Music Website News

with KEITH BRAMICH

Finding CD reviews

At Classic CD magazine you can see an interesting way to search through over 4,500 reviews of almost 7,000 CDs published in the magazine between 1995 and 1998. This could be an interesting addition to Gramophone magazine's Gramofile database, which contains 24,000 reviews dating back to 1983. Both resources are free, although you must register to use Gramofile.

Serafino Trio

From the Mallorca area of Spain comes the Serafino Trio, a group seeking concerts worldwide. The trio's cellist and webmaster, David Runnion asks you to visit their new website and to let them know what you think. I think it's a very impressive site - very informative, and with some wonderful pictures, and I'm waiting eagerly for the promised MP3 files and the 'triocam'.

Pierre Monteux

A new site dedicated to the memory of conductor Pierre Monteux has been created - correction: is being created (since the first thing you see are the words 'under construction'). Ira Kraemer (who was a conducting student of Monteux in the USA, and who has built this site) describes the site as containing 'unusual and rare items of interest for your viewing and enjoyment'. A useful section contains two high resolution publicity photos.

Prism Quartet

The Prism Saxophone Quartet, one of America's foremost chamber ensembles, has announced its new website, containing information about its recordings, concerts and repoertoire, and asks us to drop by. I just did, and I've been reading all about the 'William Bolcom Concerto commissioning project', and looking at an amazing range of repertoire, including lots of music by the Quartet's tenor sax player, Matthew Levy.

Amazing Music World

A new online sheet-music publishing business has been launched: Amazing Music World. The system allows you to download and print music immediately, and they have a list of twelve pieces available free, so you can try a download before you buy anything. (You must register before downloading the free music). Besides their sheet music catalogue, they provide software tools such as the 'amazing metronome'.

Bridgewater Hall

In the United Kingdom, Manchester's Bridgewater Hall - home of the Hallé Orchestra and performance base for the Manchester Camerata and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra - has a sexy new website giving all the usual details and listings, including sections on the Marcussen organ and about the architecture of this prize-winning concert hall, which opened in 1996.

Stefan Wolpe

The Stefan Wolpe Society's website has an empty calendar of events for 1999, 2000 and 2001. If you're programming music by Wolpe, please send them details. Other sections of this website are not empty, though, and you'll find plenty of articles, including a biography and a complete catalogue of published scores and recordings.

Singing, Vocals and Songwriting

A new singing, vocals and songwriting page has appeared on André Oostercamp's Composing, authoring, mastering, audio and video site - crmav.com. Besides links to sites, newsgroups and mailing lists, this page has a kind of question and answer guestbook. Visitors complete a form, asking a question which is then published on the page, with an answer from Alfons Verreijt.

URL Minor?

A short NetGuide article by Brian Kennedy entitled Symphony in URL Minor: A Guide to Classical Music Sites is worth a look. If you know your way around the web, you'll probably have seen most of these before, but there may be one or two new to you.