Marketing strategy used by Vancouver Opera - Take a look!

What does it take to reach younger audiences? Here's Vancouver Opera's solution.   Really??

Doris Duke Performing Artists Initiative

The Doris Duke Performing Artists Initiative is a special initiative of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF), providing pioneering support to individual artists while adding $50 million to the Foundation’s substantial existing commitment to contemporary dance, jazz, theatre and related interdisciplinary work. Over the course of ten years, the three-part Performing Artists Initiative will provide awards to more than 200 artists, as well as a range of dance companies, theaters and presenters. Read more.

Soprano Bella lose court case over earsplitting wedding performance

When lifelong opera fans Virginia and Alan Lynch complained to the Guardian's consumer champions last year about an entertainment company that had ruined their wedding reception, we suggested they go to the small claims court to get back the £2,500 they had paid for the 30-minute performance.

The couple argued that the voices of three Soprano Bella singers were amplified so much some members of the audience had to put their fingers in their ears. This, they said, had ruined their big day at London's exclusive Chandos House in September 2010. It was made worse by the fact that the generous fee had included a £250 supplement to hire one of the company's own sound technicians to help ensure a "perfect performance".

Mrs Lynch told us at the time: "To my dismay … it was deafening. A guest had tried to turn down the volume, only for the sound technician to turn it up again. The singers' voices were very good, but the whole thing was ruined by over-amplification."  Read More Here

New in Con Reference -- From Vodou to Zouk: A Bibliographic Guide

From Vodou to Zouk, the inaugural volume in African Diaspora Press's Black Music Reference Series, is a landmark work documenting vernacular music traditions of the French- and Creole-speaking Caribbean. Its nearly 1300 entries cover all of the French-speaking islands, in particular Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, as well as their overseas enclaves in France, the United States and Canada. Idioms covered range from the liturgical music of Haitian Vodou to folk and popular dance musics such as kalenda, bélé, compas, zouk, ragga, and more.  

CALL #	STATUS
Con Reference	ML3565 .G73 2010

The Unsingable - vocal problems with Susanne Mentzer

There is a stigma in opera singing that is rarely openly spoken about.

When classical singers have vocal problems the cause is assumed to be bad technique or from doing too much. Sometimes this is the case but many times it is something both literally unspeakable and unsingable.

The unspeakable happened to me in April of 1994, the day after Easter to be precise. I had laser surgery on my vocal cords. The journey to that point was a bumpy one.

Singers are independent contractors. We are paid "per performance." If we do not sing we do not get paid. It is that simple. Our livelihood relies on two tiny membranes in our throats that we use all the time for speaking, laughing, crying, and what have you.  Read More

Some Cite Censorship (more on Huang Ruo's ('00) opera)

The composer, cast and crew had already begun rehearsals in the egglike National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing when word came down from Communist Party officials in late August: the Sept. 30 world premiere of Huang Ruo’s “Dr. Sun Yat-sen,” a new opera depicting that revolutionary’s turbulent love life, would be postponed indefinitely.  Read more.

Scan it!! It's free and saves paper!!

Did you know that you can use library copy machines to scan documents to pdf instead of copying them?  Instructions are posted by each copier. It saves paper and IT'S FREE!

Geek Fest! @ Azariah's Tues 10/11 4-5:30

TUESDAY, OCT. 11 @ 4-5:30pm in AZARIAH’S Cafe

Tech geeks and book nerds alike will want to be there!

This is a FREE, LOW-KEY, DROP-IN event! Visit as few or as many tables as you wish and earn tickets for the PRIZE DRAWINGS! Oh, and there will be SNACKS!

• Check out some cool mobile library apps
• Find out what was in the New York Times on the day you were born
• Learn how you can set up and maintain an online catalog of your own book collection
• Hear about the Winter Term course in letterpress printing
• See what Summon is all about — and how it works
• Join the Student Friends of the Library and get a preview of the upcoming book sale
• Meet the friendly Writing Tutors

And much more!

#FakeAMS: Musicology Jokes and Academia’s Online Future

If you haven’t given in to Twitter yet, or just missed the overnight #hashtag sensation that’s rocking the musicologists of Twitter, allow me to catch you up. The annual conference of the American Musicological Society is coming up, and the time has apparently come to lovingly poke fun. In recent years, a bit of an arms race has developed for attention-grabbing titles. With so many papers being presented at the same time, you need to catch the readers’ eyeballs in order to draw them in to seats. Alex Ross picked out some of the top contenders from the upcoming conference, including this gem:   Read more

Top ten AMS paper titles

from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

The annual meeting of the American Musicological Society will take place in San Francisco in November. As with any academic conference, some scholars seem to have worked a tiny bit harder than others to arrest the eyes of those browsing the program. There is, of course, no guarantee that these will be the most interesting papers in the conference. (Hat tip: Will Robin.)  Read more.