On June 25 the U.K. government’s Department of Education published The Power of Music to Change Lives , a national plan for music education. The 88-page report, delayed for two years by the pandemic, is designed to “level up musical … » Read

A year ago, when the San Diego Opera was preparing a scaled-down season of live performances while Covid was still at large, a significant financial shortfall seemed a likely possibility. The company anticipated a deficit of $759,401 for the … » Read

The arrival of the compact disc nearly killed off record albums, with vinyl pressing machines sold, scrapped and dismantled by major record labels. Four decades later, with resuscitated record album sales producing double-digit annual growth, … » Read

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is hardly the only purveyor of classical music in Los Angeles. The Street Symphony brings professional musicians to clinics, homeless shelters, and jails clustered in and around L.A.’s Skid Row, one of the most … » Read

It was time, opines Lionel Sosa, to “put this great lady out of her misery.” The lady he refers to was the San Antonio Symphony, which last week initiated bankruptcy proceedings, effectively ending its 83-year existence . Sosa is more … » Read

On June 24 an international jury selected the Viennese architectural office Jabornegg & Pálffy, together with Vasko+Partner Ingenieure of the same city, to carry out the planned €335mn ($355mn) renovation and expansion of the … » Read

In 2008, when the Big Noise Project began in Raploch, only one child living in this impoverished cluster of estate houses at the foot of Stirling Castle was learning to play a musical instrument. Today, there are more than 400, and the estate has … » Read

The Orlando Consort, the renowned Medieval and early Renaissance vocal quartet, has announced that the upcoming season—its 35 th —will be its last. “The timing is propitious,” the group said on its webpage, “[and] … » Read

Montreal’s McGill Conservatory of Music will close its doors for good at the end of this summer, a victim of the pandemic. In a statement, the school called its decision "sobering, yet unavoidable…. The trend is as clear as it is … » Read

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO) purchase of a new nine-foot grand piano ($198,000), delayed two years by the pandemic, began at the Steinway showroom on Sixth Ave. in Manhattan, when Yefim Bronfman, a frequent PSO collaborator, … » Read