April 2006 Archives

Here’s a fabulous rant I got during an e-mail exchange with Michael Wittmann, a physicist and college-radio DJ. As Michael says, “we indie kids (I'm 34, grew up with Dead Kennedys and Beethoven in equal amounts during the 80s, etc.) have our own art music.” By which he means bands like Sonic Youth. But he’s also into new classical music, and like many people who know both worlds, knows that there’s a powerful potential (and often actual) crossover between them.

But let him say it:

I am completely convinced that the highbrow, "stuffy shirt" classical music world is missing out on the fact that totally f$%#ing intelligent young listeners, raised on genre hopping eclecticism and soundtracks which push the limit of tonality are able to listen to this music but don't know where to find it. The labels aren't there (though going electronic like eMusic or iTunes is an excellent way to get things out, as are free downloads and viral marketing), the venues aren't there or are too expensive, etc.

I just saw Ethel [a terrific new music string quartet] do a matinee show, with kids in the audience, and they rocked. Songs were difficult at times, but short. They chatted it up between songs. They wore no formal clothing. They played their asses off. They found personal things to say. They were cool in a way that Yo La Tengo is cool. Or Sonic Youth. Did I mention they played their asses off? I get free music from labels, and went and bought their music, anyway.

I've written to you before, on the topic of promoting "indie classical" in the indie rock vein, and I remain convinced that it's the way to go for the future. After Ethel, we need bands Martha, the String Youth, and Horse Hair Whip. The Cold Blue label has small ensembles; they could rent a school bus and get on the road, call it the Cold Blue Traveling Festival. Kyle Gann could become a promoter and send out the MetaMetric Musical Revue. The Philip Glass Ensemble still plays 50 shows a year, and the guys in it still earn their living off those shows. Baseball players stop practicing once the season starts, they just perform. When was the last time a quartet hopped into a van and crossed the country, playing shows to 10 people because that's all who showed up, driving half the night to make it to the next place? I had friends in semi-successful bands (I came from the Chapel Hill NC area, a scene with Superchunk, Flat Duo Jets, Archers of Loaf, and Ben Folds, all of whom were more successful than my friends were) and they worked their asses off and eventually got day jobs. But for a while, they fed a scene. The scene goes on, but classical music has no such scene. Concert halls should open up to the traveling chamber music indie diehards, dammit!

Classical music organizations: Wake up! This is an important part of your artistic future.

When I wrote my post on classical and pop performed together, I should have noted a few places where this really happens, or almost happens. Key among them ought to be the London Sinfonietta, which has done concerts with Warp Records, a pop label, in which Warp artists play on programs where the rest of the music is by serious postwar composers like Xenakis. These concerts have been wildly successful, attracting a large, young audience, who from what I’ve heard like the Xenakis pieces just as much as the pop stuff.

And then there’s Zankel Hall, the newest and hippest of Carnegie Hall’s three performance spaces. The programming there mixes classical and pop (not to mention world music and jazz). Rarely do these musics show up on the same concert, but one idea afloat in all this is to brand Zankel as a place where art music in many styles can be heard, and thus to develop an audience for all of it.

Likewise Nonesuch Records, which long ago (as I’ve said before) stopped being a classical music label, and instead became an art music label, with “art music” defined as anything from Emmylou Harris to John Adams, Steve Reich, and Richard Goode. Although again I don’t think the various styles are likely to appear on the same CD (except maybe when dance DJs remixed Steve Reich pieces). And I’m not sure Nonesuch needs to brand itself, with the idea that the same people might buy all their releases. I think they simply want their releases to sell. (With the exception, quite honorably, of some of the classical CDs—music by Louis Andriessen, for instance, which Nonesuch is determined to record whether anyone buys it or not).

And then there are arts centers, which long ago stopped offering (or at least most of them stopped) all-classical performing arts series. Now there’s likely to be world music and jazz, simply because classical music won’t sell enough tickets to keep these concerts in business.

