A Young, Hip, Classical Crowd

"So there I was not long ago at Le Poisson Rouge, a New York club, for a classical-music show, and the guy in the DJ booth was telling all of us to 'talk and clap when you like. And go to the bar if you get bored.'... He's a composer himself, but in his native London he's also a club DJ."

For the full article, please see the Wall Street Journal.

Music therapy 'restores vision'

"Up to 60% of stroke patients develop impaired visual awareness - a condition known as 'visual neglect'... The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study suggests music can help ease the problem."

For the full story, please see the BBC news.

Unknown Shostakovich Opera Discovered

"De larges fragments d'un opéra satirique, Orango, que Chostakovitch composait en 1932, projet dont personne, ou presque, n'avait connaissance, ont été retrouvés à Moscou. Le musicologue anglais Gerard McBurney est en train de constituer une partition exécutable de cette fable."

For the full story, please see Le Devoir.com.

Gyuto Monks: Ancient Practice, Modern Sound

"It was 3 o'clock one morning in 1964, on the eve of the highest holiday in the Tibetan calendar, when renowned religion scholar Huston Smith awoke in a monastery in the Himalayas to experience something transcendent."

For the full story, please see NPR.
Photo by Enzyme00.

New Musical Instruments Battle for $10K in Prizes

"It was like a low-stakes X Prize for music as musicians, inventors and hobbyists competed against each other in the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech for cash prizes of $10,000."

For the full article, please see Wired.

"Hard Times" For Joseph Patelson Music House

"At the Joseph Patelson Music House in New York Tuesday, members of the Philadelphia Orchestra wandered the aisles as they do when they visit Carnegie Hall. But rather than finding the usual feast of scores and sheet music, this time they were left wondering where the stock had gone.
The landmark store’s clerks were overheard speaking in anxious tones about reduced work shifts and fretting about depleted shelves."

For the full article, please see Philly.com.

In tune with the time

"Twenty years ago this month, EMI brought out a box set of the complete Beethoven symphonies that the London Classical Players and I had recorded during the previous couple of years. It startled some critics at first, but was loved by many thousands of listeners around the world. People who had found one or two of the symphonies "slow and boring" discovered that they weren't like that at all - at least, not the way we did them."

For more information, please see the Guardian.

Bring Your Coffee to the Music Library!

The Music Library has revamped its drink policy and invites you to enjoy covered drinks while studying in the Music Library and Listening Center. As long as your drinks are covered you no longer need to check them at the Music Library and Listening Center door. This finals week bring your coffee and come study in the Music Library and Listening Center!

Photo by COCOEN.

Puppetry adds an artistic edge to the debut of Pacific Operaworks

"Launching any enterprise today is a bold gesture, but an opera company devoted to 17th- and early 18th-century opera, as well as contemporary opera, even more so. Yet, visionaries have always done what they want to do when the moment is ripe for them, regardless of the circumstances."

For the full story, please see the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

College music programs booming despite economic bust

"With the economy in free- fall and unemployment taking off, it's no wonder college students these days are clamoring to study ... music?

Yes, music. As in symphony, opera and jazz.

Applications are soaring at music schools across the country, often mirroring the overall rise in college enrollment but in many cases surpassing the interest in other disciplines. Never mind that the chances of landing a paying job in a decent-size symphony orchestra have diminished, with many ensembles going out of business in recent years. Never mind that jazz clubs are becoming an endangered species."

For the full article, please see the Chicago Tribune.

Let RefWorks Ease Your Finals Week Workload!

Are you preparing those final papers for the quarter? Do you need help creating your citations? RefWorks is here to help! With RefWorks you can manage citations for your papers and download into a them into a bibliography using your choice of citation style. Write-N-Cite, a companion tool of RefWorks, will even format and insert footnotes into your paper for you. RefWorks is located on the Music Library's Homepage under the "More Resources" heading. For more information on how to use RefWorks, see the UW Libraries instructional video or the Music Library's RefWorks Help Guide. If you need help, please Ask Us!

A Musical Giant, Obsessed With a Little Tune

"AT the core of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations, an esoteric and astonishing piano piece lasting some 50 minutes, is one of the intriguing mysteries of music history. Why did Beethoven, during the difficult last decade of his life, when he was deaf, chronically ill and often in financial straits, become nearly obsessed with writing an extensive and complex set of variations on a dumpy little waltz, a theme he had first dismissed as a “cobbler’s patch”? That question drives “33 Variations,” the latest play by Moisés Kaufman, which opens on Monday at the Eugene O’Neill Theater."

For the full story, please see the New York Times.

Telarc International will cut 26 jobs and stop producing its own recordings

"Telarc International, the award-winning Beachwood recording company, will cut half its 52 employees and stop producing its own recordings, the outgoing president said Tuesday."

For the full article, please see Cleveland.com.

YouTube and Universal Music Are Said to Discuss Deal

"Google’s YouTube and the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music label, are in advanced discussions over a licensing agreement that could lead to the creation of a premium site for music videos, according a person briefed on the talks."

For the full article, please see the New York Times.

YouTube selects online orchestra

"The YouTube Symphony Orchestra will then perform at Carnegie Hall on 15 April under San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. All of the winners' videos have been posted on YouTube."

For the full article, please see BBC News.

Desktop article delivery from the UW Libraries and beyond

From March through June 2009 the UW Libraries are conducting a pilot project to deliver journal articles from our print collection to your desktop at no charge for current UW students, faculty and staff. Requests may be placed through your UW Libraries Interlibrary Loan account. For more information on this pilot, please see the Interlibrary Loan website for more information.

Photo by Zabowski.

A Beethoven premiere? You bet. In Chicago

"The classical music world doesn't usually look to Chicago as a place to catch world premieres, especially when the composer is none other than Ludwig van Beethoven and the piece was written roughly 216 years ago."

For the full article, please see the Chicago Tribune.