Life's a Pitch

I missed the 2/3 train at 14th street at an embarrassingly late hour last night because I was taking a faux toe of the Public Enemies poster for this blog. Naturally, I left the house ("  ") today and forgot to bring the cord for my camera, so I will have to post said-picture at a later hour. Incidentally, probably after I get home from the midnight showing of that same movie tonight.

Public Enemies happens to incorporate all my favorite things: The Great Depression, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, and Elliot Goldenthal(!), who wrote the score. Now, I don't expect The Great Depression, Elliot Goldenthal, or even Billy Crudup to be featured on the ads, but Christian Bale? And Marion Cotilard, Academy Award-winner? The posters in New York are JUST Johnny Depp: Johnny Depp's upper body, and the words "Johnny Depp" over the words "Public Enemy", I believe with the July 1 release date somewhere in smaller print. I have nothing more to say on this exact subject, except I think it's an interesting choice: does Johnny Depp really carry that much more star-power than both the rest of the cast and, essentially, everything else about the movie?

And typing of movies, I've been working with a gaggle of very talented publicists on an upcoming film called (UNTITLED), for which my client David Lang wrote the score. There were two screenings of the movie in the city, and when I sent the Grand High Publicist my press list, I included David's name on the lists for both nights. I just figured he'd want to see it on a big screen, and I always like hanging out with David. In response to my list, I was told very nicely, "No problem - but, I don't think it's a good idea for David to attend the press screenings.  It makes journalists uncomfortable when they are sitting in a film with someone affiliated with it."

Fascinating! It never occurred to me that writers wouldn't want to be watching something alongside "someone affiliated with it", because with the exception of those reviewing CDs, the journalists I work with are always in the same room with the artists they are reviewing; the soloists are on stage, and the composers are usually in the audience, often sitting in the same section of the orchestra as the critics. This led me to wonder what, if any, the psychological differences are between film critics, who are watching flat things on screens in dark rooms, and live performing arts critics who are reviewing artists in the flesh. Are performing arts critics, then, kinder? More compassionate? More affected by the reactions of those seated around them? If they hate a piece and then see the composer at intermission, does it soften them?

Thinking about it, I've never read a film review that included audience reactions, and yet music, dance and theater reviews incorporate the audience all the time. I remember a Bernard Holland Times review of the Chiara String Quartet from a few years back that was bascially all about the Quartet's interaction with and effect on the audience:

The excellent young Chiara String Quartet played at Rose Live Music in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Friday, seated in the center of what must once have been a ground-floor railroad flat. To the players right was an outdoor garden of Friday-night drinkers; to their left a lively bar scene opening onto the sidewalk.

The space, curtained off but still the only thoroughfare for waiters and patrons on the move, was perhaps the size of two living rooms. I counted eight tables and about 30 people, most of whom were Friday-night drinkers as well. Clinking glasses and distant good cheer from the bar created a steady background. Maybe this is what chamber music means. At any rate, I was thoroughly enchanted.

Did any film critic note that I blurted out laughing when Remy the Rat was asked if he was a chef in Ratatouille? When I was hysterically sobbing at the end of Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog ((not my finest moment))? When my friends and I sat in the dark theater for a full 20 minutes after Memento ended? No, because I don't think film critics see movies with the rest of us. They get "screeners" in the mail (I keep putting "screeners" in "air quotes" in my e mails to the movie publicists, like allegedly that's what they're called), or they go to screenings with other critics. So that's another interesting difference: performing arts critics are reviewing what I saw or could have potentially seen, in the same atmosphere I saw it, while film critics are seeing movies sans Junior Mints and plebeians.  Maybe that movie a critic ripped apart would have been better with Sno-Caps and strangers laughing. Maybe it would have been worse.

The dichotomy of screenings vs. screeners is interesting to me as well. If a critic can't attend a screening, the studio sends out a screener, so are film critics supposed to review the full-screen experience on their own small screen? (UNTITLED) doesn't have special effects, so the screener/screening issue isn't as relevant here, but I wonder if screeners were sent out for Star Trek? For Transformers 2?  It would seem unfair to have a review of Transformers 2 by a critic who was sitting on his couch.

