July 14, 2005

Although Roger Waters dabbled with operatic themes in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, he’s never written a traditional opera – until now.

Waters will debut “Ca Ira (There Is Hope),” his opera about the French Revolution, September 27 with a double-CD and DVD project from Sony Music.

Though the production includes baritone Bryn Terfel and other classical music veterans, Waters believes “Ca Ira” might spark some skepticism from
the classical music world.

“I’m in some state of trepidation because I feel that I’m putting my head on the chopping block,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

To read more visit pollstar.com.

The String Cheese Incident’s annual music festival at Horning’s Hideout in North Plains, Ore., will take place as usual August 4-7, but it will most likely be relocated next year since neighbors of the rural park have complained about traffic, noise and trespassers.

The SCI show is expected to include performances by Arturo Sandoval, Transglobal Underground, Railroad Earth, New Monsoon and others.

Horning’s Hideout is 158 acres of rolling hills west of Portland and has been the site of the festival for the past five years, drawing approximately 4,500 campers. However, a 34-page ruling from land-use hearing officer Larry Epstein recently denied owners Bob Horning and his mother, Jane Horning, a formal application to stage outdoor concerts on their property, according to The Oregonian.

Epstein said the five-space campground that was usually rented by families and companies for picnics has essentially been turned into a concert venue without formal approval by the county. The concerts could not comply with the county’s land-use zoning laws because the park is not located close enough to freeway off-ramps and is in an “exclusive forest conservation” area.

The situation will not affect this year’s concert, SCI spokeswoman Carrie Lombardi told Pollstar. For the moment, it’s up in the air as to whether the festival will be able to return the Hornings’ property next year.

“Right now, the venue has four or five shows a year. They’re trying to reduce that number to two or none,” Lombardi said. “Whether that happens, I don’t know, but the String Cheese Incident has applied for a mass gathering permit, which we expect to go through and allow this event to continue.”

Other concerts the Hornings reportedly have scheduled include the Northwest Reggae Festival July 22-24 and the Shakedown Campout & Music Festival August 26-27.

Rock act Blind Melon will be the subject of a “Best of” CD and a live DVD this fall via Capitol/EMI Music Catalog Marketing, and will also issue a previously unreleased concert recording to digital download services. The projects will be available Sept. 27, less than a month shy of the 10-year-anniversary of Blind Melon vocalist Shannon Hoon’s death from a drug overdose.

The 19-track “Tones of Home: The Best of Blind Melon” will also be available in a limited-edition with a DVD featuring six music videos and a live performance of the group’s biggest hit, “No Rain.” According to guitarist Roger Stevens, its release was inspired by higher-than-expected sales for the 2002 compilation “Classic Masters.”

“That exceeded [the label’s] expectations of what they thought it was going to do,” he tells Billboard.com. “They sold through [the pressing] — it’s not that widely available anymore, so they’re going to re-do it and make it better.”

After the 1996 documentary “Letters From a Porcupine” earned a Grammy for best long form music video, Blind Melon’s surviving members were anxious to release a follow-up. But the group found it difficult to secure live performances that met their quality standards.

“There’s so much out there, in terms of what’s being passed around by fans,” explains bassist Brad Smith. “If we’re going to put our name on it and get behind a release, it has to sound really good — the playing has to be really good. It’s live, [so] it’s unpredictable. We fished through a lot of stuff that was just like everybody playing different songs basically [laughs].”

Ultimately, the group settled on a Sept. 27, 1995, show at the Metro in Chicago, from which a smattering of tracks can be previewed on “Porcupine.” The DVD will be bolstered with three acoustic songs from a performance on MuchMusic.

A Los Angeles show recorded at the Hollywood Palace three weeks after the Metro gig, and just two weeks before Hoon died, will be the digital-only release. The material was mixed by Smith and Blind Melon guitarist Christopher Thorn at their Los Angeles studio, Wishbone. “This is the only one that’s been broken up onto 24-track tape,” Smith says, “[so it’s of] really good quality.”

Of late, Smith and Thorn have immersed themselves in producing and songwriting. “Anna Nalick — we found her and produced demos, and once she got signed, she came back and we did the record [‘Wreck of the Day’ on Columbia] in our studio,” Smith says. The pair also recorded demos with the group American Minor, helping it get signed to Jive, and produced its self-titled debut for the label, due Aug. 16.

Meanwhile, Stevens is playing in the group the Tender Trio, which features former Spacehog member Royston Langdon. The act is in the midst of a North American tour that hits Los Angeles tomorrow (July 15). “We’ll hopefully make a record this year,” he says.

Source billboard.com.

It was 10 years ago today that researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Germany decided to use “.mp3” as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. The innovative compression technology applied scientific advances of various fields: mathematics, psychology, acoustics, human anatomy, etc. and yielded significant size reduction for storing and digitally distributing audio.

Source: BillBoard