Finally, here’s an important thing I forgot, a really personal reason why concerts might include music from many different styles—because I’d like to go to those concerts. Not that I always mind sitting through an entire evening of classical music—this is my first and probably my greatest musical love, after all, and it’s also the business I’m in. But who’s going to deny that some classical concerts go on too long? Or, which often amounts to the same thing, that they’re not programmed skillfully enough to justify their length. Sometimes an entire evening of an orchestra is just too much. There might be one piece on a program that—as performed by the orchestra on stage that night—really demands to be heard. And while it’s surely unfair (most of the time) to call the other pieces “filler,” I often can’t help feeling that there wasn’t any compelling need to hear them.

In such cases, why not have Radiohead playing part of the concert instead? (Well, there are many practical obstacles, but still…they could be worked out.) I’d certainly be interested.

The following arrived as a comment on my ongoing online book. But as the anonymous writer said (I’m guessing he’s an orchestra musician), “This is more of a response to your ‘Main Street Sessions’ blog entry.” So I’m taking the liberty of posting it here, instead of on the book site.

When classical musicians play other styles of music they generally play that music in a very pure form whether it is bluegrass, jazz, or whatever. The common thread may be that there is a certain refinement technically but the product is true to its origins. I am sure there are some exceptions. However, the reverse is not true as you mentioned with Aretha Franklin. Ms. Franklin may have not been offered a leading role at the Met but she has performed with orchestras on their pops series singing a few arias along with her own stuff. Her fee is very high and she is very difficult to say the least. Another example of a pops fixture is Doc Severinsen. He plays and conducts many light to not so light pieces in his own style. It ranges from the comical to the embarrassing depending on the night. The big band stuff is usually great. However, on one occasion when he attempted a certain late romantic composer the performance literally drove a member of the orchestra to tears because the performance was so bad.

Who is going to say no to him and others like him. They put bums in the seats. But is this really what we as classical musicians have been entrusted with?

There’s no doubt that orchestra musicians have to play — not to mince words — a lot of crap on their orchestras’ pop concerts. It can also be painful to play orchestra gigs with pop stars, because the orchestral arrangements of the pop stars’ music can be rudimentary.

Who’s going to say no to this? How about the musicians? They need more power in their orchestras. Then they could say, no, sorry, we’re not playing this crap. Or, on the other hand, after examining the situation closely, they could say, “Well, we need to sell these tickets, to pay for our classical concerts. So we’re going to swallow our pride and play the crap.” At least it would be their decision.

As for classical musicians playing other musical styles with pure understanding, well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes they don’t get the style in any way at all. Sometimes they mimic its external sound, without getting the feel right. Sometimes they play the notes with no sense of groove. And sometimes they do everything brilliantly. Which figures — same thing can happen when they play various styles of classical music!

Of course pop stars can be difficult. So can classical stars. Pavarotti, anyone? Jessye Norman? Make your own list.

But how about times when classical musicians play with pop stars, and have a wonderful experience? Some musicians from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s once told me once about playing a concert with Elton John. They thought he was a fabulous musician, and really enjoyed playing with him.

And in any case, I was really talking about something else—classical musicians and pop musicians sharing the same program, but each doing their own thing. There’s no reason the pop musicians can’t be smart and edgy. The London Sinfonietta has done this, pairing members of Radiohead, for instance, with performances of composers like Xenakis.

But the key sentence in this comment, for me, is the last one: “Is this really what we as classical musicians have been entrusted with?” This is where my heart goes out to the person who wrote this. I understand the impatience, not to say pain. Being a classical musician is supposed to mean something. You’re supposed to uphold high artistic standards. And now you’re asked to share your programs with pop?

If the pop is crap, or the orchestra’s role in it is crap, then of course there’s reason to despair. But why shouldn’t the pop be smart, artistic pop?

For a long time, I’ve thought that the classical music world needs to embrace other kinds of music. Why? At first the idea might not make sense to some people. We don’t ask reggae stars to acknowledge country music; we’d be surprised if Wynton Marsalis went on TV with Bjork. So why should classical musicians (and classical music institutions) reach out to any other musical style?

Well, there are many reasons. (And as I’m writing this, I’m playing the hot new Bruce Springsteen album. He sings Pete Seeger songs live, with a large crew of musicians joining him, completely unrehearsed. Hot!) The classical music world is trying to figure out its relationship to the rest of the world. The rest of the world listens to pop (and jazz, and country, and hiphop, and dance music, and world music, and Latin music, and lots more). We live, as far as they’re all concerned, in a closed little box. We need to show them we’re human, too, and that we live in the same world they do. And that many of us listen to their music, which—because we live in the same world—is our music, too.

