April 2004 Archives

One thing to clarify (as I prepare a post on what might be the worst press release I've ever seen): Publicists don't do their most important work with press releases. They do it with direct contact -- phone calls to members of the media, lunches with them, e-mail, all building personal relationships that, over time, develop trust. So if a trusted publicist pitches a story, the writer or editor on the receiving end will know the pitch might be worthwhile. The best publicists, in fact, are those who never pitch a story unless they really know the person they're suggesting it to will be interested.

The best ever, in my experience, was Paula Batson, back in the late '80s, when she was in charge of publicity for RCA Records in Los Angeles. I was a pop critic then, and I learned that, on the rare occasions when Paula called me, I should always take her seriously, no matter how unlikely her pitch might have seemed. Maybe you remember a fairly ghastly pop hit by Rick Astley, "Together Forever." Paula once called, and, in her quiet, firm, but unassuming voice, suggested I see Astley's live show. Nothing could have been further from my mind, but she was right -- Astley live was fun, authentic, and musical, nothing like his ghastly hit.

What this means, as I dissect press releases, is this -- that even bad press releases can do the job they're meant to do, by letting me know of an event, and preparing me for the publicist's phone call, where the real pitch is going to come. So I hope I haven't suggested that press releases, by themselves, can kill classical music. They can't, but they're a striking symptom of a wider problem, which is that we don't know how to talk about our art.

I'm sure some people are laughing at the 24-hour prolongation of Beethoven's Ninth, as wonderfully described in a New York Times story linked on ArtsJournal today.

But don't laugh at something you haven't heard. Instead, listen to it, here. Or listen to some of it, since, realistically, most of us don't have 24 hours to spare. Listen through headphones, if you can, and just let the sound flow over you. It's a wonderful adventure, almost like (because it microscopically examines something familiar, and does it with immediate physicality) looking inside the cells of your own body. It's both related to Beethoven -- as a friend of mine in the music business says, someone with a terrific ear, "You almost always know where you are in the piece" -- and completely unrelated. Pauses (in Beethoven's original) become uncanny; the sound stops, and then slowly, slowly, slowly rises up again.

Over the years, I've encountered several works that fill sonic space, and make time tangible. (Ben Sisario, who wrote the Times story, smartly invokes the very long Morton Feldman string quartets.) But this one is specially absorbing.

The Boston Philharmonic -- thanks to its amazing conductor, Benjamin Zander -- has almost a cult following. I haven't heard them live, but their CDs suggest a depth of committment, almost a deeper level of truth, than we usually hear.

And they certainly know how to write about music. Here, from their website, is a description of a program they're playing on April 29, May 1, and May 2. I've been complaining about how badly the classical music world talks about its art. This shows a better way:

THE AMBIGUITY OF ADULT LIFE

Of all Mahler's works, it may well be the astonishingly “modern” Seventh Symphony that most fully expresses the mayhem of living in the contemporary world. It lays out the conflicts and contrasts, then offers a kind of alternative refuge—dream-like, entrancing “night music.” In the end, though, it is in this world, not some remote afterlife, that this symphony finds its true victory. It seems to say: “This is life. It's rough—but I am going to look it square in the face, and win.” To conclude the program and this season of Mahler, the other possible outcome is presented: the sublime song “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” Mahler's most ineffable song of leave-taking, of withdrawal from the conflicts of the world into his own exalted domain of Love and Song.

 

Note that this isn't just a description of some music. It's a statement of artistic intent. They're not just describing the symphony; they're saying why they're performing it, and what their performance is meant to say.

If only everybody did that!

From a music review in The New York Times:

The program, part of the Cooper Arts series, offered exactly the kind of cerebral contemporary music that is supposed to be frightening off potential new concertgoers. Yet the audience at the Great Hall was noticeable for the number of enthusiastic young people, shaggy-haired listeners in jeans who responded to the charismatic Alan Feinberg's electrifying performance of Charles Wuorinen's Third Piano Sonata, an uncompromising 12-tone work by one of the brainiest composers around, with shouts of "Whoa!" instead of "Bravo!"

What was going on? This is my take: young people new to classical music have no vested interest in the standard repertory and a natural curiosity for new and intense experiences. Such listeners can often be more open to challenging contemporary works that your typical symphony orchestra subscriber.

In comparison with the slickly commercial music that pervades pop, something like Francesco Guerrero's "Opus 1 Manual" (1976), 25 minutes of arm-blurring, keyboard-sprawling, dissonance-saturated mania, must seem far out and authentic to these young listeners…

"The slickly commerical music that pervades pop." When will classical music people learn that not all pop is "slickly commerical"? And that the younger audience that gets turned on by new classical music listens to pop that's brainy, trenchant, noisy, and dissonant. New classical music, in other words, doesn't come to this crowd as a welcome relief from Britney Spears, an amazed discovery that music doesn't have to be bland and empty. Instead, it comes to them as something closely related to music they already know and like.

