to fight crime and loitering? Move along, hoodlums. Antonio Vivaldi is playing at Newark Penn Station. When New Jersey Transit upgraded the public address system at the Newark transit hub a year ago, they began piping in classical music along with the announcements on train arrivals and connections. The authority subscribed to a music service and station agents could select from different channels, which also include easy-listening and jazz. The idea, said a NJ Transit spokesperson, is to relax customers "and make it more pleasant to traverse the facilities." But in cities from Atlanta to Minneapolis and London, there's often a bigger strategy at work: turn on the great composers and turn away the loiterers, vagrants and troublemakers who are drawn to bus stations, malls and parking lots. Last month, the Associated Press reported on a YMCA in Columbus, OH that began piping Vivaldi into its parking lot, and claiming to disperse petty drug dealers as a result. In this podcast, host Naomi Lewin asks why classical music in particular seems to be the weapon of choice – and whether it works. "It's been used as part of a larger strategy of crime prevention through environmental design," said Jacqueline Helfgott, chair of the criminal-justice department at Seattle University. She noted that classical music is often accompanied by upgrades like better lighting, improved traffic flow or trimmed shrubbery in public areas. Studies on the specific effects of music on criminal behavior are lacking. But Helfgott believes classical music is historically associated with "a cultural aesthetic that is pro-social as opposed to antisocial," making it a preferred crime prevention tool. Put another way, rowdy teenagers don't find classical very cool. Nigel Rodgers, the head of Pipedown, a group that campaigns against background music in any form, believes the strategy presents a slippery slope. “Yes, young people commit crimes and it’s a problem," he said. "I do appreciate that. But we must seek out other pro-sociable ways of dealing with the problem rather than just squirt acoustic insecticide at young people. "People who really like music of any sort don’t want to have it piped at them when they’re trying to talk, eat or shop when they don’t want it." It's also worth keeping in mind that not all classical music works as a soothing agent. As anyone who has seen "A Clockwork Orange," knows, even Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has its dark associations. In Columbus, OH, where the YMCA piped in Vivaldi, the strategy is being hailed as a success. A local business improvement district executive told the AP: "There's something about baroque music that macho wannabe-gangster types hate. At the very least, it has a calming effect." .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "classical-music-and-crime-prevention", "survey_classical-music-and-crime-prevention");

In recent months, symphony orchestras have returned to the music of J.S. Bach with a vengeance. The New York Philharmonic is in the midst of a month-long Bach festival with the expressed goal of reclaiming the master's music for modern instruments. At the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Brandenburg Concertos are on the calendar this spring. The orchestra also plans to re-record the Bach transcriptions of Leopold Stokowski – those sumptuous, technicolor arrangements that had been considered passé (if enjoyably so). "There's been a weird phenomenon for a long time that has made it pretty rare to see Bach on symphony orchestra programs," said New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert in a recent video explaining the orchestra's project. He goes on to question the "exclusivity" of suggesting "there was one only one right way to play Bach." All of this is a far cry from the period-instrument movement's expressed goals to rediscover how Baroque music might have sounded using original instruments and performance practices. For years, if not decades, period-instrument players had gained the upper hand by researching appropriate tempos, ornamentation and instruments. In this podcast, host Naomi Lewin asks three guests about this phenomenon. "I think [orchestras] are panicking," said Monica Huggett, a leading baroque violinist and conductor. "In London, where I worked most of my career, the big orchestras stopped playing Bach because in the end, there was so much good historical performance that they really didn't need to do it any more and people really didn't want to hear it any more." James Oestreich, the consulting classical music editor at the New York Times, sees things differently. "I wouldn't agree that the large orchestras are panicking," he said. "I think they've lost their balance to some extent. I think they've lost confidence in the repertory to some extent. To hold up the music scene in a world capital like London or New York and say this should set standards for who performs what, I don't think is fair." Oestreich adds that the New York Philharmonic played lots of Bach in the 1990s, and the orchestra is "perhaps overselling" the novelty of its current festival. Lewin also asks a prominent New York pianist whether she's trying to reclaim Bach for the modern instrument. "I'm not doing anything unique by playing Bach on the piano," said the pianist Simone Dinnerstein. "I think that I just have more omnivorous tastes and think that Bach sounds very interesting and different when played in many different ways on many different instruments with modern orchestras, on authentic instruments." Weigh in: Do you enjoy the sound of Bach played on modern or on period instruments? Please leave your comments below. Guests: James Oestreich, the consulting classical music editor and a freelance writer for the New York Times. Monica Huggett, a leading baroque violinist and conductor who teaches at Juilliard. Simone Dinnerstein, a pianist who has made a number of Bach recordings. Her latest, called “Night,” with the singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, features a modern rendering of Bach. .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "bach-period-instruments", "survey_bach-period-instruments");

