FEATURE
How Recent Innovations in AI-Assisted Motion-Capture Technology Might Impact Dance Artists
Dance: Steven Vargas
Artificial intelligence has led to advances in performance-capture and animation technology, making it simpler to record, analyze, and digitally re-create a person’s movements.
RESEARCH AND OPINION
As a labor force, artists are ‘invisible.’ A new survey tries to change that
NPR: Elizabeth Blair
Researchers surveyed more than 2,600 artists nationwide from across disciplines and working arrangements. They were asked a range of questions on everything from housing, the hours they work and health benefits to how they make money. Anyone can access the results of the study here.
How Biosensors Could Change Dance Medicine
Dance: Sophie Bress
The potential applications for bio-sensors in dance medicine are diverse and wide-ranging. One example is PointeSense, designed to track a dancer’s foot alignment during pointework through a multi-sensor pointe shoe insert.
Two long-lost organ pieces by JS Bach performed for first time in 300 years
The Guardian: Philip Oltermann
Two long-lost organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed in Germany, roughly 320 years after the composer wrote them as a teenage music teacher. Researchers discovered the two anonymous and undated works in the Royal Library of Belgium in 1992, but it wasn’t until recently that they were able to authenticate Bach as their author.
Mike LeDonne: Diversity Is Not a Dirty Word
Downbeat: Michael Jackson
LeDonne underscored his support for issues of diversity that have been scoffed at by some within the current political climate. “Diversity is not some dirty word,” he stated forcefully to the packed house.
Experience: I played the trumpet for 25 hours straight
The Guardian: Joshua Olusanya
“My first official attempt lasted 24 hours and 46 minutes in February 2024 at the school where I taught. Two witnesses and a music specialist adjudicated the attempt from start to finish, swapping every four hours. I was exhausted, in pain, and eventually I was disqualified. The reason? Taking a sip of water between a song outside the permitted time window. I was gutted: none of my previous hours of playing counted. It felt deeply unfair.”
Coming to the Metropolitan Opera: Sting
The New York Times: Adam Nagourney
After his musical “The Last Ship” failed on Broadway, Sting is bringing a revised version to the Met as the house looks for new sources of revenue.
How to find music you will love without the algorithm
The Verge: Terrence O’Brien
While there is plenty of criticism to be hurled at what music the algorithm serves to us, and how, the real problem with music discovery in the age of algorithmic recommendations is that listening has become a passive activity.
Seth MacFarlane Takes on Lost Sinatra Arrangements
Downbeat: Gary Fukushima
There are 12 never-before-heard arrangements by Nelson Riddle, Billy May and others, all written for Sinatra but never recorded or released. MacFarlane has taken the extraordinary step of animating these scores to aurality, as he steps into the role formerly played by one of the greatest singers of any generation.
ENTREPRENUERSHIP & BUSINESS
From Dudamel to Yuja Wang: full list of 2026 Classical GRAMMY nominees
moto perpetuo
The Recording Academy has announced the classical nominees for the 68th Annual GRAMMY Awards, which will take place on Sunday, 1 February 2026, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The telecast will air live on CBS and stream on Paramount+.
Sony, Warner and Universal sign AI music licensing deals with startup Klay
AP: Kelvin Chan
The world’s biggest music labels have struck AI licensing deals with a little-known startup named Klay Vision, the companies said Thursday, the latest in a series of deals that underlines how the technology is shaking up the music industry ’s business model.
Granderson: AI can perform a song, but can it make art?
Los Angeles Times: LZ Granderson
“The biggest problem is the ability to deceive people or manipulate people because it looks real, it sounds real, it’s pretty disingenuous if you didn’t say it,” Church told me. “I’ve seen stuff from me that is online.… They take my face and they put it on another body.… My mom sent me one and I was like, ‘Mom, that’s not me.’
AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreads
The Guardian: Aisha Down
Three songs generated by artificial intelligence topped music charts this week, reaching the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts. Hits include country songs and a Dutch anti-refugee anthem, both entirely made without human composition.