I wonder when music critics will start reviewing concerts streaming live from their computers. The Met HD broadcasts are already reviewed like "real" productions in non-New York markets, so it's only a matter of time. And if/when live performing arts do start getting reviewed on movie/TV/computer screens, how will the critics' treatment of the art forms change when there's no risk of running into the composer in the bathroom at intermission or the soprano at Fiorello's after the performance?

Sometimes it's hard being Amanda. For example, when I think of lots of cool people to interview for (le) blog, and they say yes, and then I don't have time to write the questions? Yes, at times like that it's hard. But at long last, this week we have Juliana Farha and Chris Gruits from the recently re-launched classical music networking hub Dilettante.


Juliana Farha is the Founder and Managing Director of Dilettante Music, the online classical music hub based in London, England. She worked at CBC Radio and as a magazine editor in Toronto before leaving journalism to work for her family business in the musical instruments sector where she was responsible for two innovative, award-winning products.

After obtaining her Masters Degree in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Juliana became convinced that the Internet and especially social media were ideal tools to support classical music and musicians, and to grow the audience for the genre. Dilettante is the embodiment of those ideas.


An American ex-pat and digital music junky, Chris is an Arts Manager with more than 10 years' experience in the classical music sector. Arriving in London by way of the Seattle Symphony, Carnegie Hall and a MBA at Edinburgh University, Chris establishes relationships with arts organizations, record labels and business partners and manages business development for Dilettante. He lives in South London with his wife, the mezzo-soprano, Meg Bragle.




"Dilettante". Explain the name for us. Also, the tagline: "Lead the Classical Music Uprising". Whom are we to rise up against?

JULIANA: My reasons for naming the site Dilettante are somewhat personal. I grew up at a time when it became a commonly-held view that being a 'generalist' with a liberal arts education was a waste of time. Instead, to become productive in the new economy, we had to undertake increasingly specialised training for increasingly specialised work.

I disagree profoundly with that view, and I believe that teaching people to think critically and encouraging their curiosity remains intrinsically valuable. I accept that this might produce a lot of 'dilettantes' - which I define as people driven by a broad intellectual and emotional engagement. In that sense, there's nothing more serious to me than a dilettante, which is how I would describe myself.

More specifically, the classical music world can be daunting because of its history, the depth of the repertoire and the complexity of the music. A certain snobbishness results from that and can stifle the fledgling efforts of new listeners, and the enthusiasm of non-professional players. [I once scandalised a boyfriend by telling him that Dvorak was one of my favourite composers. He subsequently gave me a Beethoven box set, which I read as an aesthetic 'correction'...and things went downhill from there!]

The name Dilettante is a signal that we are finding ways to invite people into what could be a very big tent if they can find the space to listen

'Lead the Classical Uprising' isn't aimed at a person, or group of people per se. It's a challenge to the common claim that classical music is dying.


Who writes your House Blog? Can any member have a Member Blog?

JULIANA: I write the house blog, and the 'musical uprisings'. (This started by accident when we launched a 'user generated' website which - at the beginning - had no users to generate content.) Yes, any member can have a member blog.


I noticed Nonesuch Records has a Member Blog. Nonesuch also has its own blog, though, off its own website. Similarly, I see my e-friend The Omniscient Mussel has a member blog that links to her personal blog off-site. Do you care if the blog posts are the same on Dilettante and the Nonesuch/Omniscient Mussel blogs, or are you ideally looking for unique content?

JULIANA: The Dilettante site is a hub which brings together music, editorial content, ideas and people. We are not especially concerned about unique content, and we would certainly not prioritise that at the expense of aggregating the most interesting and dynamic classical music content on the web. For instance, The Omniscient Mussel has developed a distinctive voice and a loyal following so creating space for her on Dilettante can only enhance our site.


Back to Nonesuch for a moment: Are you encouraging record labels without their own blogs to have Dilettante Member Blogs? How do you envision record label blogs on Dilettante actually selling records?