For the first time a soundtrack for a video game has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the category usually reserved for movie scores. The composer Austin Wintory's score for the wildly popular PlayStation 3 game "Journey" has been given a nod for "Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media," pitting him against film-score giants like Ludovic Bource, Howard Shore, John Williams and Hans Zimmer. The awards take place this Sunday in Los Angeles. The nomination comes as video game scores play increasingly well with symphony orchestras. Concerts of music from "Final Fantasy," "Halo" and "Zelda" are staples of pops concert programming. In the past year, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Montreal chamber group La Pieta have released albums of game music, the former of which debuted at No. 23 on the Billboard 200 chart. One of the most popular violinists on YouTube is Lindsey Stirling, whose interpretations of video game scores have received hundreds of millions of views. All of this is possible because video games often feature full-length orchestral scores. Composers who once specialized in film music, including Danny Elfman and Howard Shore, are also applying their talents to the game medium. There are many potential benefits, said writer Dan Visconti. "One of the ways that orchestras can stay relevant," he said, "is engaging the same level of sensory stimulation that a lot of video game players are accustomed to already." The game scores also raise questions about the medium's artistic merits and its potential to build new audiences for classical music. In this podcast, host Naomi Lewin puts these questions to three guests: Austin Wintory, composer of the Grammy-nominated score to the game "Journey" Tanner Smith, a program director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which will be presenting a concert of music from the game “Final Fantasy" for the second time in June. Dan Visconti, a composer and writer who has covered the game music phenomenon for Symphony magazine Weigh in: Do you listen to video game scores? Do you find them as valid as traditional concert music? Leave your thoughts below.

With influenza reaching epidemic proportions in the United States — and the common cold not far behind — opera singers are dropping out of productions at an alarming rate. Of course, cancellations happen for all kinds of reasons. The voice can be a delicate instrument and various personal and professional issues arise. There are also cancellations of a cloudier, more debatable variety. Regardless, with the relative ease of modern air travel comes a more mobile generation of artists, exposed to germ-filled plane cabins and, in the case of foreign-born artists, visa difficulties. On this edition of Conducting Business, host Naomi Lewin talks with three opera professionals about how presenters and opera companies manage cancellations — and the kinds of actions and deals that happen behind the scenes to secure replacement musicians. Perryn Leech, the managing director of the Houston Grand Opera Bill Palant, a vice president and artist manager at IMG Artists who oversees the careers of many singers. Stephen Gaertner, a baritone who has worked as an understudy at the Metropolitan Opera. He recently stepped in during the middle of a performance to replace an ailing Dwayne Croft in Les Troyens at the Met. Weigh in: have you ever discovered a new singer because of a last-minute substitution? Leave your comments below. A few highlights from the segment: Bill Palant: "I do think that with the ease of transport, not only is it easier to pop people in but it also serves the opposite in that singers are spending more time on airplanes and picking up bugs. Flying at 30,000 feat, you’re getting dried up and showing up a day or two before a performance, and you are risking being sick. I think the ease of travel plays both for and against opera companies and not only singers who are engaged to perform but singers who are engaged to cover." Perryn Leech: "If you or I aren’t feeling 100 percent, we can go into the office and do a 70 percent day and probably no one really notices. If a performer goes on and does a 70 percent day, they have an army of critics out there and an army of audience who say ‘oh I saw her, isn’t she getting worse, isn’t he getting worse?" Stephen Gaertner: "Last season I had four assignments [as an understudy] and all were very interesting and challenging roles. And in neither case was I called to replace my colleague. It was frustrating... But a lot of times when you do go on you might be surprised who you end up on stage with. For instance, I went on stage in Les Troyens, and there I was singing a big duet with Deborah Voigt."

