I definitely never thought I’d win a Pulitzer Prize for an opera that features Donald Trump sitting on a toilet while speaking on the phone. | | | | Little boxes: Utah pop band the Aces at the Red Bull Records Virtual Festival, May 1, 2020.
(Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “I definitely never thought I’d win a Pulitzer Prize for an opera that features Donald Trump sitting on a toilet while speaking on the phone.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Oh my god I love this idea for a socially distanced concert by Germany's STUTTGART STATE OPERA and SWR SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, which will take place this Friday and Sunday in a terminal at Stuttgart Airport. It's inspired by performance artist MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ's THE ARTIST IS PRESENT and uses the physical, psychic and aesthetic space that 2020 has handed us. It's site-specific, era-specific and health-code-specific. It's intimate, it's as live as live can be, it will happen in 10-minute increments and I assume many of you can more or less figure out what it is without clicking through to this press release on an airport and airline website. And it's replicable. There are plenty of artists around the world, in every city, in every genre, who could do something similar, or the exact same thing, and there'd be demand for it. The Stuttgart musicians are performing gratis and accepting donations to support freelance musicians. Artists could support themselves the same way if they were so inclined. What else might a 2020 live performance look like? How else might music respond to a moment that asks us to rethink how we work, how we play, how we exist? Fifty years ago, in a very different kind of moment, more man-made, more American, music answered with protests. In Germany this week, music is answering with connection and beauty. Can we create more of that?... The current issue of POLLSTAR is a look at how the live music industry is planning its return, with a well-reported piece by RYAN BORBA on how venues and promoters in various markets are trying to navigate fields full of landmines, and competing editorials promoting speed (from BRIAN MURPHY of live-event tech company BEACHFRONT TECHNOLOGIES) and caution (from JIM DIGBY of EVENT SAFETY ALLIANCE). There's a lot of discussion of "when," and there's an implicit request for an answer with a date attached to it: This fall. Next year. Some specific time. The live business would love nothing more than a time frame it can start planning around. Understandably. But "when" might be the wrong question right now, unless it means "when will there be adequate testing for the virus?" and "when will there be contact tracing?" and "when will we know the pandemic is past its crest and isn't going to crest again"? Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but look outside your window, the world is kind of a broken record right now. And we might not come back, whenever we do, to the same world we left. The better question, for now, might be "what," as in "what will we do differently?" It's a time for creativity—see the first item above—and, if I may take sides, caution... P.S. Ryan Borba's story notes that LIVE NATION has said it could survive a year with no live events. It's hard to believe many other companies are in the same boat... BANDCAMP, which generated an astonishing $4.3 million of revenue in one day, March 24, when it waived its share of all transactions, upped that to an even more astonishing $7.1 million when it waived its share again this past Friday. That's $7.1 million that went entirely to artists and labels—and several indie labels waived their share as well. Bandcamp's doing it again on June 5 and July 3... The recorded music industry did $20.2 billion in worldwide wholesale revenue in 2019, the IFPI revealed Monday. That's an 8.2 percent jump from a year earlier... ANTHONY DAVIS won the PULITZER PRIZE IN MUSIC for his opera THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE. The Pulitzer for criticism went to LA TIMES art critic CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT, with NEW YORK MAGAZINE classical music critic JUSTIN DAVIDSON and SORAYA NADIA MCDONALD, who frequently writes about music for the UNDEFEATED, named as finalists... RIP DAVE GREENFIELD, IDIR, RICHIE COLE and BOB GARCIA. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Pollstar | | "There’s two different mindsets with venue owners, agents or managers,” says Peter Gross of Coalition Entertainment, a talent buyer for venues and festivals in 10 states including Nebraska, Florida and Georgia. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Studio denizens accustomed to providing all-hours access for musicians on creative benders have been wandering hallways and pondering ways to deafen the silence. At home, they watch as artists adapt to a #SafeAtHome world without soundstages, engineers, mixing consoles or echo chambers, joining fans absorbed in acoustically insulting bedroom concerts. | | | |  | Stereogum | | The Kent State massacre led to one of the most widely-regarded protest songs ever written. | | | |  | Level | | "I tricked Kanye into understanding how amazing Jamie would be on 'Gold Digger.' I said, 'Kanye, give me a CD to the Ray Charles part.' He gave me a CD. I said, 'Aww, I got his ass now!'" | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | Illegal streaming activity fell in March -- but people are flocking back to torrent sites, new data suggests. | | | |  | The San Diego Union-Tribune | | The work, which debuted in 2019 at Long Beach Opera, features Donald Trump (or, rather, an opera singer portraying Trump, circa 1989). | | | |  | The Guardian | | Musicians and artists were all enlisted to assert US power in the cold war. A new podcast explores the part the agency played. | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | WME agent Richard Weitz's "Quarantunes" events are more than just the hottest ticket in town; they're a model for celebrity fundraising during COVID-19. | | | |  | Ludwig van Toronto | | We take a look at the long standing traditions of parents and grandparents who pass along their knowledge of the piano to the next generation. | | | |  | Longreads | | It seems like everyone in the world loves “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” So why don’t I? On the isolation of disconnection. | | | |  | Lifehacker | | It's a common issue: You, or someone you know, has splurged on an amazingly fast internet connection-but they still can't get their wired and wireless devices to play nicely within their home or apartment. This invariably leads to the question, "Why am I paying so much for these insane internet speeds I'm not seeing?" | | | |  | Billboard | | It's impossible to think about "Star Wars" without the theme music bursting into your head, and a sense of victory-against-the-odds swelling through your chest. | | | |  | Water & Music | | Geographic barriers no longer matter (but time zones do). | | | | | The Guardian | | Angelique Kidjo, Jeff Mills, Sebastien Tellier and more remember the late drummer: his humility, his brilliance, and his awesome sportswear. | | | |  | CDM Create Digital Music | | We can't dance to these sets in a club at the moment, so let's use this opportunity to really watch what's happening. Techno madman Florian Meindl takes us inside the craft of playing his fully live, all-hardware set. | | | |  | The Stranger | | Ben Gibbard, Ishmael Butler, and Emily Nokes on the future of live music. | | | | | Billboard | | The news of Cady Groves' death at the age of 30 is particularly devastating to anyone who had followed the singer-songwriter since the start of her career at the beginning of the 2010s. | | | |  | The Motley Fool | | The impact of COVID-19 on has been relatively muted. The music-streaming leader did see a decrease in listening hours, as consumers spent less time commuting to work and going to the gym -- prime listening hours -- but active accounts weren't really impacted. | | | |  | American Songwriter | | At age 60, Cherie Currie is still ready to rock. As confident and creative as ever, she now finds herself returning to make music with a power and passion that's as fully fueled as it was some 45 years ago when she joined the pioneering girl group the Runaways, a band that unintentionally helped ignite the #MeToo movement decades before the term was ever conceived. | | | |  | The New Yorker | | Drew Daniel of the electronica duo Matmos called for submissions on Twitter. The result is an ominous fifteen-minute record of the moment. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | "I've got to run back home..." The first new music from the Texas singer-songwriter in "absolutely (if not quite literally) forever," in the words of her label, Drag City. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