CHRIS: We encourage record labels to do lots of things on the site - not just creating or importing their own blogs, but setting up profiles and connecting with the Dilettante community. Nonesuch uses Dilettante in a clever way, by keeping members up-to-date about events and information related to their artists, and not just promoting upcoming releases. All of these elements contribute to selling records through the site. More generally, labels are starting to leverage social media as a vehicle for promoting their recordings and Dilettante is one outlet where they can communicate with a targeted audience in an honest and creative way.
 

Why ask new members to select their "relationship with music", that is, "serious listener", "novice listener", etc.? If I start off as a novice and become more serious because of Dilettante, can I change my profile?

JULIANA: First, you can always change your profile type. The distinctions among musician types is primarily intended for practical reasons - for instance, if someone were looking for a trio in London to play at their wedding, they could use those criteria to hone their search.

As for listener types, this was originally conceived as a way of signaling that 'novice listeners' were welcome on the site. No one has raised it with us before, but if users tell us it's not a useful or meaningful way of describing themselves, we'd certainly change it.
 

I must admit, I'm skeptical of niche social networking sites. I, like Anne Midgette, feel like there's a limit to existing classical music fans, and that the point of online networking is to find people who don't yet know they're fans.  What do you think are the benefits of having a classically-focused site?  Also, as Anne points out in her post, a few classical networking sites have started and not really taken off: she cites Classical Lounge, Artist Nation, Classical Music Now, and Classical Connection. What makes the new version of Dilettante stand out?

JULIANA: First, it's important to clarify that Dilettante is a hub (or portal as they used to say) and the social network was always intended to be an element of what we offer, but certainly not the whole thing. Also, it's not clear to us that Facebook or any other social utility is actually making 'fans' of people who weren't already interested.

Our goal is to enable discovery of music and musicians, and to that end we believe we need to provide listeners with compelling reasons to visit Dilettante, whether it's to find a range of 'expert' opinions of the best performance of Transfigured Night, or to find the best quality recording at the best price. New listeners might want advice on the Beethoven concerti but find it intimidating to walk into a record shop and ask (if there is a record shop at all!). While they're on Dilettante, they might discover an mp3 by a trio that just graduated from Curtis, and become a fan. Ordinary social networks don't offer this sort of 360-degree experience, and it's reflected in our numbers. We're now seeing more than 15,000 unique visitors per month from more than 105 countries.

CHRIS: Even so, we believe that niche social networks are the next step in the evolution of online social networking. The ability to connect in a meaningful way with people who share a particular interest or passion creates an important link and like social networks in real life, online networks are situationally relevant - there's no "one size fits all" for every interest and social group people have.


I see you've used Facebook's "Wall" platform and moniker. Are you at all concerned that classical folks who are not familiar with Facebook will be confused by this? Which brings me to the broader question of, how easy is Dilettante to use if someone is not so tech-savvy?
 
JULIANA: Quite the opposite, actually. On the first version of the site we used 'small talk' to designate a public message (the call to action was 'talk to me'). Many users found this confusing because Facebook's 'wall' had become widely accepted as a standard term for this type of message in the social networking environment.

Regarding less tech-savvy users, we have done usability tests on the new site and addressed areas that we felt were unclear. We plan to do another, more involved set of tests in the next couple of months or so, and this will undoubtedly uncover more questions about whether the user journey is as intuitive as it could be.

There are two important points here, though:
a)    the Members area of the Dilettante site is a social network in the accepted sense, and social networking functionality has become very sophisticated very quickly. For that reason, it would not have made sense to work to the least tech-savvy user. The challenge was (and remains) to make complex functionality as intuitive as possible.
b)    the Dilettante Music and Events areas are designed to be used by anyone, whether or not they're a member of the Dilettante community (or any other social network for that matter). The Music section functions like any other library-style search where you can use keywords to find information about composers and works, read reviews and discussions, and then click through to buy music or tickets. These areas are complex because of how they aggregate information, but they are not difficult to use.