The year 2012 supplied plenty of headline-making moments in classical music. There was the infamous marimba ring tone at the New York Philharmonic, the opera singer with the controversial tattoos, the composer accused of plagiarism, and cellos booted off airplanes. It was a tough year for American orchestras and a good year for entrepreneurship. In this podcast, three highly opinionated critics give us their reviews of 2012: Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post; Steve Smith, a classical music critic for the New York Times and music editor at Time Out New York; and Heidi Waleson, a classical music critic for the Wall Street Journal. Below are excerpts of some of their comments. Surprises Heidi: David Lang's love fail, written for the female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 (right). “It was a beautifully haunting, Medieval-Modern, strange modern take on the Tristan Und Isolde story, which was semi-staged at BAM. It was actually a stunningly beautiful piece.” Anne: “One of my favorite moments was a very local moment...The University of Maryland [orchestra] came out dressed in street clothes with their instruments and began moving around the stage as they played Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun. It was a wonderful example of what could be done with orchestras if they think a little outside the box.” Steve: “The reason I categorized David T. Little’s opera Dog Days as a big surprise is frankly I didn’t know that he had this in him...He was out at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances series with a full evening-length opera based on an apocalyptic story by Judy Budnitz…There were terrifying things about it and absolutely joyous things about it but in the end I thought, here’s a team that has actually moved opera forward.” Listen to the opera on Q2 Music. Trends Heidi: On interesting new operas showing up outside of major producing companies: “I thought, maybe if people from the regular producing opera companies actually see [Dog Days], maybe somebody will get an idea that this is actually the sort of thing that can happen in the opera house.” Anne: “There’s no question that some of the most exciting stuff in opera is going on in smaller spaces – and some of the most innovative thinking." Steve: On entrepreneurship in classical music: “People confronted with a certain stodginess or intractability in major companies are just putting on the shows themselves, or doing the kind of programming they feel ought to exist. I’m thinking about ICE, the International Contemporary Ensemble, whose founder Claire Chase won a MacArthur this year, which was richly deserved.” Disappointments & Low Points Heidi: “It was the Metropolitan Opera Ring – and I’m sure I’ll have a lot of company in that one. It took a lot of hits and for good reason. It was just a very big elaborate backdrop of a set for a not very stimulating concept.” [Right: A scene from Die Walküre (Photo: Ken Howard)] Anne: “The problem with some of the concepts that are applied to operas – and I’m a great defender of innovation in opera direction – but a lot of times you think up this great idea and a lot of times the opera isn’t actually about that there’s only so far you can go with the idea.” Steve: "What perturbed me is you basically still have to go out of town, even if it’s just crossing the river to New Jersey, to hear what’s really happening and what’s really interesting in the operatic sphere period." Anne: On American Orchestras: “While it’s both tragic and deplorable that there have been so many lockouts, strikes, seasons disrupted – the Minnesota Orchestra, really one of the exciting orchestras in the country is still not playing – all of this was foreseeable. The managements seem to be acting as if ‘oh my goodness, all of the sudden we’re having these financial crises.’ All of those difficult moments have come home to roost.” High Points Steve: What many of the year's most exciting productions this year had in common was the producer Beth Morrison, "who is enabling a lot of really exciting work that’s going on right now. Beth Morrison Productions is involved in a lot of these things – in staged concerts, in grassroots opera. She has been a real bolt of vitality and innovation that has been much needed and is having a great impact.” Anne: On the John Cage Centennial: “I’m not a big fan of artist centennials. In classical music they’re rammed down our throats, these anniversaries. But with all of the festivals and activities and concerts, it really allowed a new perspective on Cage...It was a centennial and an anniversary that for me really made a big difference.” Heidi: The Juilliard Historical Performance Program under its new director Robert Mealy (above): "You just don't get a big orchestra of American players playing who can play this in this really stylistically correct and distinct way" (after hearing a concert of excerpts from two Rameau ballets). BONUS TRACK: Predictions for 2013: Weigh in: Give us your reviews of the best and worst of 2012 below.

