59 h. ago ‘I’m a composer. Am I staring extinction in the face?’: classical music and AI

Technology is radically reshaping how we make music. As I dug deeper into this for a radio 3 documentary I began to wonder if creative organisations are right to be so upbeat about AI. Are we riding the wave or will the wave destroy us? The hacker mansion is part startup commune, part luxury crash-pad, part sales floor for the future. They are dotted around Silicon Valley, inhabited by tech founders and futurists. The most opulent I’ve seen is in Hillsborough, one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest enclaves, just south of San Francisco. Inside, marble floors gleam beneath taped-up portraits of tech royalty; in the gardens, gravel is raked into careful Zen spirals and pools shimmer beyond the hedges.It was a sunny June afternoon, and I had come with my producer, Fay Lomas, to record interviews for a BBC Radio 3 documentary about the collision of generative AI and classical music in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando: ‘Some people were supposed to take drugs – and one of them was me’

He was the darling of early-90s alt rock, but success came with the kind of rock’n’roll excess that many of his peers did not survive. Now, having finally quit heroin, he’s back with a new album, a memoir – and no regretsEvan Dando rolls up a sleeve and points to a line of small dents running down his forearm, faint scars from decades of heroin abuse. “It takes so long to get decent track marks,” he says. “You do it for years and you think: I can’t stop yet. Maybe my skin is particularly tough, but you can barely see it now. What was it all for, eh?” He grins and lets out a raspy laugh. “Just kidding!”Dando, one-time indie pin-up and leading light of 90s alt-rock band the Lemonheads, looks in reasonable nick for a man who has taken every drug going from the age of 14. The songwriter behind such exalted tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray and My Drug Buddy, Dando is also known as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a star who seemingly had it all and threw it away. He is warm, goofily chari...

Events

1 week ago TikTok Launches Crescendo to Discover Classical Music Talent

TikTok Launches Crescendo to Discover Classical Music Talent  Variety

Politics

1 week ago ‘People seemed deeply insulted’: how cult 90s band Rachel’s took chamber music out of the classical world

The graceful ensemble prefigured the neo-classical phenomenon and found surprising success in the post-Nirvana alt-rock boom. After the deaths of two members, reissuing their debut has proven bittersweetIf you were an American indie rock act in the mid-90s, life could be strange. After the breakthroughs of Nirvana and Green Day the music industry spent several frenzied years trying to refine the formula for rock success. Labels indiscriminately hoovered up guitar bands in the post-grunge glut.But the newfound interest in alternative music also buoyed some unexpected acts. “There were a lot of people looking to independent labels for the next Nirvana,” says Christian Frederickson, violist with the Louisville chamber music act Rachel’s. “While that obviously wasn’t us, I do think we benefited.” Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Shayne Ward 'very honoured' as he reveals he almost ended up in huge '90s band

The former X Factor winner admitted things could have turned out differently for him in his music career

Events

3 w. ago Blind date: ‘The restaurant staff reacted with glee when told them we were going on somewhere’

Niamh, 27, who works in classical music, meets Harry, 30, a public sector consultantWhat were you hoping for? A pub quiz partner who is witty, well dressed and preferably Irish. It’s where my family is from originally and my mum’s dream is for me to settle down back over there. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Blind date: ‘The restaurant staff reacted with glee when we told them we were going on somewhere’

Niamh, 27, who works in classical music, meets Harry, 30, a public sector consultantWhat were you hoping for? A pub quiz partner who is witty, well dressed and preferably Irish. It’s where my family is from originally and my mum’s dream is for me to settle down back over there. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Take That break silence on Jason Orange return after tour announcement

EXCLUSIVE: The 90s boy band are bringing The Circus Live back to arenas and open up about the potential return of Jason Orange

Politics

3 w. ago Cécile McLorin Salvant: Oh Snap review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

(Nonesuch)From breezy swing to scampering synths, folksy harmonies to stark wails of the soul, Salvant’s crystalline vocals shine across her ingenious experimentsWhen the US-raised French-Haitian singer Cécile McLorin Salvant played Ronnie Scott’s for the first time as a 25-year-old in 2014, the awestruck atmosphere recognised a young multilingual jazz artist of rare gifts – but it was soon apparent that her sublime technical skill as a singer wasn’t the half of it.Salvant had all the jazz tools: coolly hip timing, improv quick-wittedness, the crystalline sonic clarity of her early model, Sarah Vaughan. But she could also conjure up a dream world of her own that listeners would willingly follow her into. Her new album, Oh Snap, is a set of 12 originals and one cover that she created on her own over four years, before adding her band. She experimented for the first time with computer-generated sounds to draw on grungy pop and intimate folk music and expand on the classical-vocal educ...

Politics

3 w. ago Orchestra as invitation: How City of London Sinfonia is rewriting the rules

Orchestra as invitation: How City of London Sinfonia is rewriting the rules  classical-music.uk

Politics

3 w. ago Orchestra as invitation: Why City of London Sinfonia is rewriting the rules

Orchestra as invitation: Why City of London Sinfonia is rewriting the rules  classical-music.uk

Politics

3 w. ago I used to embrace my manic episodes – until a therapist’s advice set me straight, and out on a butterfly hunt | Claire Jackson

The highs were preferable to the depressive lows, but I needed balance, not extremes. Perhaps a return to a childhood passion could help‘Please sit down,” I begged my neighbour, who was leaning across the car gearstick, arm stretched around my headrest. My pleas for him to fasten his seatbelt were futile. Now he was jigging about, gesticulating wildly as he revealed his latest plans.He had told me before about the script he was writing for Gary Oldman. I hadn’t thought too much of it, then – all writers have to be a bit grandiose, I had reasoned, otherwise they wouldn’t achieve anything. But now he was telling me he was inventing a flying machine, from which he would fall – and I quote – “like a sycamore seed”. “You very much won’t,” my partner muttered. “What goes up, must come down.”Claire Jackson is a journalist who writes about classical music, art and animals Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago 'Best ever film' with 'unsettling' plot by Cate Blanchett is on TV tonight

Tár, which was released in 2022, follows the fictional classical music composer Lydia Tár

Culture