NYC’s Dicapo Opera Suspends Performances
Writing on the Dicapo Opera website, Founder and General Director Michael Capasso announced that the company will be on hiatus through midyear because of money problems. Funding has dwindled to one half of what it was before 2008.
During the hiatus, everyone at Dicapo will be concentrating on fundraising. They hope to amass $1.2 million, which would pay the company’s debts and put it in good shape to begin the 2013-2014 season. Dicapo’s educational activities and its popular Opera for Kids program will continue, however.
www.dicapo.com
Venezuela Has El Systema and Paraguay Has the Landfill Harmonic
There is a new kind of orchestra for students who cannot afford musical instruments in Cateura, Paraguay. The Landfill Harmonic is an ensemble in which the players use instruments that have been fashioned from recyclables found in the trash. For example, 19-year-old Juan Manuel Chavez’s cello is actually composed of an oil drum, waste wood, and old kitchen implements, all of which were found in the city landfill.
Now there is a feature-length documentary film called Landfill Harmonic that tells the stories of this remarkable orchestra and its young musicians.
www.landfillharmonicmovie.com/
allthingsd.com/20121213/musical-recycling-paraguayan-youth-turn-landfill-trash-into-an-orchestra-video/
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Receives Challenge Grant
The gift of $1 million from Terri and Jerry Kohl is the largest donation the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra has ever received since its founding by current Music Director Jeffrey Kahane in 1968. This grant has already attracted an additional $1 million with its challenge. The orchestra said the $2 million will establish their Cornerstone Campaign, a major gifts and endowment initiative designed to strengthen the orchestra’s fiscal health.
Jerry Kohl noted that the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra has had to make considerable sacrifices in recent years in order to maintain its fiscal standing. He said that he and his wife chose to make this donation because they don’t want the orchestra ever to have to compromise its artistic programming because of difficult economic times. They want to be sure that it doesn’t have to cut back any more.
www.laco.org/press/424
More Bad News Surfaces from the Recording Industry
The use of services such as Spotify, YouTube, and customized Internet radio stations is growing faster than music downloading, according to the Canadian publication The Globe and Mail. Younger consumers in particular tend to listen to free songs on YouTube.
Current research shows that streaming services will most likely generate more than $1 billion for the global music industry in 2012, which represents an increase of 40 percent over the previous year. Thus, it seems as if streaming could become the fastest-growing sector of the industry. Compact discs and vinyl records still represent 61 percent of music purchases, but their sales dropped 12 percent last year. Since many fans like to buy discs at concert and opera performances so that they can get them signed by the performers, physical forms of music are not likely to completely disappear any time soon.
www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/the-year-in-review-music-is-thriving-but-few-musicians-are/article6494411/