There’s more. We’re publicly funded. What’s our relationship to the community that funds us? Are we good neighbors? Do we respect what other kinds of musicians do? Or do we stand apart with our noses in the air, waiting for the chance to educate people to appreciate our superior art?

And then think of orchestra musicians who play nonclassical music (the Philadelphia Orchestra principal trombonist who plays in a Latin band, as shown in the film Music from the Inside Out; the players in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra who, I’ve heard, have a punk band and play at CBGB; so many more). Why should this be cut off from their orchestra life? Why can’t their orchestras—into which they pour so much of their hearts—nurture everything they do musically?

So, fine. The principle is clear. (At least to me.) But how do we put it into practice? I thought of one way when Aretha Franklin started singing opera arias. She stepped in for Pavarotti one year at the Grammys, singing “Nessun dorma” when he abruptly dropped out. She was sensational, though of course in her own style, not Puccini’s. (You can hear it—and see her, too—right here, thanks to YouTube. Forgive her Italian, and stay to the end, when the really great stuff comes.) Later on, she sang “Vissi d’arte” and “Un bel di.” (I heard her do “Vissi d’arte” with the Detroit Symphony; you can read my happy review.)

So when she did that, I thought that opera companies should have congratulated her. “Aretha,” the Met could have said, “welcome to our music. Of course we don’t do it the way you do, but the way you do it makes us really happy. Come do a concert on our stage!”

But beyond that, what? How about some ideas we could try every day? So here’s one from Jennifer Foster, the broadcaster from WDAV, a classical public radio station at Davidson College in North Carolina, whose musical mashups I wrote about here before. Jennifer produces a show called The Main Street Sessions, which features many kinds of musicians, all from the station’s area.

Let Jennifer tell the story (as she wrote it in an e-mail to me, which I’m quoting with her permission):

Within the series I record and produce, Carolina Live: The Main Street Sessions (our station is on Main Street), I've wandered outside of classical boundaries several times. I have aired progressive jazz, jazz standards, Brazilian folk, Celtic, barbershop quartet, world percussion, singer/songwriter, and "new grass" material. I fully expected hate mail, irate phone calls, angry emails. We received none. In fact, words like “refreshing” and “innovative” came up in a smattering of emails, letters and conversations.

The context of the program and some sensitive editing on my part may have helped. I was able to humanize each musician or group of musicians using interview material that was presented along with (and sometimes layered over) the music we recorded in the performance studio.

I discovered (for me) it's hard to discriminate against music when the humans making it are right in front of you. I put that affection to work on the air as best I could in the way I scripted, edited, framed and presented each segment.

I also deeply believe I can't be the only person on earth who loves all kinds of music; that an ear that revels in classical music is also attracted to other kinds of music that are emotionally or texturally rich, complex or thrilling.

But there’s more:

We organized a live concert, calling on musicians who'd performed for the show to perform at the concert, held in an Episcopal church in uptown Charlotte. It was a remarkable array of performers -- all ages, all types of music -- and people loved it. All three hours of it! There was old music, early music, new music (Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues was a real high point), Latin music, and a barbershop quartet performed between numbers (the crowd loved them).

To top it off, a twenty-five-year-old Charlotte composer, Nathan Wright Shirley, wrote a piece that brought all of these diverse musicians together for a grand finale. He even wrote in a part toward the end for me (I'd been emcee al evening) to sing. It was a bit rough at the beginning -- those early music folks were having a tough time with pitch -- but once it gets into full swing, it isn't half bad. You can hear it at: http://www.wdav.org/nav1024.cfm?cat=2&subcat=124&subsub=308 (look for the "listen" button). Rough as it was, it brought the audience to their feet. What fun!

And what a great idea! And what a terrific way to make classical music part of the community, by making the community part of what a classical music institution does.

Another North Carolina example (which I’ve mentioned here before)—pianist Gregory McCallum taking his piano around the state, playing recitals, giving masterclasses, and organizing concerts everywhere he stopped, where local pianists of all ages and all musical persuasions could play. Greg wanted to take that to every county in the state, but unfortunately had to stop because of illness.

