Today in the New York Times -- a business-section piece on TV commercials, yet another threatened institution in the rush of current changes in our culture. Companies now divert some of their TV advertising dollars to cell phones and the Internet; many people record shows with DVRs, and skip the commercials; many people go onnline during commercial breaks, and don't watch the commercials at all. (The Times business section, by the way, is a good place to find out what's changing in our culture. Anybody trying to sell anything has to know how … [Read more...]

I'm happy to announce a performance of a recent piece of mine. This is a piece for cello and piano, called A te; it's an unpredictable and (if I say so myself) rather sly set of variations on "A te o cara," a tenor aria from Bellini's opera "I Puritani." These performances are happening on a series called Second Helpings, produced by the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. Here's the data: April 1, 2 PM: Chelsea Art Museum, 556 West 22nd Street, in New York April 2, 2 PM: Dia:Beacon. This is a museum in Beacon, NY, where … [Read more...]

The following comes from somebody in the business who wants to be anonymous. It was sent as a comment on my book, but it's worthwhile putting it out for everyone to see: Permit me to offer a real-world perspective re your comment that "orchestras should try to find people who really like the modernist works." That's very true, but the cold, hard fact is that, at the present time, it's a small audience. The research I’ve seen says somewhere between 5 – 10% of the current orchestra audience likes modern or contemporary. … [Read more...]

Once more I'll be going out on stage at Severance Hall in Cleveland, to lead short musical discussions during a Cleveland Orchestra concert. This coming Sunday, March 26; the concert starts at 3 PM. … [Read more...]

Small audience, good discussion. I was very struck with the passion that began to come out. This subject -- the future of classical music -- gets people going. It doesn't only stir up peoples' love of music; it stirs up everything they care about in current culture. So one woman got up and passionately said it was "naive" to think that a more informal presentation could attract newcomers to classical music .The music's too complex for that, she said. Someone else declaimed for some time on the theme that popular culture makes everybody … [Read more...]

The third episode of the new version of my book on the future of classical music is now online. Gradually I’m making my way through what will be the book’s first introductory chapter (or maybe simply the introduction), in which I set forth, in general terms, what the book’s going to say. When I’m through with that, I’ll launch the first main section, which will be about the measurable side of the classical music crisis—aging audience, declining ticket sales, and all the rest. The next episode goes online two weeks from … [Read more...]

This coming Thursday, March 23, I’ll be speaking on a small panel about the future of classical music. 6:30 PM, at the Dahesh Museum, 580 Madison Avenue, in New York. One reason this will be fun for me -- I get all of five minutes to state my position. There's nothing like brevity to focus my thoughts; this should be a big help in organizing my ideas for my book. Composer Stefania de Kenessey will moderate, and my co-panelists will be the very lively composer Paul Moravec, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in music, and two people I … [Read more...]

The Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast I thought I was doing — during my visit to Milwaukee, to talk about Brahms for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra— fell through. But I had a lively time on Milwaukee’s classical station, WFMR. I was talking to Steve Murphy, the station’s program director, and Samantha George, the associate concertmaster of the orchestra, on a weekly show they do called MSO Backstage Pass. I couldn’t imagine two better people to talk to. Samantha asked most of the questions, and I loved, really loved, talking … [Read more...]

As I studied various Brahms scores, I was forcefully hit by something I'd thought about before, but never noticed this clearly. You can gush about great composers all you like -- their magical inspiration, their matchless flights of musical creativitiy -- but it's hard to keep doing that when you study details of their orchestration, especially if you've ever orchestrated yourself. Yes, there are times when some orchestration idea strikes like a ray of light out of nowhere (that final chord in Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, the famous flute … [Read more...]

I'll be in Milwaukee this coming weekend, speaking about Brahms for the Milwaukee Symphony, along with my old friend Tim Page. We'll be doing preconcert talks at 10:30 AM on Friday, and at 7 PM on Saturday. That's right, 10:30 AM; the concert's at 11:15.. Tim and I will also be on Wisconsin Public Radio at 9 AM on Friday. And so now you know why I've been blogging recently about Brahms. Just doing my normal overpreparation, which in this case has been a joy, partly because Jan Swafford's Brahms biography is one of the most deeply satisfying … [Read more...]