Episodes

  • John Duffus, "Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)

    John Duffus, "Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
    Nov 7 2024
    Today, the Hong Kong Philharmonic is one of the world’s great symphony orchestras. But when John Duffus landed in Hong Kong in 1979 as the Philharmonic’s general manager–its fifth in as many years–he quickly learned just how much work needed to be done to make a Western symphony orchestra work in a majority Chinese city. John Duffus’s memoir Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars (Blacksmith: 2024) charts his life from running the Philharmonic, bringing acts like the Three Tenors and Cats to Asia, and his thoughts on the Hong Kong Cultural Center and the West Kowloon Cultural District. John joins the show today to explain what the general manager of an orchestra actually does, the trickiest problems he had to solve in Hong Kong and China, and his thoughts on whether Hong Kong is truly a “cultural wasteland.” You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Backstage in Hong Kong. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • David Rowell, "The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music" (Melville House, 2024)

    David Rowell, "The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music" (Melville House, 2024)
    Nov 6 2024
    A veteran music journalist argues that the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms is decimating the musical landscape, with dire consequences for the future of our culture ... In The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music (Melville House, 2024), former Washington Post writer and editor David Rowell lays out how commercial and cultural forces have laid waste to the cultural ecosystems that have produced decades of great American music. From the scorched-earth demonetizing of artist revenue accomplished by Spotify and its ilk to the rise of dead artists "touring" via hologram, Rowell examines how a perfect storm of conditions have drained our shared musical landscape of vitality. Combining personal memoir, intimate on-the-ground reporting, industry research, and cultural criticism, Rowell's book is a powerful indictment of a music culture gone awry, driven by conformity and subverted by the ways the internet and media influence what we listen to and how we listen to it. David Rowell grew up in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For nearly 25 years he was an editor at The Washington Post Magazine and has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University. He is currently a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. His previous books include the novel The Train of Small Mercies, and Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreak in Music Making. He lives just outside of Chapel Hill. David Rowell’s website. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025). Bradley on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021), Part 1

    R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021), Part 1
    Nov 4 2024
    R. Murray Schafer recently passed away on August 14th 2021. If you’re someone who works with sound or enjoys sound art or experimental music–or you’ve just thrown around the word “soundscape”–you’ve probably engaged with his intellectual legacy. Schafer was one of Canada’s most influential avant-garde composers. He was also the creator of acoustic ecology, the founder of the World Soundscape Project, and the author of the classic book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. He brought a musician’s ear to the field of ecology and he brought an ecological perspective to music. And he bequeathed us a generative vocabulary for talking about and thinking about sound. This is the first of a two-part series on R. Murray Schafer. Next month, we speak with two of Schafer’s critics–Mitchell Akiyama and Jonathan Sterne. But today, we speak with three of Schafer’s associates to understand the person, his creative works, and his lasting impact on the study of sound: Ellen Waterman, ethnomusicologist, flutist, and Schafer expert Hildegard Westerkamp, soundscape composer and member of the World Soundscape Project Eric Leonardson, sound artist and President of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Creative works heard on today’s show: Listen, a short film on Schafer, directed by David New. Snowforms, R. Murray Schafer The Greatest Show, R. Murray Schafer The Crown Of Ariadne, R. Murray Schafer Wolf Music V: Nocturne, R. Murray Schafer Le Testament, Ezra Pound Loving, R. Murray Schafer Beneath the Forest Floor, Hildegard Westerkamp Miniwanka, R. Murray Schafer Special thanks to Elisabeth Hodges for translation assistance, Alex Blue V for our outtro music, and Craig Eley for his dramatic turn as R. Murray Schafer. Today’s show was produced and edited by Mack Hagood with additional editing by Ravi Krishnaswami. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    37 mins
  • Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)

    Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)
    Nov 2 2024
    What happens when the elitist space of 'Western' classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity discourses in classical music institutions? The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Kristina Kolbe addresses these concerns by critically examining how diversity work takes shape in a cultural sector so deeply implicated in hierarchies of class, structures of whiteness, and legacies of imperialism. The book draws from ethnographic and interview data to analyse how diversity discourses become constructed in the organisational and creative processes of music production. From rehearsal and performance practices to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sector's commitment to change, Dr. Kolbe reveals the institutional constraints and precarious labour relations that form around diversity work in classical music and skillfully considers what these processes can tell us about the remaking of class, race, and racism today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    53 mins
  • On Listening In