Many thanks to Jennifer, for doing all this, telling me about it, and letting me quote her. Check out The Main Street Sessions web page, on the station’s site. Sample concert program
(scroll down on that page to see it):

• Original songs by Mike Orlando, mandolin, banjo and guitar, and sister Larina Orlando    www.michaelorlando.com
• Barbara Blaker-Krumdiek, baroque cello with viola da gamba/bass player/cellist, Robbie Link    www.robbielink.com
• Kate Minogue, wooden flute, guitar, & vocals
• Billy Jones, the singer/songwriter whose homemade “Townie” T-shirt and musical connections launched the idea for the show.
• Henry Lebedinsky www.gostalbans.org/musicatstalbans.htm , musician of all trades & guest fiddler, Michael Albert from Boston 

Which reminds me of one last—and best—reason to do all these kinds of music together: Because they sound good together, and because people in the audience (who might not draw such hard and fast musical boundaries as we do) might like to hear them.

I'm happy to announce that episode five of the second version of my book -- about the future of classical music -- is now online. I think it's an especially good episode, full of very specific ideas for ways in which classical music can change. Of course, these are just a teaser, since I'm still just writing the introduction to the book. In the finished text, I'll have many more ideas.

Comments, as always, are very welcome. I don't know if anyone who hasn't done what I'm doing here can imagine how helpful all the comments are. And they've also turned my book into a very lively discussion site.

You can subscribe to my book, and I urge to you. Just click the link, and send me e-mail with the word “subscribe” in the subject line. (I’d love it if you’d also tell me who you are and why you’re interested in the book.) That way you’ll get e-mail whenever a new episode shows up online. Plus, maybe in the future, extra commentary, jokes, special revisions of the book, and any other goodies I can think of. (No promises, though!)

And for anyone who’s thinking of subscribing, I want to state my privacy policy. I was at a luncheon for a new website I've done some work on (see below for what it is; it's worth a look). Among the many questions asked by members of the press was one very skittery inquiry, about whether somebody who posted comments on the site would have their privacy protected. The answer, of course, would be that if you choose to leave your name and e-mail address, then of course the whole world will know who you are. Otherwise the site would always protect your privacy.

This taught me, though, that many people wonder what happens to their data when they send it to anyone online. So I thought I'd better state my own privacy policy, which from now on will be stated on the book site as well:

I’ll never share my subscriber list with anyone, for any reason. I send all e-mail to my list myself, without routing it through anyone at ArtsJournal. And I send all e-mail with the names of the recipients hidden. All subscribers have their privacy protected at all times.

(And of course anyone who e-mails me has similar protection.)

The website I mentioned is www.polyphonic.org. It's a promising resource for orchestra musicians, hosted and made possible in part by the Eastman School of Music. I conduct video interviews for it, with people in the orchestral world. On the site right now, you can see me talking to Gloria dePasquale, a lively cellist from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and (as you'll see) a terrific spirit, a real statesman in her field. She plays her cello at the beginning of the interview, and she's pretty terrific at that, too.

A bonus if you watch this (or maybe not a bonus, you decide): If you've ever wondered what I'm like in person…

From another frequent corresondent, Eric Edberg, and also originally posted as a comment on my book::

Dull music-making is indeed a big issue. And the ironic thing is that conservatory training, the orchestral audition process, and most music competitions emphasize technical perfection, discourage genuinely individualistic performance, and are much of the problem.

The more charismatic an established performer, the more likely (s)he is to be ridiculed by teachers and by other players of that instrument. The more impassioned and original a young artist, the more likely a member of a competition jury is to be offended by the interpretation or stage presence and give a low score. (That's why I'm in favor of having competition juries made up of fine musicians who play a different instrument than that which is the focus of the competition.)

And the same sort of thing happens with the orchestral audition process, in which a committee has, usually, total say over who gets into the final round heard by the music director. The usual advice for people taking orchestra auditions is to be able to play everything with technical perfection, good musicianship, but little "personality." And again, the less bland the playing the higher the liklihood of offendig a committee member.

When I was a teenager at the North Carolina School of the Arts in the 1970s, I had a cello teacher who encouraged me to play with emotional and physical abandon. I was overtly emotional and moved around a lot. Audiences and singer friends loved it. Other instrumentalists? Once I got into playing like this, some wouldn't even speak to me. I was (sniff) "acting." How very, very distasteful!

