Classical Music Blog - Overview

Overview

As blogging has become increasingly popular, the blogrolls for classical music (like those for other genres) have grown increasingly long. "And yes, they are read," wrote music critic Anne Midgette in The New York Times. She reported that an anonymous blogger had posted her wedding picture on their blog, and within 24 hours she had heard about it from both a leading music critic and the marketing director of a major orchestra. The young opera singer Anne-Carolyn Bird uses her blog, The Concert, to chronicle the ups and downs of building a career in her profession, but finds it a useful networking tool as well. A fellow Tanglewood Music Center alumnus, composer Judd Greenstein, tracked her down via her blog, which led to her giving a recital in his concert series. By May 2007, her blog was receiving 250 visitors a day, including opera administrators, critics and fellow singers. Writing in The New Yorker, Alex Ross suggested that the growth of classical music blogs (from dozens when he started his own blog in 2004 to hundreds by 2007) could also be a positive force for maintaining and possibly building the audience for classical music. By giving performers and composers a far wider voice than they ever had before, their blogs put a human face on what Ross termed an "alien culture". He went on to write, "If, as people say, the Internet is a paradise for geeks, it would logically work to the benefit of one of the most opulently geeky art forms in history."