Music Industry News

Music Industry

Baltimore Opera Pursuing Chapter 7, Dissolution

Source: All About Jazz
March 15, 2009

The Baltimore Opera Company's board of trustees has voted to seek Chapter 7 liquidation and sell off the 58-year-old company's assets.

General Manager M. Kevin Wixted says the company didn't have enough money to do more than struggle month to month. He said the company would never get ahead and could never raise enough money to have one season of opera.

The board took the vote on Thursday. Now the company is going to sell its costumes, equipment, warehouse and ...

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Music Industry

Morse Theatre Operators, Owners Strike Deal to Remain Open

Source: All About Jazz
March 15, 2009

The music may keep playing at the Morse Theatre.

An agreement in principle has been struck between the firm that has operated the refurbished Morse since October and the owners of the building.

The two parties fell into a dispute last month over operation of the facility, which opened in October to critical acclaim, after a multimillion-dollar restoration. The theater's operators— Rogers Park Entertainment Ventures Inc.—said last month that the theater might be shuttered.

Instead, 86th Ohio LLC—a corporation based ...

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Music Industry

Defense Rests in Phil Spector Murder Retrial

Source: All About Jazz
March 14, 2009

Phil Spector's defense attorney rested his case Thursday in the music producer's murder retrial involving the shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson.

Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler advised Spector of his right to testify, but he chose not to take the stand in his own defense. Attorney Doron Weinberg concluded with testimony from forensic psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, an expert in memory and witness testimony. Her opinions were presented to cast doubt on the prosecution's star witness, a chauffeur who ...

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Music Industry

Message in a Bottle: Sting's Vineyard to Sell 'Rock Star Wine'

Source: All About Jazz
March 13, 2009

The rock star Sting – whose best known songs include Message in a Bottle – is to produce 30,000 bottles of Chianti a year from his 300-hectare estate in Tuscany.

The singer, 57, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, made the announcement at a public meeting called at Figline Valdarno, south of Florence, to “defend Tuscan agriculture and bio-diversity". “Since January I have been round the world one and a half times," he told the meeting. “When I get back ...

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Music Industry

The Playboy Sells His Other Mansion

Source: Michael Ricci
March 13, 2009

Hugh Hefner's home next to Playboy mansion for sale for $27,995,000 The two-story, 7,300-square-foot English Manor-style home was built in 1929 and bought by the Hefners in 1998.

OK, no more proverbial pressing your nose up against the gates hoping to catch a glimpse of what goes on at the Playboy mansion. Now, you can live right next door and spy much more effectively from the comforts of your own home.

Hugh Hefner and wife Kimberley have listed their personal ...

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Music Industry

ObliqSound Signs Vocalist and Songwriter Somi

Source: All About Jazz
March 12, 2009

ObliqSound is pleased to announce the signing of its newest artist, vocalist and songwriter Somi, whose label debut will release this fall. A finalist in the prestigious John Lennon Songwriting Contest for her single “Ingele" from her critically acclaimed album Red Soil In My Eyes (2007, Harmonia Mundi), Somi will perform at the 2009 SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas next week. She is the second female vocalist signed to seven-year-old independent label ObliqSound. “Somi is an exciting addition to the ...

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Music Industry

Johnny Mercer Project

Source: JamBase
March 12, 2009

LEGENDARY LYRICIST/COMPOSER CELEBRATES 100TH BIRTHDAY

Johnny Mercer The Johnny Mercer Foundation and the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University are presenting the fourth annual Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project on Northwestern's Evanston, IL. campus, June 21 to 27. The no-fee, weeklong workshop led by Tony and Grammy award-winning artists is seeking talented young songwriters or writing teams from all popular music genres to participate.

The legendary Johnny Mercer, master of the American song and award-winning composer of “Come Rain or ...

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Music Industry

Zeitlin in the Journal

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
March 12, 2009

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I write about Denny Zeitlin. The piece is pegged to the simultaneous releases of his new trio CD on the Sunnyside label and a Mosaic box set with nearly all of Zeitlin's Columbia trio recordings. The article begins:

In October 1963, a 25-year-old Johns Hopkins medical student sat at a concert grand piano in the East 30th Street studio of Columbia Records in New York and played a masterpiece of a jazz solo. Denny Zeitlin, ...

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