Results tagged “Hilary Hahn” from Life's a Pitch

To begin, I'm posting this entry from over 10,000 feet. If we're being completely honest with each other, I did start writing it at LaGuardia two days ago, but I finished it and am pressing 'Save' among the clouds. Raise your hand if you love living in 2009! The fact that $12.95 gets me internet in mid-air for my entire flight almost redeems Delta after having me land in Salt Lake City, de-board the plane for 35 minutes, get back on the same plane, sit in the same seat, and continue on to Boston. The one benefit, if we can call it that, of this aerial pit stop was seeing a man wearing two wedding rings on two separate fingers, to whom I gave the I-saw-Season-1-of-Big-Love-on-DVD-buddy stink eye.


I was sitting on the steps at the Bang on a Can Marathon last weekend, and near the end of the (or at least my) evening it occurred to me that I - ever a creature of habit - had plopped down at the exact steps-spot on which Greg Sandow and I sat last year.  Greg was out of town this time around, so I texted him at 8:42pm to tell him about my location. He texted right back, and our exchange continued until 9:35pm, on and off, including but not limited to subjects such as there being a pianist playing a drum (Greg has his own piece with a pianist playing a drum) and whether or not the concert was streaming live on WNYC (at which point I walked over and asked the marathon publicist Christina Jensen about this on his behalf). For a few select moments, I got the sense that the journalist who was sitting with my friend and me was throwing "what does she keep doing on that phone" looks my way. Was I being rude? I figure it's Bang on a Can: everyone's coming and going and texting and standing and talking and snacking. And besides, for those 53 minutes I was spreading valuable information about the marathon and the pieces being performed in real-time; one might call it "the A1A1 virus" marketing. So I clicked away to Greg, confident that I was doing everyone on stage a great justice and decidedly not being disrespectful to anyone or anything.

Reading the reviews of the marathon later, I had a few moments of "wait  - when was that piece?". It seems I had missed a few things whilst clicking. I did stop texting during Julia Wolfe's Thirst because that was the new work I was most looking forward to - wait, looking through my phone now it seems I did send one text to Greg to say it was fantastic - but the rest of that hour was kind of hazy. Whoops.

I ran into publicist and proud Twitterati member Steven Swartz at one point that Sunday. While not a usual participant or advocate in/of Tweeting during concerts, Steven had been recruited by the marathon administration to be part of a Bang on a Can Twitter Team, which ended up generating 9.5 hours of Tweets.  When I ran into him, Steven told me how much he enjoyed David Lang's new piece, For love is strong. "I even stopped Tweeting at the end!" he said, "It was so moving." Steven and others were charged with the task of live-Tweeting as a form of media coverage, but it seems that when he actually wanted to focus on the music, he stopped, watched and listened. My texting and Steven's Tweeting led me to wonder: there has been a lot of writing on this blog and others (see Greg on the topic here and here, Opera Chic here) about Tweeting, texting, taking photos, live-blogging - just about anything a person can do with their fingers - during classical music concerts. "People do these things at rock concerts all the time, and look how much more popular rock music is than classical music" is the overarching argument we make.  But are you really listening if you're thinking about spelling a composer's name correctly in your live-blog entry? When you're fiddling around with the zoom and color swap settings on your camera? And if you're commenting on something that just happened, wouldn't logic dictate that you're missing the thing that's just-happening next?

I thought I was paying attention while texting Greg, and Steven thought he was paying attention while Tweeting. Maybe we were, in a way. It seems, however, that the line between passive and active listeners is thin.  Is one audience member's viral marketing another's I'd-rather-be-elsewhere sentiment?  And who defines the difference between "rude" and "comfortable"?  Would it have made me more comfortable to not have food and wine and chocolate* at my apartment when some friends were coming over to watch the Tonys on Sunday? "Comfortable" in that it would have saved me two subway stops and some money, yes, but why invite people over at all if I was so concerned with the extra errands? I could have just watched the Tonys by myself in my underwear and messy, foodless apartment; Lord knows it's happened before. Additionally, when bloggers (including myself) and presenter marketing departments decide texting/Tweeting/painting their toenails during performances will Save Classical Music, do they think about or ask the artists? Are pieces and performances created and intended for audience members who are also doing something else? I agree that these initiatives can raise awareness about artists in great and organic ways, but has anyone asked the artists what they think?

