From the official Deutsche Grammophon Web site:

“For this recording, Plácido Domingo has drawn directly on the origins of music - the music of the street. Domingo and the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, one of Europe’s up-and-coming ensembles, have chosen the popular song form of the copla which, along with zarzuela and flamenco, constitutes the three-pronged spear of recent Spanish popular music. The copla, like its close relative, the cuplé, is music written by a composer, but one who draws so extensively on the folk music tradition that his music merges with that tradition and becomes indistinguishable from it. The great composers of Spanish coplas can proclaim with every justification: “I am folk music.”

Read the rest of the liner notes and purchase the album online here.

Junichi Hirokami & Columbus Symphony

(Photo: Columbus Dispatch)

The Columbus Symphony has announced that they plan to shut down on the first of June, and will not perform their annual outdoor summer pops concerts.

In April, the orchestra’s musicians voted to reject management’s final offer for next season’s contract. It included a 40% salary cut for all 53 full-time musicians. In 2005, the players had agreed to $1.3 million worth of reductions in the length of the season and in benefits.

More from The Columbus Dispatch.

Additional background here.

Last month, violinist Philippe Quint got out of a taxicab in Manhattan - and left his $4 million dollar Stradivarius violin behind.

You might think, "This is not going to end happily." But it did. The next morning, Quint had his instrument back, and taxi driver Mohammed Khalil had a $100 tip. The city of Newark awarded Khalil a medal for his honesty.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Quint wanted to do something more for his driver. So, on Tuesday (6 May 2008) he gave a concert for Khalil and about 50 of his cabbie friends, at Newark Liberty International Airport, by the taxicab holding area, outdoors.

The drivers danced.

Read more (New York Times website; registration required)