I recently attended a master class by a very famous cellist, now retired from performing, who was known for his rather reserved stage presence. As he does quite often, he devoted part of the class to making fun of players who show the spirit of the music in their faces and bodies. He did this by, rather comically, mocking this behavior while playing. I thought he actually sounded better. Whether he did or not, his students, and their students, are being taught that to be physically demonstrative is to be deserving of scorn and ridicule.

There are even lots of cellists still denouncing Jackie DuPre, who's been dead for nearly 20 years! And I never heard so many second-rate conducting teachers put down anyone more than Leonard Bernstein, not realizing that his "showmanship" sprang from genuine passion and knowing his scores inside and out, as well as a natural theatricality. Think of all Bernstein did for classical music! And to hear some people talk, back when I was a student, you'd think he was some sort of evil force.

So the bad news is in much of classical-music land, we are teaching our students to have a boring stage presence and exert social pressure on each other to do the same.

From my faithful correspondent Joseph Zitt (and originally posted as a comment on my book site):

One useful buzzphrase: when I took a performance workshop led by Deborah Hay in Austin, one thing that she insisted on for all performers was that they "Invite being seen." Performers have to be conscious that they don't become invisible once they stop sounding, and that, unless they are playing in the dark or physically obscured from the audience, they will been, and what the audience sees as their state affects how things are heard.

A while back, I saw a performance by a good Bay Area rock band, invited by one player of the moment (who has since moved on to another town). When she asked for my reaction, I said that she played the music well, but was a problem when not playing -- she would twiddle noiselessly with her instrument, stare off into space, or look blankly in a random direction. I suggested that she use that time to visually channel the audience's attention toward the other members of the band as appropriate: either the lead singer, or another performer who either was taking a solo or playing a significant other part. (This was especially true since she was strikingly attractive, and a lot of the audience was watching her anyway, thus increasing her resposibility to channel their attention.) This appeared to work, and a later performance seemed my tighter, even though the sound of it was identical, through her attention to the audience's attention.

As a followup to my last post, about my students, here’s the conclusion from a very useful paper, “Some Thoughts on Consumer Behavior,” originally published in ArtsReach (a magazine for arts marketers) and reprinted in Platform, a publication of AEA Consulting, which is where I saw it. The authors are Alexis Frasz & Chris Lorway.

Here’s how they conclude. People who’ve been reading me ought to find these thoughts familiar:

The world has changed dramatically and will continue do so. So what is the non-profit arts community to do?

·         Offer “high value” experiences and appeal to consumers seeking a wide variety of leisure experiences at a range of price points.

·         Develop your skills at maneuvering the web and using other digital technology and establish supportive virtual communities of producers, dealers, visitors, buyers, and commentators. Consumers increasingly expect to be able to find information about whatever they are looking for online, and culture is no exception. Organizations that find ways to link to other convenience services - such as ticketing, accommodation, travel, and restaurant reservations – will find that they have a competitive edge in the marketplace.

·         Convince consumers you are worth the trip. Arts organizations that depend on the presence of an audience in some form (museums, theatres, opera houses, festivals) will need to make a convincing argument for the unique value of the live experience. Visitors may expect a unique, intense, all-consuming experience when they do venture out, and not be satisfied with a high-quality show or exhibition alone. At the same time, high artistic quality and a powerful, involving experience continues to distinguish successful artists and institutions from the rest – mid-quality theatre, exhibitions, and live music are struggling to survive.

In my Juilliard graduate course, that is, called “Classical Music in an Age of Pop.” It’s about, guess what, the future of classical music.

We were talking about how concerts might change, so they’d be more likely to attract an audience (especially a new, young one). And, I might add, so they’d be more interesting for the musicians playing them. That’s something the students insisted on.

Greg Anderson, a pianist, described what sounds like a stunning concert he gave in the Twin Cities. I’m not going to venture a description myself. Maybe I’ll ask him to write it for the blog. But it involved a great variety of music, much of it 20th century, including pieces by Ligeti, Henry Cowell, and John Corigliano. But also Liszt. There were thematic ideas linking the pieces—on the first half, an insistence on the note A, but in ways, as he described them, that anyone could hear. And on the second half, an exploration of love and death.