Fortunately, I happen to know some artists, so I asked: how do you feel about audiences live-Tweeting/texting/blogging/photo-essaying during performances of your music, David Lang, and how do you feel about the above when you're on stage, Hilary Hahn?

David:

People texting or blogging during concerts doesn't bother me.  I think one of the best things about listening to music is that you get to decide how much attention you want to spend on it, while it is going on.  And I guess it is sweet to think that something live may be so exciting that a listener simply has to share it in real time.  But I wonder if the idea of connectedness is changing the the way people experience things now.  It could be that the ability to stay in constant touch may make listeners come to feel that they themselves are not having a valid experience unless they are letting someone know about it. And if the action of music is some kind of mystic direct communication between the person making it and the person receiving it that is a big loss.

Hilary:

I'm all for Tweeting and spreading the word, but not during performances. Between pieces, maybe, if you can stop when the music starts up again; while standing in line for the restroom, definitely; at intermission or on the train afterwards, definitely. The problem is that acoustic performers rely on the audience's attention and focus and can tell when the audience isn't mentally present. Your listening is part of our interpretive process. If you're not really listening, we're not getting the feedback of energy from the hall, and then we might as well be practicing for a bunch of people peering in the window. It's just not as interesting when the cycle of interpretation is broken.

If you are Tweeting, then you might as well check your emails, and then you might as well just turn on the camera and make a recording for YouTube, and then you might as well have a little chat online while you're at it, or play a game of Tetris or Scrabble, or write down ideas for that presentation you have to give next week. In that case, really, the question is, why are you here? Are you enjoying the beauty of the live concert experience, in which moments are fleeting and you have to get caught up in the flow because it will never be the same again?

There's also the distraction factor. The stage is a great vantage point and a prime spot of acoustical convergence. It may be possible for you to do multiple things at once, but the same may not be true of the performers and your fellow audience members. They may not be able to keep themselves from wondering what you're writing instead of just listening and concentrating on their own individual experiences. You may not be able to delve into your own listening experience if you're thinking about what other people should be thinking.

Finally, it seems to me that listeners make things difficult for themselves by observing themselves in the third person and putting their thoughts into a narrative before those thoughts can fully form. I feel that concerts can be a break from outside pressures and influences. For audience members, a concert should be like a vacation on a distant beach with a stack of good books. Comfortable seats. No one trying to call you. No one breaking into your trains of thought. No way to reach the outside world. Just a time to shut off and calm down and treat yourself to something truly wonderful. If we can't sit through a classical concert we pay decent money for, and we can't take two hours out of an evening to shut out everyone else's demands and opinions and thoughts, where does that leave us?

*I'm not going to pretend I don't always have chocolate in my apartment, guests or no guests. I just threw that in there for dramatic effect.

When I was watching the summer Olympics this past August, I got it into my head that a funny segment during the TV coverage would be to show an average person swimming alongside the Olympic swimmers (running against the runners, etc.). Me, for example, in all my former New Canaan High School swim team not-glory, diving into the pool next to these women who were breaking world records. My thought was that after watching the Olympics for days on end we lose track of how incredible these people are; there are no points of comparison, so when the Olympic athletes swim fifty meters of a pool in 22 seconds (it took me longer than that to write this sentence), we don't comprehend what it really means.

Last Saturday night, I made my concert debut in a world premiere performance piece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer in New York City. Go big or go home, I always say. In the interest in full disclosure, composer David Lang, who I work for, and visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra created a piece for 50 "violinists" who had never played the violin before. I was one of them, and I was terrible. I must have asked our teacher Todd Reynolds to show me how to hold the bow four times, in addition to glancing conspicuously at the girl to my left who seemed to know what she was doing. I was the only person in the whole group who Todd Reynolds had to physically correct, and when I asked David how I did later on he said, "You had the best posture of anyone when you weren't playing."

I'm certainly guilty of leaving concerts and complaining about the quality of musicianship. It's obvious to state, but this is hard work - physical work - that takes decades of commitment to perfect. We know this in our heads when we sit at concerts, just as we know it in our heads while watching the Olympic swimmers on TV, but can we really grasp it without experiencing the physicality ourselves? 

How can orchestras give donors, audience members, and perhaps even critics a taste of what it's like to play an instrument? Would that help ticket sales? Change reviews? Increase donations?

