Bowling Green

style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK2'>Last week — as regular readers know from the

href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2006/10/greg_sightings.html">

style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK1'>schedule of

my travels

style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK2'> that I posted a while ago — my

wife Anne Midgette and I were at Bowling Green

State University

in Ohio. This

was a happy visit. The two of us were in residence, thanks to the Dorothy E.

and DuWayne H. Hansen

Musical Arts Series Fund, which brings people in the arts to Bowling Green to

work with students — and, as it turned out, faculty as well — at the university’s

college of musical arts.

So here are the headlines. We met with students in four classes, one

in music, one about popular culture (Bowling

Green was one of the first universities to establish a

popular culture department), and two in

style='mso-spacerun:yes'> journalism. (Anne writes about music

for The New York Times, as of course

I’ve mentioned here before.) We heard concerts in

w:st="on">Bowling Green

class=GramE>‘s annual new music festival, including a really striking

performance (more on this below) by the student orchestra. I had pieces performed

on two of these concerts, with (I won’t be modest) enormous success.

We were quite honored to be asked to address the first meeting of a

new interdisciplinary committee of arts faculty, brought together to develop a

new approach to arts courses aimed at the entire student body. This was an

honor, as we saw it, because we wouldn’t have thought we’d have anything

obviously useful to say to these people. They’re the ones immersed in arts

education, not us. But they felt otherwise, and I think we at least got their

discussion going in a productive way. In return, we learned a lot from them.

Then, last but not least, we led two panel discussions, one on the

role of the arts in the community, the other on music criticism, and finally

gave a presentation ourselves on the future of classical music. This turned out

to be a particular pleasure. The subject, obviously, is my specialty, not Anne’s,

but she has quite a lot to say about it, and it was really fun to stand on

stage together — they decided to hold this discussion in their large concert

hall — and hold forth jointly.

One more thing. I took advantage of a free

moment to hear a rehearsal of the school’s gamelan ensemble. Not every music

school has an ensemble of gamelan instruments, or someone to teach the students

to play them. I thought these students were really lucky to have this chance to

get inside another culture’s music, which they did with a lot of uncomplicated

enthusiasm. By “uncomplicated,” I mean that there didn’t seem to be much

concern about any deep meaning in the cultural blending. They just took their

shoes off (which I take to be a traditional expression of respect), and played

the music, under the warm encouragement of David Harnish,

an ethnomusicology professor. This was a special treat for me, because it was

something I hadn’t experienced before. And the instruments are very beautiful,

both to look at and to hear.

More details. The student orchestra — the

Bowling Green Philharmonia — was amazing. They played

four not at all easy pieces by Robert Beaser,

class=SpellE>Avner Dorman, Michael Daugherty, and Timothy

class=SpellE>Stulman (he’s a Bowling Green DMA student, and his piece

had a nicely relaxed and lovely ending, with a lot of surprising unison writing

for the orchestra). So what was amazing? Most of the students had never even

heard music like this, let alone played it. (We’re talking about complex

harmony, complex rhythms, complex textures, and much more.) And in spite of

that they dug in, and reached the musical heart of each piece. Gigantic credit

goes to Emily Freeman Brown,

class=GramE>Bowling Green‘s

Director of Orchestral Activities, who conducted.

The Bowling Green Wind Symphony (the university’s top concert band) followed

the Philharmonia on the same program, with Bruce Moss

conducting, and also did wonderfully. If I favor the orchestra here, it’s because

the strings posed more of a challenge than the wind and brass. I’m told that

every string player in the college of music took part, including some students

who might not be particularly advanced. Obviously the music challenged them, but

they rose to the challenge. Credit again goes to Emily.

I could say lots more. The students in a class on feature writing

asked especially acute questions. They’d been asked to read

href="http://www.gregsandow.com/ozawa.htm">

style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK2'>something I wrote

style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK1'>

style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK1'> in the ’90s

about Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, and they probed it sharply,

exploring every possible weakness in my reporting. For the panel on the arts I’d

prepared some comments on popular culture, and how I think it’s as artistic as

anything in the officially labeled arts, and I recycled these in the faculty

committee meeting. But they were way ahead of me. They’d already dropped those

barriers, and were prepared to plan courses that touched on every known kind of

artistic creation, from science fiction to hiphop to

style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>La traviata.

The people we met welcomed us very warmly. As we went from one event

to another (our schedules were really packed), we’d meet new people, but also

often encounter people we’d met before. Eventually we felt that we’d been

welcomed into a community we loved being part of. And we can’t say enough good

about Dorothy and DuWayne Hansen, who turned out to

be the kind of smart and caring people who do good wherever they go. We were

thrown together with them quite a bit, and found ourselves talking to them

about everything from baseball to theology. They care passionately about music,

and DuWayne has some intriguing, advanced ideas about

how to bring a chamber music series he’s involved with into classical music’s

evolving future.

I realize that all this may sound like gushing. I guess I’m stuck

with that; everything really was the way I’m describing it. Our private

conversations about our visit are pretty much what you’re reading here.