    On Listening In
    Oct 28 2024
    Today, in honor of World Listening Day, we rebroadcast our story on renowned Australian sound composer, media artist and curator Lawrence English. This episode of gets deep into English’s own listening practices as an artist, specifically a technique he calls Relational Listening. In fact, as you’ll hear, he describes himself not as a sound maker but as a professional listener—that’s how central the act of listening is to his artistic practice. In particular he talks about his reworking of an important work in the fields of musique concrète and field recording, Presque Rien by Luc Ferrari, and the recent premiere of Wave Fields, his own 12-hour durational sound installation for sleepers at Burleigh Heads in Queensland as part of the Bleach* Festival. Lawrence is interested in the nature of listening and the capability of sound to occupy a body. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. He investigates the politics of relation listening and perception, through live performance, field recordings and installation. The show includes extracts from the following tracks: Album: Cruel Optimism: “Hammering a Screw.” Album: Wilderness of Mirrors: “Wilderness of Mirrors,” “Wrapped in Skin.” Album: Songs of the Living: “Trigona Carbonaria Hive Invasion, Brisbane Australia,” “Cormorants Flocking At Dusk Amazon Brazil,” “Various Chiroptera Samford Australia.” Album: Ghost Towns: “Ghost Towns.” Album: Kiri No Oto: “Soft Fuse.” Luc Ferrari: Presque Rien. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    40 mins
  • Landon Palmer, "Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom" (Oxford UP, 2020)

    Landon Palmer, "Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom" (Oxford UP, 2020)
    Oct 26 2024
    During the mid-1950s, when Hollywood found itself struggling to compete within an expanding entertainment media landscape, certain producers and studios saw an opportunity in making films that showcased performances by rock 'n' roll stars. Rock stars eventually found cinema to be a useful space to extend their creative practices, and the motion picture and recording industries increasingly saw cinematic rock stardom as a profitable means to connect multiple media properties. Indeed, casting rock stars for film provided a tool for bridging new relationships across media industries and practices. From Elvis Presley to Madonna, this book examines the casting rock stars in films. In so doing, Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom (Oxford UP, 2020) offers a new perspective on the role of stardom within the convergence of media industries. While hardly the first popular music culture to see its stars making the transition to screen, the timing of rock's emergence and its staying power within popular culture proved fortuitous for a motion picture business searching for its place in the face of continuous technological and cultural change. At the same time, a post-star-system film industry provided a welcoming context for rock stars who have valued authenticity, creative autonomy, and personal expression. This book uses illuminating archival resources to demonstrate how rock stars have often proven themselves to be prominent film workers exploring this terrain of platforms old and new - ideal media laborers whose power lies in the fact that they are rarely recognized as such. Combining star studies with media industry studies, this book proposes an integrated methodology for writing media history that combines the actions of individuals and the practices of industries. It demonstrates how stars have operated as both the gravitational center of media production as well as social actors who have taken on a decisive role in the purposes to which their images are used. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Megan Steigerwald Ille, "Opera for Everyone: The Industry's Experiments with American Opera in the Digital Age" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

    Megan Steigerwald Ille, "Opera for Everyone: The Industry's Experiments with American Opera in the Digital Age" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
    Oct 25 2024
    Every year a relatively small number of canonic operas are produced around the world. Many companies shy away from new works, afraid of alienating a predominantly white, older, wealthy audience who are comfortable with operatic traditions. But opera can also be a site of incredible innovation. Opera for Everyone: The Industry’s Experiments with American Opera in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2024) by Megan Steigerwald Ille examines one of the most disruptive opera companies in the United States. The Los Angeles-based company, The Industry, wants to make opera for everyone by breaking down hierarchies, undermining the expectations of both audiences and performers, and confronting how opera is part of harmful systems of exclusion and marginalization. Rather than simply analyzing some operas and interviewing a handful of key players in the company, Steigerwald Ille spent years observing rehearsals and interviewing many of the participants in the Industry’s productions. Focusing on the period between 2012 and 2020, her ethnographic work yields a thorough and nuanced analysis of the company and its operas and the many ways they challenge the conventions of Western classical music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    51 mins
  • Ashawnta Jackson, "Soul-Folk" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    Ashawnta Jackson, "Soul-Folk" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
    Oct 19 2024
    Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light- the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals- and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours. Soul-Folk (Bloomsbury, 2024) traces the growing imprints of soul-folk and how it made its way from folk tradition to subgenre. Along the way, it explores the musicians, albums, and histories that made the genre what it is. Ashawnta Jackson is a writer based in Brooklyn. She writes mostly about music and culture and has written for Atlas Obscura, Artsy, Crime Reads, Bandcamp, JSTOR Daily, The Whitney Museum, and most recently Vinyl Me Please, where she wrote the liner notes for the reissue of Lee Morgan's Take Twelve. Earlier in her career, she was on the radio at KMHD Jazz Radio in Portland, OR. Ashawnta on Twitter. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025). Bradley on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
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    1 hr and 11 mins