But what really got me, on top of everything in the last paragraph, was audience participation. Two pieces required volunteers from the audience. Greg, you should understand, is a very lively guy, and I can imagine that the concert was great fun, and terrifically engaging. He’s going back there next year, he says, so if you’re in the area, look out for him.

There was also lots of talk about quality of performance. Faithful readers will know that I’ve chewed on that bone myself, here and here. My students—and I guarantee I didn’t prompt them at all—said exactly what I’ve been saying. Performances aren’t good enough. They’re not good enough to excite the audience. They’re not good enough to excite the musicians. That even extends, the students said, to how the musicians look. They were very harsh (for instance) on orchestral players who, with nothing to play for a while, look like they’re not remotely interested in what’s going on around them. Note that they didn’t say that these musicians in fact aren’t interested, but that they need to communicate in some way that they are.

I thought of two cases where how orchestral musicians look could be dramatically improved. At the end of the Mahler First Symphony, some conductors like the horns to stand up. (Is that in the score? I’ve forgotten, and I don’t have the score with me to check.) So if that’s going to happen, the horns (eight of them, right?) should work on how they look when they do it. They all stand together, with as close as possible to whipcrack unanimity.

And when the strings—maybe just the first violins, but in a Tchaikovsky symphony maybe the seconds, the violas, and the cellos, too—all join in on a big melody, presumably they bow it the same way. But why don’t they (just like those horns) coordinate their bowing so it really looks synchronized? So all the players are visibly joined together in a single act of musical expression.

Oh, I can imagine the horror if anyone tried to institute these things. “Where does it say in the contract that you can tell me how I should look?” Never mind that orchestras need to rebuild their audience. Never mind that, in fact, whether you like it or not, when you’re playing in an orchestra concert, you’re putting on a show. Never mind that there’s an audience out there (which in fact is quite engrossed in what they see, as any conversation with members of the orchestra audience will reveal). Never mind that eight horns standing at once is a wonderfully dramatic event, which you don’t want falling flat, any more than you’d want a dramatic musical entrance to fall flat. Never mind that you could undercut the moment if it doesn’t look right. Never mind that in absolutely any other kind of performance, everyone involved would want this to look as good as it could. When are we going to grow up?

Finally, from Sanja Petrovic came something quiet and lovely. Sanja, a pianist, said she’d been involved in a performance of Chopin nocturnes. Several pianists were involved. (Sanja, I hope I’m remembering this exactly right!) The concert began at 11 PM. The space was darkened. Candles were lit. Can you imagine a more beautiful—or more suitable—setting for the nocturnes? No need for program notes. No need to explain who Chopin was, or what a nocturne is, or what kind of unexpected modulations might occur in measure 32. No need, God help us, for any education (the very notion of which, I think, is killing classical music, but more on that in another post). The setting of the concert clarified anything that anyone would need to know. I wish I’d been there.

And of course people will say that not every concert can be like this, that there isn’t always such an obvious theme or such a clear path to an evocative setting. That’s true, of course. But Sanja (and Greg, and others, too, of course) are pointing the way here to something very important. Most classical concerts aren’t events at all. They’re musical performances, defined by the names of the performers and by the repertoire they’re playing. If that means something to you, fine. If it doesn’t, forget it. Why would you go?

But that’s not good enough. We need to give people reasons to attend. And the clearest reason would be that the concert is about something. The staging, if that’s the word, doesn’t have to be as elaborate as what Sanja described (though, really, it sounded pretty simple). Maybe all you need to do—at, let’s say, a piano recital—is put flowers on stage. Or say something interesting. Or play your heart out, so fervently that nobody can miss it. But you have to create an event. You have to give people a hook. You have to enable them to say, “I want to go hear Sanja play because she’s going to…”

And you know what? That’s not just for the great unwashed (who, in fact, are nothing of the sort: As I’ve said here in other contexts, they’re smart, discriminating people who think that the presentation of classical music is empty and dumb). It’s for me, too. Why should I go to all the concerts I get invited to? I’m sure that many, if not most of them, are pretty good. But why do I want to be there? Why would it be better than going to a Mets game, or watching The Sopranos on TV?