Find out more at MusicalAmerica.com

“CHRIS HADFIELD has cap­tured the world’s heart, judg­ing by the 14m YouTube views of his free-fall ren­di­tion of David Bowie’s “Space Odd­ity”, recorded on the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion (ISS). The Cana­dian astronaut’s clear voice and capa­ble guitar-playing were com­ple­mented by his facil­ity in mov­ing around in the micro­grav­ity of low-earth orbit. But when the man fell to Earth in a neat and safe descent a few days ago, after a five-month stay in orbit, should he have been greeted by copy­right police? Com­man­der Had­field was only 250 miles (400 km) up, so he was still sub­ject to ter­res­trial intellectual-property regimes, which would have applied even if he had flown the “100,000 miles” men­tioned in the song’s lyrics, or mil­lions of kilo­me­tres to Mars. His five-minute video had the poten­tial to cre­ate a tan­gled web of intellectual-property issues. How does copy­right work in space?”

Read more at The Econ­o­mist.

Find out for your­self at BBC News.

“Last year, New­Mu­sicBox, an online mag­a­zine for con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music, pub­lished an essay by the com­poser Amy Beth Kirsten enti­tled “The ‘Woman Com­poser’ Is Dead.” Kirsten acknowl­edged that women have had an ago­niz­ingly dif­fi­cult time gain­ing a cre­ative foothold in clas­si­cal music, whose reper­tory is male-dominated to a sti­fling degree. But, in light of the inter­na­tional renown of such fig­ures as Kaija Saari­aho, Unsuk Chin, and Sofia Gubaidulina, she argued that the “woman com­poser” no longer required spe­cial plead­ing or affir­ma­tive action. “Nei­ther art nor artist is served by segregation—even if it’s well intended,” Kirsten wrote. Rather than going out of their way to boost female com­posers, she sug­gested, pro­gram­mers should embrace only works that speak to them strongly, trust­ing that women will con­tinue to advance.”

Read the full story by Alex Ross in the New Yorker.

“The Greek com­poser trained as an archi­tect, and cre­ated works of shat­ter­ing vis­ceral power that still astound today”  Read about his music at The Guardian.  Lis­ten to his music at the UW Music Library.

“New research from Israel sug­gests a sim­ple way to reduce intim­i­dat­ing behav­ior among ado­les­cents.”  Read more at Pacific Stan­dard.

“When Richard Wag­ner began com­pos­ing “The Ring of the Nibelung,” his vision­ary opera cycle, he became dis­sat­is­fied with a par­tic­u­lar musi­cal theme. The solu­tion, he decided, was not to rewrite the pas­sage but to fos­ter the cre­ation of a new instru­ment to per­form it—the Wag­ner tuba.”

Learn more about the Wag­ner Tuba at the Wall Street Journal

http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/solving-the-symphony-crisis.html

http://www.musicalamerica.com/news/newsstory.cfm?archived=0&storyID=29319&categoryID=3