How does Dilettante interact with actual musical activity? Are there structures to help musicians find gigs, or to find other musicians for a string quartet, for example? Is there a place where instruments are bought and sold, or where teachers in a certain area can be found? Or are the networking elements of Dilettante purely social?

CHRIS: Users have many tools to search for and interact with musical activity. First, they can use the events calendar to upload their recitals, masterclasses, performances, hold auditions and anything else they can think of. Members can post discussions on forums, and use their own blogs - which appear on the members' homepage - to find musicians.

Members' mp3s appear in our library on the page that describes the work they're performing and on Dilettante Radio, so musicians can be found through the music itself, and not just through their member profiles. Also, our members search is very precise and specifically designed to find a user by instrument/skill/location etc, not just a specific person. For instance, you can look for an accompanist in Philadelphia, or a teacher in Houston...


You've just announced a Digital Composer-in-Residence competition wherein one of the prizes is a year-long "virtual residency". What does a virtual residency entail?  Is this the first of its kind? Who owns the rights to any work created by that composer during that period?

CHRIS: A virtual residency offers the winning composer a digital space in which to promote their work, facilitate discussions, post podcasts and conduct online master classes, all to an established international audience. We'll be working with the winner to develop a series of activities on the site, which will provide information about what they're working on, the process involved, and their thoughts on new music. To my knowledge it is the first of its kind.

Dilettante is commissioning the winning composer to write a new piece for chamber ensemble over the course of the residency. They will own the rights to that work.


As with the YouTube Symphony, I continue to wonder why great web initiatives need to be validated by "real" live performances. Why will the three composer finalists have their works performed at London's Wilton's Music Hall, and not in a purely online setting?

BOTH: Glad you think it's a great web initiative - we do too! But the Digital Composer-in Residence project was never intended to be a web-only initiative. It reflects the fact that the real world doesn't exist in a parallel universe to the virtual one. For most musicians who are active online, those worlds work together and complement each other - our project does the same. [Besides, we want to have a party and we really love Wilton's!]

Still, a key aspect is that our 'niche' community is built on a common activity and interest, and we are leveraging all aspects of that community to make this project happen, from soliciting entries to attracting judges and performers, and then using our web presence as a viable way for the winning composer to develop their own profile.

In fact, the project progresses work we did last summer on Blank Canvas, our classical club night in East London. The production of Blank Canvas was documented on the site, members were invited to attend at discounted ticket rates, and we produced a high-quality webcast of the event which we posted on Dilettante and YouTube. That way, we supported live performance in a non-traditional venue and we also brought the sites and sounds of London's contemporary classical scene to users elsewhere.
 

Obviously, a network of any kind is dependent on the quality and/or quantity of its members. Is Dilettante looking for a select group of very active members, or is this a the-more-the-merrier situation? And in either case, how are you getting the word out about this site, and what have been the most successful ways you've recruited new members thus far?

CHRIS: Dilettante already has a group of super-users and this is likely to remain the case over time. Nonetheless, we currently attract members and visitors from more than 105 countries, and these run the gamut from orchestras like the London Phil to organisations like the New England Conservatory and small record labels, to individual listeners and musicians.

For us, then, if Dilettante is to continue to function as a hub it needs to grow in all of these directions - so the more-the-merrier!

I'm glad our mom didn't come to The Wiz at City Center with my sister and me tonight. If she had, then from the first moment Ashanti stationed herself downstage center and started to sing, Aliza and I would have had to re-hear all about Melba Moore - "the tiniest little woman you'd ever seen" - being un-miked - "with the biggest voice you've ever heard" - "reaching all the way to the back of the house" - in Purlie.  Ashanti was miked tonight - I know this because we're talking about musical theater in 2009 and because the body mic factors prominently in the (awful) Times photo - but she surely didn't have to be. The woman has a phenomenal voice. She could have stood there and sang whatever she wanted to all night and I would have been happy as anything. (And while we're on the topic, even happier if she had busted out 'I've Got Love'.)

Unfortunately, Ashanti was not allowed to simply "park and bark", as they say, and instead was required to dance and act as well. And that, my friends, was an unmitigated disaster. I think she may have actually been looking at her feet during a few of the big dance numbers. But Ashanti is famous, so there she stands in a role that presumably requires a triple threat: someone who can sing, dance and act equally well.