Besides, were those "shaggy-haired listeners in jeans" really new to classical music? They sound to me like the normal new music audience in New York, which I've seen at concert after concert after concert. Many of them are trained musicians -- instrumentalists, composers, and composition students. They don't look anything like the mainstream classical music crowd, and fit this reviewer's description perfectly. (Or, anyway, the men do. Weren't there any women at this concert?)

Why this matters: If we want to find a new audience, we have to know who they are. We can't deceive ourselves -- we can't pretend we mean more to them than we really do.

I've gotten lots of e-mail about press releases, most of which -- including one message from the executive director of a notable orchestra -- agrees with me. (Forgive me if you've written, and I haven't answered yet.) Though one major orchestra publicist felt just a bit "offended."

Some people raised an important point, that the materials -- biographies and photos -- that publicists get from artists and their managers aren't any good. That's true (and in fact I've been hearing that complaint for years). I'm going to address it; I've got a ghastly official biography of a top pianist, from the Carnegie Hall program book, which I'll soon dissect.

Publicists, though, might consider interviewing artists whom they work with, to uncover useful information that isn't in the official bios. Though then you run into another problem -- some artists (or is it their managers?) don't want their bios or press releases to be any different from the pointless standard model. They want every distinction, every award, every bit of praise, every important performance mentioned, for fear that people will think they haven't achieved these things! Sad, to the extent that it's still true.

Meanwhile, here's a good press release, brief as it is, from the Carson City [Nevada]Symphony. Notice that it makes a concert sound friendly and interesting, and even includes an evocative description of a new work:

CARSON CITY SYMPHONY PRESENTS
"SYMPHONIC DANCE" CONCERT
WITH INTERNATIONAL TAP STAR,
SAM WEBER, APRIL 24

The Carson City Symphony, conducted by David Bugli will perform on Saturday, April 24, 7:30 p.m., at the Carson City Community Center theater.  The program, "Symphonic Dance," will feature guest soloist Sam Weber in Morton Gould's "Tap Dance Concerto," and the world premiere of Gwyneth Walker's new work, "Symphonic Dances," written in celebration of the Symphony's twentieth season.  The concert also will include the premiere of "Allegro" from "Argentia," a suite for flute and orchestra by Argentinean composer Adriana I. Figueroa Mañas, with soloist Carol Grenier.  Rounding out the program will be several Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms.   An informal preview discussion, with conductor, composer, and soloists, begins at 6:45 p.m. in the Bonanza Room adjacent to the lobby.

Music Director and Conductor David Bugli said, "The Symphony has played several works by Gwyneth Walker, including two commissioned pieces, in the past.  Her new work, 'Symphonic Dances,' is a suite of five dances, which are celebratory and fanciful, an expression of the composer's imagination roaming freely.  Her encounter with wild horses in Nevada inspired one of the movements, 'Dance of the Wild Ponies.'"

Sam Weber is an international performing artist, master teacher, and choreographer.  He studied in New York at the Juilliard School and has performed with several dance companies, including the Joffrey II, San Francisco, and Sacramento Ballets; in musical theater; and in television productions.  Weber, known as "the fastest feet in tap," is a winner of New York's "Bessie" award.  He is the permanent Guest Artist of Sierra Nevada Ballet, and is one of few tap dancers in the world currently performing Gould's "Tap Dance Concerto," a work in the classical concerto tradition, with the tap dancer as soloist.

Some weeks back I commented -- maybe just a little brattily -- on the Fat Matter. Which provoked this, from a very fine professional in the vocal music world:

I actually agree with what you wrote about the "fat issue" though I don't think the Planet Debbie should have been bought out or let go from that production of Ariadne. The friggin' costume could have been modified. That's just fairness and non-discrimination. This was not a new production, after all. The whole thing was avoidable, and I think Covent Garden handled it shamefully--now they're taking a lot of heat for it. Meanwhile, Debbie waited a year and has made herself into a national heroine just at the moment she's releasing a new CD. Such is our world. "Hairspray" comes to opera.....Once again, the core issue gets ignored: Debbie is a dull singer with a good voice but no sense of phrase shape or musical arc. (I actually walked out--no, staggered out of her Ariadne performance because it made so little musical sense to me that I thought I was losing my mind.)  I don't care so much if she looks like "The Moon and I" but I have never been able to stand the way she (doesn't) make music. The first time I heard her she lumbered through "Ocean, thou mighty monster." It was what [critic's name suppressed] would have called, as he always does, "glorious"--i.e., loud, secure, and unvaried. After 90 seconds, I muttered, "Oh shit, this is going to take forever." Ocean in question seemed to be the Dead Sea.