NATIONAL
Nvidia CEO makes major donation to SF Opera, boosting arts in the AI age
The San Francisco Standard: Emily Shugerman
Huang’s collaboration with the SF Opera started when Maryam Muduroglu, the former head of protocol for San Francisco, mentioned “The Monkey King” world premiere to him in passing. Muduroglu, who worked with Huang on the 2023 APEC Summit in San Francisco, said Huang seemed “really excited that the San Francisco Opera was doing something like this, touching deep into Asian culture.”
The first professional orchestra of Arab and Jewish musicians in Israel is coming to Philly
Philadelphia Inquirer: David Patrick Stearns
Based in Nazareth (known as the “Arab capital of Israel”), the orchestra’s common ground on this tour includes Mozart among other composers whose nationalities, from centuries past, now feel like neutral territory — while still speaking to the present.
The AACM Stands Tall at 60
Downbeat: Howard Mandel
Group celebrations and individual artists’ achievements galore mark this year’s 60th anniversary of the birth of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. The artists-run collective, with approximately 100 distinctly individualistic members across independent chapters based in Chicago and New York, is known in connection with some of the most original, provocative American musical art of the past half-century-plus.
Jack DeJohnette Enters the DownBeat Hall of Fame
Downbeat: Willard Jenkins
With Jack DeJohnette entering the DownBeat Hall of Fame — his musical odyssey having begun at the piano and evolved to a drumming career that is one of the hallmarks in the evolution of that essential set of instruments — one hears reverberations of that age-old adage, “A band is only as good as its drummer.” When considering DeJohnette’s vast discography and musical affiliations, one cannot help but consider that maxim as gospel truth.
Brooklyn Art Song Society to Present ‘Cycles III: Die Schöne Magelone’
OperaWire: Francisco Salazar
The Brahms song cycle features fifteen songs that bring to life Ludwig Tieck’s medieval romance about a young knight from Provence and his beloved Magelone, blending vivid storytelling, lyrical passion, and Brahms’s most dramatic writing for voice and piano.
Protesters Interrupt a Performance of ‘Carmen’ at the Met Opera
NY Times: Adam Nagourney and Marina Harss
A performance of “Carmen” at the Metropolitan Opera was disrupted Friday night by demonstrators, including at least one who made his way onstage during Act 1, setting off confusion and then anger from the audience and bringing the production to a halt, eyewitnesses said.
Obituary: Famed Tenor Gary Lakes Dies at 75
OperaWire: Francisco Salazar
Born on Sept. 26, 1950, in Woodward, Oklahoma, and raised in Irving, Texas, Lakes studied at Southern Methodist University. The tenor went on to make many recordings for which he won three Grammy awards.
Pay-what-you-can to see the Fort Worth Opera
The Guardian: Deborah Ferguson
The Fort Worth Opera will debut a new production this weekend, and it will also launch a new pay-what-you-can program. “You can pay $1 or you can pay the price of a normal ticket because we are a not-for-profit organization,” said Angela Turner Wilson, the opera’s general and artistic director.
INTERNATIONAL
Five Injured in Semperoper Dresden Workplace Accident
OperaWire: Francisco Salazar
According to the Press Office of the Dresden Fire and Rescue Service in consultation with the Semperoper Dresden, “During the midday rehearsal for ‘Turandot’ on the main stage, a workplace accident occurred in which five members of the production team fell from a platform approximately 1.5 metres high, sustaining minor injuries. A total of six individuals were assessed by emergency services; five of the injured received initial treatment on site before being taken to hospitals in Dresden for further care.”
OFF THE BEATEN PATH
36 Hours in Memphis
New York Times: Rick Rojas
Memphis — one of the great Southern cities — rarely gets its due. The city’s struggles, and the darker chapters of its history, are well-documented. But it’s easy, even on a brief trip, to tap into a vibrant and unpretentious city with plenty to be proud of.
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