The other celebrity draw in this production of The Wiz was comedian Orlando Jones, again, unfortunately made to do things on stage other than be funny. The third celebrity of the evening - albeit more of a Broadway celebrity than a celebrity-celebrity - was LaChanze. In the three musicals I've seen her in, she's only really sung (and technically acted, though I've never been especially impressed), and yet there her name is in the program with an "and" credit and a fatter font.

Joshua Henry, James Monroe Iglehart and Christian Dante White - you've heard of them, right? Oh...you haven't? Really? Are you sure? But they can dance! They can sing! They can act! Incredibly well, actually, and in equal distributions. These were the three men who played the Tinman, the Lion and the Scarecrow, respectively, and they should be Matt Damon, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt as far as I'm concerned. Well not precisely, but you see what I mean: the three most all-around excellent cast members were the least famous of the leads.

So as I boogied out of The Wiz tonight in my vintage jumpsuit and platform gold lamé sandals I wondered: does being good at just one thing make it easier to be famous? Of course there are exceptions, but if you think about it, how many celebrity-celebrities are really triple threats? Beyoncé is certainly one. Little Zac Efron is too if we're being lenient in the acting category. Madonna, for sure. Can we still count Michael Jackson (acting c.f. The Wiz and oh yes, the incomparable Captain EO)?  We'll see how the whole crew does in the new Nine movie. But you hear in theater that you have to be a "triple threat" all the time, but does that celebrity-celebrities make? Or even niche celebrities make? Yo-Yo Ma isn't expected to tap, and Savion Glover isn't expected to play the cello. Or to sing. Or to act. Aren't we frankly surprised when celebrities can do anything but the one thing they are famous for doing?

Has anyone tried the New York Phil iPhone app? I'm told it currently has 2.5 out of 5 stars. Reviews, please! As previously mentioned, I can't get an iPhone because I refuse to let go of my Verizon family plan, and my cheapness haunts me daily. All I hope is that the iPhone app is more successful than the Philharmonic's previously secret Facebook page.

Recently, my clients David and Hilary weighed in on Tweeting, etc. during concerts.  Life's a Pitch devotees may also remember the report of the Patti LuPone incident from this winter, during which Santa Evita stopped singing 'Rose's Turn' in Gypsy to yell at an audience member while my friend Maureen and I sat horrified in the left orchestra. Well, according to The New York Times' arts blog (via the Las Vegas Sun) the Rainbow of Argentina has has done it again:

Broadway star Patti LuPone hadn't even finished lowering her arms in the iconic introduction to the song "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina," when she waved to her 10-man orchestra to stop the music. LuPone was already at the lip of the stage, chewing out some doofus in the third row, who was brave and foolish enough to be caught using an electronic gizmo during her show at the Orleans showroom.

"What were you doing?" LuPone demanded of her captive. "I promise not to be mad at you. Just tell me, what were you doing -- videoing? Taking photos? Texting? I really want to know."

...Sitting near me in the capacity crowd was freelance journalist and blogger Steve Friess, who was itching to post about the eruption to his Twitter feed. "I want to text right now so bad it's killing me!" he whispered, laughing. Friess quickly jammed out a blog post and a tweet, apparently while waiting for the valet to retrieve his car. [Las Vegas Sun]

"I don't care what the bourgeoisie say; I'm not in business for them, but to give all my descamisados a magical moment or two!"

Of course the internet is a magical place, and the great irony is that audio from her Gypsy spasm has been listened to 200,000+ times on YouTube.

Update from my friend Jeff, 6/23!! LuPone, from whom I'm still awaiting monetary reimbursement for the Gypsy ticket to the performance she ruined, has responded to the New York Times. It seems she's both read the recent Wall Street Journal article on the topic and doesn't know who Will Swenson is. Yes, photos/texting/Tweeting/eating during performances are a problem, but where are the ushers? The house managers? There are systems in place to police these things that don't ruin performances for the rest of us.