When the news emerged last week that Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center is to finally go under the knife in 2017, reaction was swift and vocal. "Tear the place down!" wrote more than one commenter on a recent WQXR.org blog post. "The dimensions are all wrong," said another. Some familiar complaints about hall were heard — concerning its acoustics, uncomfortable seats, dated restrooms and even the lack of a pipe organ. Others argued that a facelift should respect the integrity of the 1962 building while using the latest technology or acoustic principals. A concert hall renovation is an exceedingly long, complex and costly project involving numerous constituents — patrons, musicians, staff, boards — and Avery Fisher is home not only to the New York Philharmonic but many other presenters. So just what does Avery Fisher Hall need? How can it become more welcoming to new audiences? And what risks confront Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic as they embark on the process? (Over 80 percent of concert hall renovations experience significant cost overruns.) In this podcast, guest host Jeff Spurgeon puts these and other questions to three experts: Justin Davidson, classical music & architecture critic at New York magazine Carroll Joynes, a senior research fellow at the Cultural Policy Center of the University of Chicago Pete Matthews, editor, of the blog Feast of Music Please share your own thoughts on Avery Fisher Hall's planned renovation below.

Last week was basically a write-off for many of New York City's arts organizations. Superstorm Sandy shut down theaters, knocked out power to downtown clubs and submerged art galleries. For many individuals, it destroyed paintings, musical instruments and recording equipment. Kate Levin, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, said the impact was widespread. "There are organizations that have had pretty severe property damage," she noted. "But almost everyone has had some kind of revenue loss, had to suspend performances or stop services." Efforts are now underway to help art galleries restore and conserve damaged works of art, including an initiative led by the Smithsonian Institution to offer resources and tactical advice. In addition, the the Art Dealers Association of America has assembled an aid program to help flooded New York City galleries, worth about $250,000. Meanwhile, some arts groups are starting the process of raising funds, seeking out loans and Federal assistance. What was Sandy's larger impact on the arts? What can hard-hit cultural organizations do to recover? In this podcast, host Naomi Lewin talks with three guests: Kate Levin, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Pia Catton, an arts columnist at the Wall Street Journal John Strohbeen, president of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, which is based in a warehouse on the Red Hook waterfront Weigh in: What role should the arts play as the region recovers from Superstorm Sandy? If you work in the arts, how where you impacted by the hurricane? Please leave your comments below.

In the old days, opera singers were expected to just "park and bark," as the static style of performing on stage is referred to within the business. But that’s a thing of the past. Singers now not only have look to like their characters, but also bound across raised platforms, fly through the air and undertake graphic fight scenes. With this growing emphasis on HD-quality realism, what physical skills must an opera singer have to make it today? Is opera becoming too dangerous? Recent accidents in major opera houses have put a renewed focus on this question. In this podcast, we examine the question of physical risk-taking in opera with three experts: Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post Dale Girard, the director of stage combat studies at the North Carolina School of the Arts and a working stuntman Laura Lee Everett, the artistic services director at Opera America, a service organization representing opera houses in the US Weigh in: Do you think opera is becoming too dangerous? Or is some physical risk part of a singer's job? Take our poll and leave a comment below. .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "action-opera", "survey_action-opera");   On the physical risks of being an opera singer: Anne Midgette: As soon as you get a lot of hydraulic sets that move you get the risk of people’s legs getting caught in them or sets not being in place or people getting stuck up on top of sets...I don't see exactly what visions it serves to have singers that uncomfortable on opening night of a major work that needs a lot of singing. Dale Girard: [Opera companies] are designing productions that try and compete with the film industry in the expectation of action and movement and storytelling. In that sense, the fights on the operatic stage are becoming more and more dynamic, to match the scope of the music, and the expectations of newer, younger audiences. So that is where some of the challenges are in trying to get singers to actually go through that expectation but still be able to sing at the end of the fight. Laura Lee Everett: Shows are required to have a fight choreographer who comes in and does stage-safe training, so people are more likely to not injure themselves. Some of the onus is on the singers, more so than it was in the past. They’re going to be asked to do things physically and they need to be aware of how to do these so they don’t hurt themselves.