Give this man a blog!

\And I have to say that I agree. I've never found her a compelling singer.

Many reasons for not blogging lately. One of them is an enterprising idea called the Concert Companion, which has gotten lots of intermittent press. The Companion is a handheld device -- a Palm PDA, or a Pocket PC -- that displays program notes cued to music. (They're broadcast to the device via a simple WiFi network, the kind of wireless hookup many of us, me included, have in our homes.)

The Companion been tested at a couple of orchestra concerts, in Aspen and at the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer season at Saratoga; it'll soon be tested twice more with two other major orchestras, though I'll let them announce the news themselves. I'm writing the text for these two tests.

And the reaction, when I tell people that I'm doing this, just fascinates me. Many people think the Companion has to be a terrible mistake. Now, the notes I'm writing are innocent enough. They're mainly aimed at people who haven't gone to many concerts, and simply call attention to what the music's doing at any given time. (Though of course there's room for subtlety -- I can cite the evolution of themes, or structural and textural niceties, as long as these are clearly audible.) But some people fear these notes will stop an audience from listening.

Now, first of all, that's wrong. Focus groups done with people who took part in the first two tests show them saying that they listened more attentively, not less. But why, I wonder, would anybody jump to the conclusion that this wouldn't be true?

I wonder if the reason isn't fear of change. And, more specifically, fear of damaging something precious about classical music, something that's presumed to be under siege.

For what it's worth, I think about it very differently. First, we don't know what the device will do until we try it. Rather than fear the worst about innovations, we should give them a chance, and see what happens. Our speculations -- on either side of these disputes -- could easily be wrong.

Second, who says people listen when concerts are given normally? Who knows what people in the audience are really doing? My mind wanders, and I'm a professional. New concertgoers, who don't know what to listen for, might drift off quite a lot. In any case, some people just sit there reading the program book. They're not listening (or, anyway, not listening very hard). If, instead, they were reading brief descriptions cued to things that happen in the music, wouldn't that be better?

And what about the opera audience, which happily reads supertitles? I'd bet they're paying more attention than they would without the titles. What about serious musical scholars, who sit there reading scores? Now, I -- speaking now as a musician, though not all musicians would agree with me -- think that's one of the worst ways to listen to music. You notice the trees, not the forest. You police the composition (and, above all, the performance), but you don't truly hear it. You notice details, but you miss both the flow of the composition, and the sheer taste and impact of the sound.

But the same people who worry about the Concert Companion respect -- at least in my experience -- people who listen with the score. So isn't that a contradiction? Wouldn't the Concert Companion function, almost, as a score for people who can't read music? With one extra virtue, I think (though of course I might be wrong) -- a few brief words might not straitjacket your attention as strongly as I think a score does. So your mind can still be free to hear.

My wife and I were coming home on the bus from Lincoln Center (we'd been to the movies, for once, at a theater near there, not to a concert). On the bus were people immediately identifiable as a concert/opera crowd, and we overheard one couple saying that whatever they'd come from was the best thing they'd seen in 30 years.

We couldn't restrain our curiosity. What was that? we asked them. Salome at the Met, they answered, and even as we'd asked the question, we'd guessed the response. Nothing else at Lincoln Center has evoked that much excitement this year, from anyone. (We're seeing it this weekend.)

As they told us why they liked it so much, something caught my ear. One reason why the opera was so compelling, they said, was the "discordant" music. It fit the story, they said.

In a way, you might think, that's odd. A piece premiered 99 years ago still sounds discordant!

But that makes perfect sense. A while ago I heard the Mahler Third, with Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and felt almost torn inside -- and fascinated! -- by the way the music stretches (and sometimes almost rips apart) tonality. It struck me then that atonality, for anybody used to it, sounds pretty tame now. It doesn't raise any issues; it can't disturb me.

Tonality, though, is still with us. Today I listened to the second Shostakovich piano concerto; its tonal harmony sounded fresh as a daisy (and -- speaking now of aesthetics, not harmony -- the sass of the first movement seemed wildly up to date). Tonality, in fact, still sounds entirely normal. So anything that pulls and tears at it can still sound unsettling. Or, at least, music written when tonality was under siege reflects that struggle, and still can get to us.

I've written quite a bit about issues of tonal and atonal harmony in my NewMusicBox column. One piece that meant a lot to me was on the meaning of atonality -- atonal music, I've come to think, is very rarified, and not much use for representing the emotions of everyday life. You can read it here.