Many industry people and classical music lovers have or still do played/play an instrument, but we don't usually play just before the concerts we now go and see. If every person in the audience was required to take a half-hour music lesson from member of the orchestra before that evening's performance, how would that connectedness alter the concert experience? Would the audience appreciate the music more because they understood the instruments better? Some might even appreciate the music more simply because they met an orchestra member personally before the concert. Similarly, when was the last time your orchestra's administration played instruments? Perhaps the orchestra members could give them lessons as well. Make it a team-building day, and see if your local paper would cover it.

I won't be quitting my day job any time soon, even though Hilary Hahn saw the photos and swore I looked like a natural (that's because she didn't see my post-concert Erlkönig impression). That said, after a one-hour group lesson, I feel like I understand what I'm pitching a bit more intimately, and will smile fondly and knowingly at my (big air quotes) fellow violinists during the next concert I go to.


Updated 3/23: Click here for a slideshow of the event.

The venerable Jean Sibelius would have turned 143 years-young on this cold day of 8 December. Birthday wishes - what I've been told is her "best reference to the final movement of the Sibelius concerto" - from Hilary Hahn can be found here.

I can't say for sure, but I'm fairly to moderately certain that all Jean wants for his birthday is for the Violin Concertos of Schoenberg and Sibelius on performed by Hilary Hahn released on Deutsche Grammophon to win two (2) Grammy Awards. Don't quote me on that, though; he could very well want something entirely different.

Now, if his relatives surface and send me family birthday party photos like Larry and Randy Schoenberg did, free S/S discs for all!

The big news from my colleagues in Europe who wake up before me is that both The King's Singers and Hilary Hahn are nominated for GRAMMIES. We have Hahnda Accord in Best Classical Album and Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra), and All The King's Singers' Horses and All the King's Singers' Men in Best Classical Crossover Album. Now let's see...six Singers plus one Hahn times two tickets each minus four managers minus one mother minus wives and children...yeah, there's no way I'm getting to that ceremony.  (((Sigh.)))

Awards are funny. David wins the Pulitzer and suddenly presenters who didn't love his music before are banging (on a can) down his door. When a friend of mine's client didn't win a Grammy last year and he was upset about it, I said, come on, she's unbelievably successful: what would a Grammy really do for her career at this point? Legitimize her as an artist? Hardly. Well, he said, I would have liked to add "Grammy Award-winning artist X...." to the first line of her bio.

I have found that the Grammies are a point of reference for the "outside world" about classical artists, that is, a way to let people who haven't heard of a certain artist know he or she is "that good". Sometimes, I'll meet someone and the conversation will go like this:

What do you do? Classical music PR.

Oh, that's cool. Name someone you work for. Is it? And...Hilary Hahn?

Mmmm...don't know her. She's a violinist. Mmm.... She played for the Pope's 80th birthday. Weird, OK.... She played on 'The Village' soundtrack. I loved 'Sixth Sense'. She won a Grammy. Oh! Cool, great, yeah.

So the Grammies are a cultural touchstone - is this the right use of that phrase? - or, perhaps more accurately, a popular culture mile marker of success. What is that worth, though, monetarily speaking, slash, what does winning a Grammy mean for an artist's overall profile?

Both The Kings Singers and Hilary have won Grammies before, so I already get to slap "Grammy Award-winning..." next to their names in their bios and pop-culture-mile-marker-of-success name-drop "Grammy" to folks outside the industry.** BUT - would Grammy wins this year result in, oh, what's the word - "album sales"? Does a shiny Grammy sticker on an album make the difference (it might), or is there more we can do to channel the win of a mainstream award into recording and concert revenue?


**Not that this means we should "give someone else a chance" (boo, ridiculous) and that all seven Life's a Pitch readers shouldn't vote for my British lads and all-American girl! Also, for changing record industry sales and marketing forever by virtue of "getting it out quickly", Radiohead's In Rainbows is the official Life's a Pitch choice for Album of the Year.


Update, 12/4 like, 10:18 AM - Grammy voters vote on all categories, no matter what their particular genre of choice, correct? So, let's say voters who know classical music are reading this blog/will read the press release I'm about to send out - that's great. But how do I reach voters who are super psyched to get out there and vote for "N.i.*.*.e.r (The Slave and The Master)" in Category 31, Best Rap Solo Performance? They might be sleeper King's Singers fans! You-never-know. And anyone who doesn't think someone voting for "Back to Back Hall of Fame Polkas" in Category 76, you guessed it, Best Polka Album wouldn't vote for the Schoenberg if they had heard it is simply incorrect. I want those votes!

