Classical Music for a Modern Age – An ensemble called Treefalls puts on concerts of modern approachable music from a contemporary generation influenced by the music of The Beatles, Miles Davis and more. The contemporary pieces were all written in the last decade or so. The free concerts are put on by the nonprofit organization in the Spartanburg, SC area. The composers are influenced by everything from electronica and jazz to avant-garde and rock, rather than imitating the baroque, classical, romantic of other period composers that most people associate with classical music. A spokesman says they “…purposefully avoid the phrase ‘classical music’ when describing our concerts because it is a loaded term..our music stems from the line of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, etc., but it is no longer of that era. Jas those great composers of the past wrote music for their contemporaries, so do composers today; just as those great composers used the newest instruments and techniques available—inventing new instruments where they needed—so do the composers of today. Popular music influences new music composers, and new music composers influence popular music.
Free Classical & Jazz Music – To celebrate 80 years of opera at Glyndebourne, London’s Telegraph allowed readers to download for free eight tracks of Mozart and Verdi. The Met opera is offering free streaming of over 500 of its unforgettable performances on one’s computer or iPad. The videos are similar to the Met’s Live in HD series of movie theatre transmissions as well as classical telecasts from 1970 onward, There are also hundreds of radio broadcast performances. Go to metoperafamily.org/on demand for details on the seven-day free trial. The Montreal International Jazz Festival celebrates its 35th anniversary June 26-July 6 and is now the world’s largest jazz festival. Two-thirds of the 1000 concerts and activities are free, on nine outdoor stages and ten concert halls in downtown Montreal. The free outdoor concerto program offers concerts for every taste, in every possible genre related to or descended from jazz. Diana Krall, Diana Ross, Keith Jarrett, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Miller, Bobby McFerrin, Tony Bennett and Brad Mehldau are just a few of the stars performing.
OLED TV May Not Be the New Technology – After years of promises, it appeared that the era of OLED TV was finally going to happen, with both Samsung and LG releasing large-screen sets. But the luster of OLED may be dimming and Samsung may be pulling back on this technology. It is capable of the deepest blacks and natural-looking, accurate color, but the problem is that they are very expensive to manufacture, which translates into very high retail prices. Sony has dumped OLED in favor of LED/LCD UHD TVs, and even Samsung is devoting more resources to LED/LCD UHD R&D and production, so let’s see what happens next. And Panasonic has given up completely on plasma, so another top-performing technology is down the drain.