In 1955, Canadian piano prodigy Glenn Gould made a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations that made him world-famous. But Gould became just as famous for his eccentricities – humming along while he played, wearing gloves and overcoat in summer, middle-of-the-night phone calls and quitting the concert circuit at the height of his career. It’s the 80th anniversary of his birth, and Gould continues to provoke fascination, with tribute albums, books, DVDs, an app and even a Glenn Gould conference at the University of Toronto. All this raises bigger questions of Gould’s impact on the music industry – and how artists’ legacies are promoted – or maybe even exploited – after they’re gone. In this podcast we ask what Gould represents to a music business hungry for the larger than life personalities and increasingly changed by the technology that he foreshadowed. We also consider the results of our listener poll on Glenn Gould. Joining us are three guests: Colin Eatock, author of the new book Remembering Glenn Gould. He also writes about music for Toronto's Globe and Mail. Brian Levine, executive director of the Glenn Gould Foundation. David Patrick Stearns, classical music critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a writer for WQXR’s Operavore blog. Weigh in: What do you think is Gould's biggest legacy? What is your favorite Gould recording? Leave your comments below.

Recently, WQXR.org polled listeners on what's needed to help troubled orchestras in several major American cities. Focusing on major symphonies in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St. Paul and San Antonio – all of which face contract disputes and bulging deficits – the responses varied considerably. Some listeners called for for management shakeups; others advocated more innovative programming and concert formats. A few said that orchestras need to take on a greater educational role in order to fill the void left by public school cutbacks. In this segment, we review the poll results and pose some of your comments to three experts: Jesse Rosen, president and chief executive of the League of American Orchestras Drew McManus, an orchestra consultant and blogger at Adaptistration.com Graydon Royce, music critic at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Listen to the show above and tell us what you think of the solutions offered. And please share your reactions in the comments box below.

U.S. airlines are more punctual and less likely to lose your bag than at any time in more than two decades, according to a recent Associated Press analysis of Bureau of Transportation data. Fewer than three suitcases per 1,000 passengers were reported lost, damaged or delayed from January through June, a record low. But a recent spate of stories concerning musical instruments on airplanes suggests that the skies aren't always friendly for musicians.  Paul Katz, a former member of the Cleveland Quartet, recently experienced a particularly dramatic incident involving his 1669 Andrea Guarneri cello and a flight from Calgary to Los Angeles operated by WestJet, which partners with American and Delta, among other carriers. "I was even pre-boarded. I got the royal treatment,” Katz tells host Naomi Lewin in this podcast. Then one of the flight attendants came and told him the airline "had a policy that cellos were not allowed on board and that I’d have to leave. So that started a lot of shenanigans. I begged, I pleaded, I got mad, I got sad, I did everything." Eventually, Katz agreed to let the airline stow the cello in the luggage hold below the wing. “As the plane took off, it was the bumpiest runway you could imagine," Katz continued. "Then we got up in the air and after a few minutes they discontinued beverage service because there was so much turbulence. At this point my imagination started going completely crazy. I was near a breakdown because I thought 'how could I have ever done this?' The stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life was to give them my instrument.” (WestJet countered in a statement that "the seat and its restraint system are designed and rated for a person.") The incident drew widespread attention after Katz wrote about it in an article for the Boston Globe, and it raised new questions of how airlines set their own rules about which musical instruments are allowed on board. Cellos are particularly problematic, not being able to fit in overhead bins and generally requiring their own seat. This comes as the Paris-based International Federation of Musicians (FIM) has launched an online petition with the aim of persuading EU legislators to take action on the issue of musical instruments on planes. The organization, which represents 72 musicians' unions worldwide, is calling for Europe to follow the example of the US, which earlier this year introduced a uniform musical instrument policy for airlines. Still, the "passenger bill of rights" which passed in congress in February is not without loopholes. As Rose Hirschel, the owner of the travel agency Musicians' Travel Services, explained, while the bill is a tremendous advance, “it has a stipulation for each carrier to judge whether each instrument is safe on the aircraft. It will help a lot but it certainly will not be a panacea.” James H. Burnett III is a culture writer for the Boston Globe who recently examined the rules governing carry-on luggage. Considering Katz’s experience, he is not overly optimistic that the rules will become clearer. “Given that ultimately this is a government bureaucracy we’re seeing, which means more red tape wrapped around more red tape. So I don’t see any serious change in the near future." Listen to the full discussion above - which includes tips on boarding the plane more quickly and smoothly - and share your thoughts below. Guests: Paul Katz, a professor of cello and chamber music, New England Conservatory and cellist in the Cleveland Quartet from 1969-1995 Rose Hirschel, owner, Musicians' Travel Services James H. Burnett III, cultural reporter, Boston Globe

