Local and Industry News

The New York City Council has passed a resolution in support of the Justice For Jazz Artists campaign. The campaign seeks to ensure that jazz musicians performing in clubs in New York City receive fair pay, pension contributions, and a reasonable process for addressing grievances.

South Miami K-8 Center teacher Vivian Gonzalez has been selected as a semifinalist for the Grammy Music Educator Award. Gonzalez, a violinist who soloed with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Florida at age 10, runs the music magnet program at the school and teaches music to third- through fifth-graders.

The Deerfield High School symphony orchestra will become the first American public high school ensemble to travel to Israel when it embarks on a 10-day tour in March 2015. The orchestra is under the direction of Ron Velleuer, and has previously toured Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, and Budapest.

The Coral Springs Middle School Jazz Band has become one of only two Broward County middle schools to earn a trip to the Midwest Music Clinic in Chicago. The band, under the direction of Luis Piccinelli, will travel to Chicago in December to perform at the Clinic.

Miami City Ballet founder Edward Villella has turned to choreographing ice dancing at the urging of former figure skating champion Dick Button. Villella's "Reveries" was performed by the Ice Theatre of New York last year, and his "Back Bay Shuffle," to the Artie Shaw tune, was recently presented at the Chelsea Pier Sky Rink in New York.

recording

The AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund has recently made its annual distribution to participants. The Fund is a 501c(6) not-for-profit organization that was initially formed by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) but is now an independent entity whose purpose is to collect and distribute royalties from various foreign territories and royalties established by government statute under U.S. Copyright Law. Distributions from the Fund's Audiovisual division have increased from last year's $3.2 million to $4 million, and distributions from the Sound Recording division have increased from $9.3 million to almost $14 million this year.

According to the Recording Industry of America, sales of recorded music were down by 4.9 percent for the first half of 2014. digital sales account for about 68 percent of all sales, but the trend is toward more streaming sales. Streaming now accounts for 40 percent of digital sales, up from 31 percent in 2013.

2014 is the first year since the inception of platinum sales in 1976 that no artist's album will be certified as platinum. Sixty individual songs have been certified as platinum this year, reflecting the trend of sales of singles rather than albums. SoundScan notes that 2014 had the fewest overall album sales since they began tracking in 1991.

symphonic

Palm Beach Opera will livestream their Opera @ The Waterfront concert this season. The free concert will take place on December 13, 2014 at the Meyer Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach. Last year's inaugural concert was attended by 2,500 people.

Soprano Birgit Fioravante and bass Dean Peterson have launched Opera Fusion, a startup that plans to offer high-quality but minimally staged opera performances throughout South Florida. The company's first performance was of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle on Halloween at the Lake Worth Playhouse.

Florida Grand Opera will launch Opera in Hialeah this November. The festival will include Spanish-language concerts, Sing a Song, and Random Acts of Opera at Hialeah's Milander Center for Arts and Entertainment. FGO will also present Opera Lab at Hialeah High School.

The Nashville Symphony has reached an agreement on a new four-year contract with musicians. The new contract calls for three percent raises in each of the first two years, and the option for musicians to renegotiate wages in years three and four. The Symphony's ticket sales increased 26 percent last season, and fundraising was up by more than 71 percent.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Write reply

This item is closed, it's not possible to add new comments to it or to vote on it

Comments must be approved before being published.