Aisle Be Seeing You

Dame Kiri fishing ...

Brief clip of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa fishing in Norway. Really.

Dame Kiri will, no doubt, leave her fishing pole behind when she comes to Symphony Hall as special guest with Frederica von Stade on October 4.

Frederica von Stade and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - "Being a Diva"

An excerpt from a longer production, this section features an interview and some duet clips with Frederica von Stade and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. The two will open the 2009-2010 Celebrity Series of Boston season on October 4 at Symphony Hall.

Sweet Georgia Brown with tractor

Need a little silly yet charming in your day?

Downloading music found to be better for environment than buying CDs

 

In a not particularly surprising, but helpful, finding, researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford Universities found that:

"... buying an album digitally reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 80 percent relative to a best-case scenario for purchasing a CD."

Read all of The Carbon Case for Downloading Music.

Vienna Choir Boys' European football championship commercial

This commercial is from 2008. The Vienna Choir Boys will visit Boston, probably without footballs, for a holiday program at NEC's Jordan Hall on December 12.

Vienna Choir Boys web site.

The Berlin Philharmonic's new YouTube channel

Along with your CDs and DVDs, the Berlin Philharmonic's new YouTube channel will have to do until the real thing comes along (which, in Boston, will be November 15). Here is the official introductory video/montage/ad thingy.

While I'm on the topic, here is Sir Simon Rattle giving some of his thoughts on classical music and the digital revolution.

Les Paul, 1915-2009

Guitarist and audio recording pioneer Les Paul has died at 94: CNN International obituary.

"How High the Moon" via 26 tracks.

Mr. Paul, was not a Celebrity Series performer, but I couldn't let his passing go without a post.

The American Time Use Survey

The American Time Use Study, conducted by the U.S. Census bureau, measures how we, by various groupings, spent our day on average in 2008. It is a picture not for the faint of heart:

Graphic

NY Times article

American Time Use Survey homepage

Royal Opera House to perform opera with Twitter libretto

This project has an air of inevitability to it, but London's Royal Opera House will perform an opera using Twitter contributions for the libretto. Here is a snippet of the AP story:

"In an effort to get more people involved with opera, which sometimes suffers from an elitist, highbrow reputation, London's world-famous Royal Opera House is turning away — temporarily — from classic talents like Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini and giving the composer's pen to ... just about anybody.

All you need to contribute is a computer or a mobile phone and an account on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site that is open to all."

Read all of the Associated Press story.

Random assortment of contributions to date:

"Nuts, i love hazelnuts." Bang! The bird dropped from the sky, dead, its tiny wings were frozen."

"concerns of a nihilist. I would bring you flowers, but they would die. I would love you, but, why?"

"Still in park. Her, shivering with coffee: I’m so cold- let’s leave Boston. Him: Anywhere! Around the world India, then Egypt!"

"but the distance between us is psychological – not physical or intellectual. And what’s happened toooooo the ginger cat?"

"forget! forget! the natives won’t forget! Lovers, mysterious in the mosquito net!!"

View the line-by-line progress of the libretto.

Make a contribution to the libretto (login required).

Visit the Royal Opera House on Twitter (is that close to Covent Garden?)

Royal Opera House web site

WBCN radio signs off for good

It's true. WBCN, fixture of Boston radio for 41 years (and originally the classically formatted Boston Concert Network) is going away today. Story.