First, a note about the silliness of the classical music industry:

The Gramophone Magazine Awards are being announced across the pond today - perhaps even AS I TYPE THIS BLOG ENTRY - and I'm expected to write a press release about the winners. Fine, fine - just tell me how many people voted, give me the list of the awards, etc.. What am I told at 6 am this morning? "This information is under embargo till today's lunchtime". UNDER EMBARGO!! Am I waiting on the Gramophone Awards winners AND Bush's solution to America's financial crisis? Under embargo. Give me a break. How much of the population woke up this morning - giddy with anticipation - leaped to their feet and Googled GRAMOPHONE ARTIST OF THE YEAR? ~Nobody. Whatever. I know who the Artist of the Year is already. And if I know, you should be able to figure it out.

I have been thinking a lot lately about anticipation. I started seeing Iron Man DVD previews on The TV last week, and was like, September 30th - yes - sign me up. This year, however, I will not tell everyone I know that I want a copy, since a similar announcement last year resulted in not one but four Ratatouille DVDs for Christmas. I was actually giddy with anticipation about (and then devastated by) the Sex and the City movie this summer; I wasted a truly embarrassing amount of time trying to find different versions of the trailer online. ((LAME)). I'm seriously excited about the new Deerhoof CD, since I've been hearing about it and seeing it everywhere since July.

When was the last time you were really excited about a classical CD? Was anyone in this wide world like, "I hear Hilary Hahn is recording a definitive Schoenberg disc...can't wait!" No, they were not. They learned about it when I or the Director of Publicity at Deutsche Grammophon sent out a a press release, maybe two months before the release. No one leaked recording sections, Hilary never performed sections live on the radio, I never offered any blogs exclusive mP3 downloads. I'm not complaining about the response to the disc, but how amazing would it have been to really gear people up for it?

The Metropolitan Opera does an excellent job via their posters around the city getting folks excited about productions; the Satyagraha posters are especially memorable. But why don't they videotape Atomic rehearsals and "leak" them on YouTube? The people who know what Doctor Atomic is about/sounds like are...few. Perhaps if folks saw clips of rehearsals, the "not your grandfather's opera" point would be driven home. I already asked Eric if I could come to a rehearsal. Maybe I'll sneak in a Flip camera.

You also don't see teaser ad campaigns often in classical music. I wasn't going to bring this up, but I thought the "ad" "campaign" (me hanging up flyers at like, Collis Commonground) for our production of Pippin at school was pretty good: basically, we pulled quotes from the musical ("Sometimes the fornicating I'm getting isn't worth the fornicating I'm getting." "Think about your life."), typed them up in big, bold white letters on black backgrounds, printed 8.5/11 sheets and on the very bottom in small type said "Pippin the Musical" and the date (which I have since blocked from my memory). Then, the week of the show we printed flyers in the same font that had the actual performance and venue information. The "Be Kanye" ads (for Absolut Vodka) and the bus ad campaign for the recent Die Hard movie ("Yippee Ki Yay Mo - John 6:27") are real-world examples of this. In retrospect, I should have come up with a banner ad or window card campaign using the "unplayable" tag on the Schoenberg concerto.

Incidentally, the more creative you are with your teasers, the less money you have to spend. The "Be Kanye" ads are made to look cheap, and the Die Hard ads were simple white text on a black background (perhaps they saw Pippin at Dartmouth...).

HIlary Hahn is Gramophone Artist of the Year, by the way. One down, one to go. Was this entry enough pre-buzz for that announcement?

In celebration of Arnold Schoenberg's birthday on Saturday, September 13th, and with the help of the estimable HappyCorp, we're launching a custom-designed YouTube channel for Hilary that will include new video content she will create in response to fan questions about her most recent album - the violin concertos of Schoenberg and Sibelius - as well as a collection of past performance and related videos.

We're not entirely sure how this is going to work out, but she's ready to film answers to your questions, so send them our way! I even set up an exciting new e mail account for the occasion: questions@firstchairpromo.com. Happy Birthday from us to you, Arnie.
 
Twenty fan questions will be selected and posted here at 12:01 am and throughout the day on September 13th. So don't expect any blog posts on the 13th, team.

Please note, this may be the dorkiest pursuit I have ever been involved with (other than, you know, becoming a classical music publicist...and Photoshoping a hat on Arnold Schoenberg), but as Hilary once assured me, "Music dorks rule!"