The headlines from Europe this summer are as persistent as a bad sunburn: the Dutch government has slashed arts funding by 25 percent, Italy’s La Scala opera house has announced a $9 million shortfall, and Madrid and Barcelona's main opera houses have both implemented cuts in productions and staff. Portugal abolished its ministry of culture altogether. Yes, dire news about arts organizations isn’t just for Americans any more. Throughout much of Europe – most notably in Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain – generous public arts funding is being slashed as governments impose severe austerity measures. What will this mean for classical music? Will more arts organizations turn to private donors and corporations for support? Could there be an upside, as groups are forced to be more self-sufficient? In this podcast, three experts join host Naomi Lewin to debate the future: Johannes Grotzky, a journalist and director of the radio for the Bavarian Broadcasting System (Bayerischer Rundfunk) in Munich Norman Lebrecht, author, blogger at Artsjournal.com and a cultural commentator for the BBC Andreas Stadler, the director of the Austrian Cultural Forum here in New York and former president of the New York branch of the European Union National Institutes for Culture.   Weigh in: Would American-style funding best preserve Europe's cultural heritage? Please leave a comment below.

As almost anyone with a Facebook account knows, classical music criticism is going from spectator sport to participatory activity. Some people read the comments on articles or news feeds just as avidly as the actual reviews that precede them. Meanwhile, as newspaper arts coverage is cut back in many cities, blogs and Twitter feeds are a growing force in shaping conversations about the art form. But where does this leave classical music? Is the Internet giving us a more democratic form of commentary – or a more shrill, unfiltered one? This issue recently hit home for violinist Lara St. John, who publicly criticized Facebook commenters who were "piling on" by reposting and joking about a scathing New York Times review of a fellow violinist. In this podcast, St. John explains what she found so distressing. Also joining us is Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post, and Pete Matthews, the editor of the blog Feast of Music. Weigh in: What do you expect of a critic? Does the Internet make music criticism nastier — or simply more exuberant and democratic? Leave your thoughts below. On negative reviews and the online response they generate: Lara St. John: I have no problem with the review itself. That's what music critics do; they review concerts. But once I saw this happen for the third, fourth and finally the twelfth time, I got kind of angry. It was in a mean way that [Facebook friends] were re-posting this review. Pete Matthews: I don't think there's much to be gained from cutting down somebody who's just starting their career and trying to build up their cred -- unless your point is to build your name as a critic and get your name out there. Anne Midgette: I would object to the term cutting down. That propagates this idea that a negative review is about being mean to an artist. For me, the reason to write a negative review is you're trying to uphold standards...But the only way to make the field exciting is to call it sometimes when it's not working. Sometimes that requires a tough review.