FEATURE
100 years, 100 moments: How women shaped a century of music
NPR: Miguel Perez
To commemorate Women’s History Month, World Cafe is looking back on a century’s worth of music history. Every week in March, they pinpoint distinct moments of every year from the past 100 years, a quarter century at a time.
RESEARCH AND OPINION
Why Composers Want to Write Operas for Children
New York Times: Jeffrey Arlo Brown
For contemporary classical composers, writing children’s opera can be transfiguring — it’s like casting a spell that lets them be both big and small. Artists with highly experimental aesthetics get to embrace their silly sides and reconnect with the childlike urge to create.
Gabriela Ortiz talks about the ethos that fuels her creativity
ArtsJournal: Aaron Dworkin
In this interview with Arts Engines host Aaron Dworkin, Gabriela Ortiz, Grammy Award-Winning Composer & Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composer’s Chair, shares the ethos that drives her creativity.
Changing of the Guard at Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra
DownBeat: Ted Pankin
JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the equator. But the new hire announcement stood out for a much more consequential reason: Alexa Tarantino, 32, is the first woman to become a permanent orchestra member since it became an official department of Lincoln Center in 1991.
A Jazz Quintet Bubbling With Good Vibes? Meet the Women of Artemis.
New York Times: Alan Scherstuhl
The pianist Renee Rosnes formed the group in 2016, and it has evolved into a five-piece drawn from different nations and generations with a common goal.
High suicide rates show music industry ‘profoundly dangerous’, researchers say
The Guardian: Denis Campbell
Musicians have one of the highest suicide rates in the world because the music business contains so many difficulties such as intense touring, performance anxiety and low earnings, researchers have suggested.
How Do You Preserve a Vanishing Music Scene?
New York Times: Jon Caramanica
Five recent books collect photographs, memories and ephemera from the hardcore band Agnostic Front, the mysterious dance artist Aphex Twin, the rap collective Odd Future and more.
This ‘Swan Lake’ Keeps the Tutus but Sheds the Tights
New York Times: Martha Schabas
Barelegged swans are a bit like baseball players without caps. But as the art form confronts its history of racial homogeneity some traditions are being rethought.
Celebrating Mardi Gras with New Orleans clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens
NPR: Tonya Mosley
Known as “Lady Louie,” Ketchens has been a fixture of the French Quarter for nearly four decades. In this interview, Ketchens talks about her classical training and her career as a street performer, and plays some music.
NATIONAL
SF Symphony pauses Emerging Black Composers project
KRON4: Stephanie Rothman
Federal cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are now threatening art programs in the Bay Area. A memo from the United States Department of Education forced the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to pause their Emerging Black Composers project.
Hollywood’s DEI commitments were slipping even before Trump. Now they’re vanishing fast
MSN: Samanthan Masunaga
Walt Disney Co. is changing some of its internal DEI policies, including swapping out a “diversity and inclusion” performance standard used to calculate executive compensation. Meanwhile Warner Bros. Discovery told employees that its DEI program would now just be called “Inclusion,” and Paramount Global dropped staffing goals related to gender, race, ethnicity and sex.
US arts funding agency sued over Trump order targeting LGBTQ+ projects
The Guardian: Marina Dunbar
The groups, which are seeking funding for projects that support art about or are made by transgender and non-binary people, say they have in effect been unconstitutionally blocked from receiving grants from the agency that was built to promote artistic excellence, despite having received funds for similar projects in the past.
No Name Pops names Christopher Dragon its first music director
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Peter Dobrin
The 34-year-old Australia-born conductor said he had been following the saga of the old Philly Pops’ demise, calling it “heartbreaking,” and is already plotting out ideas for his first full season starting this fall.
Handel and Haydn Society President and CEO David Snead to Retire
Symphony Magazine
Under Snead’s leadership, the 210-year-old period instrument orchestra’s annual revenue grew by 45 percent. Its endowment has expanded from $13 million to more than $34 million, and its ongoing comprehensive fund-raising campaign recently surpassed $50 million.
‘Hamilton’ Cancels Kennedy Center Run Amid Trump Takeover: ‘Some Institutions Should Be Protected From Politics’
Variety: Jack Dunn
“Hamilton” producer Jeffrey Seller released a statement saying the Tony award-winning musical will no longer return to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts amid President Trump’s takeover of the historic venue.
Conductor Marin Alsop on Trump, the Kennedy Center and why art is bipartisan
NPR: Scott Simon
Alsop kept her Kennedy Center performances with the National Symphony Orchestra recently because, she says, art is bigger than this moment and should be celebrated. “Art is about the human spirit … It’s about the human condition,” Alsop says. “Music, art — these are not partisan issues.”
Roy Ayers, jazz-funk pioneer behind Everybody Loves the Sunshine, dies aged 84
The Guardian: Lanre Bakare
A post on the musician’s official Facebook page said: “It is with great sadness that the family of legendary vibraphonist, composer and producer Roy Ayers announce his passing which occurred on March 4th, 2025 in New York City after a long illness.
INTERNATIONAL
‘The space is like an instrument’: How Notre-Dame found its voice after fire muffled it
BBC: Richard Gray
Performers and visitors to the famous gothic cathedral in the midst of the River Seine may find some subtle differences to the way sound bounces around its walls.
‘Reopen these youth clubs’: Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso on nurturing young artistic talent
The Guardian: Lanre Bakare
Drummer and band leader used Brits awards stage to spotlight clubs that help musicians like himself to thrive.
National Ballet Of Canada Nominated For Two Olivier Awards In A Company First
LudwigVan Toronto: Anya Wassenberg
Both nominations revolve around the National Ballet’s tour to London for performances at Sadler’s Wells in October 2024, and the production Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada, featuring Angels’ Atlas by Crystal Pite, Passion by James Kudelka and islands by Emma Portner.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND MUSIC BUSINESS
Concert Ticket Prices Are Soaring, and Busting Gen Z’s Budgets
New York Times: Melissa Rohman
How can 20-somethings afford the high cost of seeing their favorite artists’ live shows? Some save; some go into debt.
Hackers Stole $635,000 in Taylor Swift Ticket Scheme, Queens D.A. Says
New York Times: Amanda Holpuch
Two people stand accused of taking hundreds of tickets from StubHub to redirect them to others who resold them, prosecutors said.
YouTube Music hits 125 million subscribers, adding 2m subs per month on average over the past year
Music Business Worldwide: Murray Stassen
Universal Music Group‘s Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge confirmed on UMG’s Q3 earnings call at the end of October that YouTube Music “has become one of the fastest-growing players in subscription”. Now we know exactly how fast.
IMPALA Confirms — and Fires Back Against — Amazon Music’s ‘Artist-Centric’ Minimum-Play Thresholds
Digital Music News: Dylan Smith
New details are emerging about Amazon Music’s “artist-centric” recalibration, which, like its Spotify counterpart, includes minimum-play thresholds before uploads can begin accruing royalties.
OFF THE BEATEN PATH
Indian rock sensations Bloodywood: ‘What’s more metal than standing up for people you love?’
The Guardian: Emma Wilkes
The trio’s playful mix of heft and traditional instrumentation sent them viral. But they’re also confronting racism and rape culture, and struggling in a Bollywood-dominated music industry.
The soundtrack to King Charles’ life features music from Kylie Minogue
NPR: Manuela López Restrepo
King Charles the III has revealed that he isn’t impervious to a generational earworm like Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” He recently announced a playlist that represents the soundtrack of his life in a collaboration with Apple Music entitled the King’s Room Music Show.
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